Richard L. Feigen, a number one gallery proprietor, vendor and collector whose affect within the artwork world in New York and past included media companies of all genres for museums and magnates whereas supporting the aged. masters and new abilities, he died on the twenty ninth of January. in Mount Kisco, NY He was 90 years outdated.
Her daughter, Philippa Feigen Malkin, mentioned the trigger was problems from Covid-19.
Mr. Feigen has had a hand in quite a few title artwork gross sales throughout his greater than 60 years in enterprise. At his galleries in Manhattan, Chicago and elsewhere, he has organized numerous exhibitions, together with premieres of rising figures equivalent to Pop artist Gerald Laing and sculptor Enrique Castro-Cid. For years it represented the elusive collagen Ray Johnson, and was an important refresher to the meeting Joseph Cornell, the painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet and the painter and printer Max Beckmann, all of whom have obtained exhibits of their galleries.
At varied factors he superior Surrealism, German Expressionism, Italian artwork from the thirteenth century to the Baroque interval, and, specifically, every part regarding outdated masters. A headline in a 1987 article within the New York Occasions about him and his work on behalf of the recent collectors of the day merely mentioned, “Previous Masters, New Magnates.”
Because the article famous, together with his curiosity in outdated masters, he was shaking up a historically agency nook of the artwork market – he had “introduced Wall Avenue’s model and stress to a occupation nonetheless steeped within the notion of aristocratic kindness “.
No matter artist or style he gives or shows in his galleries, Mr. Feigen, regardless of having little coaching in artwork or artwork historical past, confirmed a passionate intuition to see worth – or, extra importantly, future worth.
“Richard was all the time forward of the curve,” mentioned by e-mail Frances FL Beatty, who from 1980 to 2017 was vp after which president of Richard L. Feigen & Firm. “They did not like being a follower; I needed to shine a highlight on the foremost artwork that was underestimated. ”
Mr. Feigen traveled in whimsical circles, befriending artists and jet-setting to seduce those that collected them. His powerful driving model has left a few of his colleagues extra reserved.
“He could have managed to work 4 English dukes, three financiers and two movie stars in considered one of his long-running sentences,” considered one of them as soon as complained.
No matter his ardour of the second, Mr. Feigen understood that as a way to admire the significance and worth of artwork he wanted to know easy methods to match into his time interval.
“Artists I like take dangers,” he mentioned an oral story registered in 2009 for the Smithsonian Establishment’s American Artwork Archives. “They do not paint of their rearview mirror.” They’re portray by means of the windshield. ”
Richard Lee Feigen was born on August 8, 1930, in Chicago. His father, Arthur Paul Feigen, was a lawyer and actual property investor, and his mom, Shirley (Bierman) Feigen, was a housewife.
By the point he was about 10 years outdated, he was already growing a rudimentary assortment concept.
“I feel I used to be within the potential way forward for issues,” he mentioned within the oral story.
On the age of 11 or 12, because the story goes, he purchased a watercolor by Scottish artist Isaac Cruikshank caricaturing the French Revolution, which he had caught his eye in an area vintage store. He paid $ 100, he mentioned, cash he had earned promoting tea cups with flowers in them. Why would a toddler purchase one thing like that?
“I preferred it and felt underestimated when it comes to what it might value me,” he mentioned an interview in 2019 with Christie’s, the auctioneer.
When he was in faculty at Yale College, he had amassed sufficient of a set that he apprehensive the items had been “a bit at risk for a crowd of roommates,” he mentioned within the oral historical past. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1952 and a grasp’s diploma from Harvard Enterprise Faculty in 1954.
He was making ready for a place in a father or mother firm, the Los Angeles Customary Useful Life Insurance coverage Firm, and at age 25 was assigned to start out his funding division. However his ardour for artwork assortment continued to drag him into the east.
He purchased a place on the New York Inventory Change, considering he might work on Wall Avenue and pursue his ardour for artwork on the identical time, however this didn’t show possible. In 1957 he jumped into the artwork world with each ft, opening the Richard Feigen Gallery on Astor Avenue in Chicago.
“I had to make use of my very own assortment as my opening present,” he recalled within the oral story. Entitled “Masterpieces of Twentieth-Century German Artwork,” Mr. Feigen had fallen in love with German Expressionists. However he quickly confirmed Beckmann, Francis Bacon, the Roman sculptor and painter Victor Brauner and different essential artists.
He additionally took to representing some artists within the Chicago space, amongst them the painter George Cohen. His need to see his work in New York, he mentioned, was one of many causes he opened his first New York gallery, on East 81st Avenue, in 1963.
In 1965 he opened a second gallery in Manhattan, in SoHo, centered on up to date artwork. Throughout this era he had a bit of a gallery in Los Angeles, and, for 4 years within the early 90s, he had a gallery in London. Through the years its New York Metropolis galleries have occupied varied areas, together with the present one on East 77th Avenue.
Mr. Feigen beloved working together with his artists, together with mercurial ones like Mr. Johnson, who died, apparently by suicide, in 1995. As soon as Mr. Johnson indulged in a kind of artwork of present, letting 60 sizzling canines escape from a helicopter over Wards Island. in New York. He spoke to Mr. Feigen to take the cardboard for the helicopter and the canines.
“He was relentless in his devotion to artists and explicit actions (by no means the obvious),” Dr. Beatty mentioned.
Whereas displaying artists in his galleries, Mr. Feigen has constructed a repute as a bicycle vendor within the artwork world. He typically introduced himself because the bidder behind a sale at excessive costs in giant public sale homes, and was even chosen as a model of himself in Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie, “Wall Avenue.” Typically at such auctions, he represented consumers he had studied in regards to the worth of investing in artwork.
“There are few prospects prepared to do that enterprise, particularly Individuals,” he advised the Occasions in 1987. “He has to transform.”
Museums have typically turned to Mr. Feigen for main acquisitions. However generally he was compelled by himself, both by stock for his galleries or for his personal assortment, which over time grew to become formidable.
“I by no means purchased a big object for myself that I might afford,” he admitted within the oral historical past. “I by no means knew the place the cash got here from.” I someway managed to evoke it. ”
Many occasions late in life Mr. Feigen, who on his demise lived in Katonah, NY, offered items from his assortment to fund his retirement. Christie’s managed such a sale in 2019.
“I hope none of them promote,” he mentioned on the time, “as a result of I need them again in my front room.”
The marriages of Mr. Feigen with Sandra Elizabeth Canning in 1966 and Margaret Culver in 1998 resulted in divorce. In 2007 he married Isabelle Harnoncourt Wisowaty, who survives him with a daughter, Ms. Feigen Malkin, and a son, Richard, from their first marriage; two daughters, Stephanie Diana Harnoncourt Wisowaty and Léonie Allison Harnoncourt Wisowaty; a grandson, Alexander Karl Richard Wisowaty; a sister, Brenda Sue Feigen; and three grandchildren.
Feigen, a staunch Democrat, recorded Smithsonian oral historical past in January 2009, over the past days of President George W. Bush’s administration, which he had seen for eight years in workplace with cultural shame. He talked in regards to the intent and the place artwork ought to enter into the worth system of society.
“It has to start out with a perception that isn’t common: that the humanities are of paramount significance,” he mentioned. “Now, not everybody agrees with that, and a few folks would name it elitism. The actual fact is that I feel what we go away when it comes to artwork is what actually counts, and never the bombs we make and the craters that we dig and the constructions we construct, which flip into rusty piles over time. ”
