Photo: Saatchi Gallery, London. Courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London © Matthew Booth, 2009
SALON at Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, London, has been created to present the work of leading international artists who have had limited exposure in the UK.
This new venture directed by Philippa Adams, Senior Director of Saatchi Gallery, will work in collaboration with galleries and artist’s estates, in selling exhibitions.
Lévy Gorvy will inaugurate SALON with an exhibition by Tsuyoshi Maekawa, opening on 24 February 2017. The presentation will include a selection of paintings by the artist from the 1950s and ’60s, with important loans from Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp, conveying both the unique sensibility and remarkable energy of Gutai’s most productive period.
Says Adams:
‘SALON has been created because there are limited opportunities for international artists to show at major museums in the UK. Saatchi Gallery, which attracts more than 1.5 million visitors a year, will provide that platform, and SALON in collaboration with Lévy Gorvy is privileged to inaugurate with a breathtaking display of historic works by Tsuyoshi Maekawa.
Dominique Lévy previously held an exhibition of Maekawa’s works in New York in 2014. Tsuyoshi Maekawa will be held concurrently with an exhibition of fellow Gutai painter Kazuo Shiraga’s works at Lévy Gorvy’s Old Bond Street location. By presenting simultaneous exhibitions by two Gutai masters across both venues in London, the galleries will highlight the legacy of this influential avant-garde collective.
Tsuyoshi Maekawa, presented with Lévy Gorvy, 24 February – 14 May, 2017, SALON, Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, Kings Road, London, SW3 4RY
About The Artist
Tsuyoshi Maekawa (b. 1936) was a member of the Gutai Art Association, Japan’s most significant avant-garde collective of the postwar era founded in 1954. He was included in the 8th Gutai Exhibition at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art in 1959, and became a protégé of the group’s founder, Jiro Yoshihara. The first solo exhibition of Maekawa’s work was held at the Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka in November 1963. From that point until the group’s eventual dissolution following Yoshihara’s death in 1972, Maekawa was represented in every Gutai event.
About Salon at Saatchi Gallery:
SALON, Saatchi Gallery’s new project space has been created to present the work of leading international artists who have had limited exposure in the UK. Located in its own self-contained space at the Saatchi Gallery, this new venture will collaborate with galleries and artists estates in selling exhibitions.
Saatchi Gallery was founded in 1985 by Charles Saatchi. The Saatchi Gallery is the world’s No. 1 museum on social media. It has presented 15 of the 20 most visited exhibitions in London during the last five years, due to the policy of free admission to all gallery curated shows.
It was the first UK museum to introduce the public to exhibitions of Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, Robert Ryman, Sol LeWitt, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, Jeff Koons, Philip Guston, Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, Jenny Saville, Sarah Lucas, Glenn Brown, Andreas Gursky, John Currin, Ron Mueck, Grayson Perry, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Cecily Brown, Martin Kippenberger, Peter Doig, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Duane Hanson, and Alex Katz, among others.
In recent years it has presented surveys of emerging artists from China, India, the Middle East, Korea, Russia, South America, Africa, Germany, United States, and Britain, many of whom have achieved international success.
The Saatchi Gallery education programme attracts over 2,000 schools each year, organising student visits from primary school level upwards. The website displays over one thousand works that have been exhibited in the last three decades, as a study resource, and also gives full details about the art to be seen in forthcoming exhibitions.
