Marlborough Gallery announces it will close after 78 years.
Exterior view of Marlborough Gallery in London. Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery.
Marlborough Gallery—a pivotal institution in the post-war international art world with locations in New York, London, Madrid, and Barcelona—has announced that it will shutter by early June. Over the gallery’s 78-year history, it has represented high-profile artists such as Alice Aycock, Francis Bacon, and Vincent Desiderio.
“After long and careful consideration, we made the decision that now is the time to sunset our nearly 80-year-old firm,” said Franz Plutschow, a member of the gallery’s board of trustees and a long-time associate of its founders, in a statement.
Portrait of Frank Lloyd, Gilbert Lloyd, and Francis Bacon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975. Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery.
In 1946, Marlborough was co-founded in London by Frank Lloyd, a Jewish immigrant who fled Austria in 1938, and Harry Fischer, an Austrian book dealer, after meeting in the military. The gallery initially showed works from Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and modernists before pivoting to exhibiting contemporary works. During this period, the gallery showed artists like Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, and Barbara Hepworth.
By 1963, Marlborough opened a space in New York that would embrace American artists such as Richard Diebenkorn and Philip Guston, as well as estates including Jackson Pollock. In the following decades, the gallery expanded worldwide, operating spaces in Rome, Zurich, Toronto, Montreal, and Tokyo. Meanwhile, the gallery maintained a strong presence in Spain, where it became a critical representative of artists such as Juan Genovés and Fernando Botero.
Exterior view of Marlborough Fine Art on Bond Street in London, 1960. Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery.
In the coming months, the gallery will release more information about distributing its inventory, which is estimated to be worth more than $250 million.
“We are indebted to our expert and dedicated employees, including those who will continue to work with us as we now wind down the business,” said Plutschow. “As we do so, we are mindful that the extraordinary breadth and depth of our inventory testifies to the relationships formed over the decades with some of the most important artists of the modern era.”
