Ivan C. Karp (June 4, 1926 – June 28, 2012) was an American

art dealer An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...

, gallerist and author instrumental in the emergence of pop art and the development of Manhattan's SoHo gallery district in the 1960s. Ivan Karp was born in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

and grew up in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. His career in art began in 1955, when he served as the first art critic of the

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...

. In 1956, he joined the Hansa Gallery, a downtown artists' cooperative gallery that had moved uptown to Central Park South. Karp was co-director, alongside Richard Bellamy, who later founded the

Green Gallery The Green Gallery was an art gallery that operated between 1960 and 1965 at 15 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City. The gallery's director was Richard Bellamy, and its financial backer was the art collector Robert Scull. Green Gallery ...

. He moved to the relatively new

Leo Castelli Gallery Leo Castelli (born Leo Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which ...

in 1959 as associate director. While there, he helped sell the works of, popularize and market the initial generation of Pop artists, including

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. Hi ...

and

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

. On April 25, 1966 in

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...

Magazine, Ivan Karp is described as the "

Sol Hurok Sol Hurok (Solomon Israilevich Hurok; born Solomon Izrailevich Gurkov, Russian Соломон Израилевич Гурков; April 9, 1888March 5, 1974) was a 20th-century American impresario. Early life Hurok was born in Pogar, Chernigov G ...

of Pop Art". He said he was devoted to this art form because the artists "transform banal objects. They see beauty in all things". Karp worked with Castelli for ten years, leaving in 1969 to open the OK Harris Gallery in

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

, Manhattan. Karp's was the second art gallery to open on West Broadway, which ultimately became the core of the SoHo gallery district. His initial focus at O.K. Harris was on

Photorealism Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be ...

, with artists such as

Robert Cottingham Robert Cottingham (born 1935 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American artist known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes showing building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, railroad heralds and shop fronts.

and

Robert Bechtle Robert Alan Bechtle (May 14, 1932 – September 24, 2020) was an American Painting, painter, printmaker, and educator. He lived nearly all his life in the San Francisco Bay Area and whose art was centered on scenes from everyday local life. His pa ...

. Other artists represented by the gallery included

Deborah Butterfield Deborah Kay Butterfield (born May 7, 1949) is an American sculptor. Along with her artist-husband John Buck, she divides her time between a farm in Bozeman, Montana, and studio space in Hawaii. She is known for her sculptures of horses made fr ...

Malcolm Morley Malcolm A. Morley (June 7, 1931 – June 1, 2018) was a British-American artist and painter. He was known as an artist who pioneered in varying styles, working as a photorealist and an expressionist, among many other styles. Life Morley was ...

and

Duane Hanson Duane Hanson (January 17, 1925 – January 6, 1996) was an American artist and sculptor born in Minnesota. He spent most of his career in South Florida. He was known for his life-sized realistic sculptures of people. He cast the works based o ...

. In the early 1960s, Karp led efforts to salvage architectural ornament from older New York City buildings that were being demolished for new construction. He founded the Anonymous Arts Recovery Society and often drove around the streets of Manhattan and the Bronx spotting and collecting materials from building sites before they could be carted away as rubble. Many of the hundreds of items recovered by Karp and his colleagues were deposited in the collection of the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, displayed in the sculpture garden and the subway station adjacent to the museum. The Brooklyn Museum transferred 1500 architectural artifacts to the National Building Arts Center, located in Sauget, Illinois. Others are housed in the Anonymous Arts Museum Karp founded in Charlotteville, New York. Karp wrote a 1965 comic novel, "Doobie Doo", about love among pop artists with cover art by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. He died on June 28, 2012 at the age of 86, in Charlotteville, New York.

Notes

External links

Archives of American Art, Interview with Ivan KarpThe Gallerist, Where Did the Name OK Harris Come From?Video interview with Ivan KarpBrooklyn Museum sculpture gardenNational Building Arts Center Mission
1926 births 2012 deaths American art collectors American art dealers People from Manhattan People from Brooklyn People from the Bronx 20th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1920s-stub