Galería Leyendecker on Four Decades of Bringing Art World Stars to the Canary Islands
Portrait of Ángel Luis de la Cruz and Lele H. Colomer. Courtesy of Galería Leyendecker.
Off the coast of northwest Africa, Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands, known for its numerous beaches, pleasant climate, and mountainous terrains. It’s not the most likely location to run a contemporary art gallery, but that’s exactly what Ángel Luis de la Cruz and Lele H. Colomer did when they set up Galería Leyendecker in 1979.
In the four decades since, the gallery has made a mark for bridging the gap between the local and the global art scenes while building its own hotbed for contemporary art on the island. It has hosted some of the art world’s brightest stars across its history, and shows no sign of losing its knack for spotting and platforming emerging talent.
A formative moment for the gallery came when de la Cruz visited the German city of Kassel for the art exhibition Documenta in 1982. There, he discovered the famed German artist Martin Kippenberger when the artist was selling his paintings for just €100 ($109). The same year, de la Cruz and Colomer established a residency program with the gallery in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, with Kippenberger becoming its inaugural attendee.
“We started inviting artists…with the intention of bringing what was ‘cooking’ in Cologne and New York at that time,” de la Cruz told Artsy.
Quickly after it launched, the residency program became a plank of the gallery’s identity and a magnet for international talent. Besides Kippenberger, the gallery has invited art world stars such as Kennedy Yanko and Angel Otero in recent years. At first, the residency program was much more laid back, with de la Cruz recalling that they were partying and relaxing in the island environment. However, he noted that dramatic differences from the art scenes in New York and Cologne influenced the artists’ work.
Exterior view of Galería Leyendecker. Courtesy of Galería Leyendecker.
“On the island, the color and everything changed in their work,” de la Cruz said. “That was really great because when you are living in Cologne, the weather is different, the landscape is different. You can work here for three months, and everything is new—and this is why we decided to make the residency.”
This program allowed the two veteran gallerists to cultivate a strong artist community within the Canary Islands and branched out across the global art world. For each artist who attends the residency program, Leyendecker produces a publication about the artist and their work. Recent residents include Morgan Vallé in 2023, Enrique Ramírez in 2022, and Emily Meringolo in 2021.
The gallery’s knack for spotting and nurturing the careers of emerging talents continues to be a defining characteristic. The gallery has earned a reputation for pinpointing emerging talent—a prescient torchbearer for artists like Jiří Georg Dokoupil and George Condo, the latter being the second artist to attend the residency. “When you dedicate yourself to discovering talent, it is very difficult to stop having that intention,” de La Cruz said.
The gallery continues to burnish its record today. In 2021, the gallery showed a solo exhibition from Basil Kincaid—two years before the American artist would be featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2023–2024.
This week, the gallery will take part in Spain’s premier art fair, ARCOmadrid, which it has participated in every year since the fair’s inception. De la Cruz emphasizes the importance of the fair for Spain’s contemporary art world. The art fair, founded in 1982, emerged in the country’s period of rapid democratization. From early on, the gallerist supported the preeminent Spanish art fair, working on the committee of directors for six years. Here, he helped usher in a new era for the Spanish art market.
“Spain was very closed, and the art world was very closed, so when ARCO began, the art world came to Spain,” de la Cruz said. “This is really important because we could see how a global gallery works, and this was really fantastic for us.”
The gallery itself has also developed along with the broader shifts in the contemporary art world. When de la Cruz and Colomer first launched the gallery, the internet did not exist. The gallerists built their collector base with a grassroots approach, but it also quickly embraced the online art world. After almost 50 years in the art world, online platforms allow the gallery to exist at eye level with top galleries in major art capitals.
Installation view of “16436 Days” at Galería Leyendecker, 2024. Photo by Ángel Luis de la Cruz. Courtesy of Galería Leyendecker.
“[The collectors] buy from you because they believe in your work, and so when what they have bought from you grows in value, they are loyal to you,” de la Cruz said. “You have to have that capacity and that quality because it is the only way to compete with the large galleries. When the pandemic arrived, being able to advertise on a portal like Artsy ended the difference between a gallery in New York and a gallery in the Canary Islands. All that remains is the quality of the work, and that is where you can compete.”
This enduring mission underscores Leyendecker’s journey from its humble beginnings to its current status. It recently celebrated 16,436 days since its opening on February 28, 1979, showcasing several of the aforementioned artists as a testament to its forward-thinking program. As the gallery maintains its versatility, embracing the digital landscape while maintaining its foundational ethos, emerging talent continues to flock to the Canary Islands.
“Let’s distinguish two things: There are people who have studied and rely on data to work with artists, and there are other people, less numerous, who have the talent to choose artists,” de la Cruz said. “We belong to the second group.”
