Tony Shafrazi (born May 8, 1943), is an American art dealer, gallery owner, and artist. He is the owner of the ''Shafrazi Art Gallery'' in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
who deals artwork by artists such as
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
,
Keith Haring
Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his wor ...
, and
David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle (born March 11, 1963) is an American photographer, music video director and film director. He is best known for his work in fashion, photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His pho ...
.
Early life and education
Tony Shafrazian was born in
Abadan, Iran
Abadan ( fa, آبادان ''Ābādān'', ) is a city and capital of Abadan County, Khuzestan Province, which is located in the southwest of Iran. It lies on Abadan Island ( long, 3–19 km or 2–12 miles wide). The island is bound ...
to
Iranian Armenian
Iranian-Armenians ( hy, իրանահայեր ''iranahayer''), also known as Persian-Armenians ( hy, պարսկահայեր ''parskahayer''), are Iranians of Armenian ethnicity who may speak Armenian as their first language. Estimates of thei ...
parents and raised
Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...
.
His parents divorced when he was two years old.
At the age of 13, his father, an oil-company executive, and his stepmother took Shafrazi to England and left him to study there.
[David Grogan (March 26, 1984)]
Once He Vandalized Picasso's Guernica, but Now Tony Shafrazi Is a Successful Patron of the Arts
''People
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
''. He first went to a
vicarage in
Bilston
Bilston is a market town, ward, and civil parish located in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England. It is close to the borders of Sandwell and Walsall. The nearest towns are Darlaston, Wednesbury, and Willenhall. Historically in Staffordshi ...
, then to boarding school in
Whittlebury
Whittlebury is a village and civil parish in the south of the English county of Northamptonshire, close to its border with Buckinghamshire.
History
It is due south of the town of Towcester, to which it is connected by main roads. At the time of ...
, and later
Hammersmith College of Art & Building.
He attended the
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It ...
from 1963 to 1967.
While attending Royal College of Art, Shafrazi visited New York City in 1965, staying in a YMCA that was near Andy Warhol's Factory.
On that trip, he met
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. ...
, Andy Warhol, and art dealer
Leo Castelli
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 ...
.
He moved to New York City in 1969,
[Carol Vogel (October 12, 1998)]
Another Look at Bacon; Newfound Canvases Shed More Light on a Master
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. where he lectured at several universities, including the
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
History
This school was started by ...
.
Art work
Shafrazi and ''Guernica''
On February 28, 1974, Shafrazi
spray-painted Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
's 1937 painting ''
Guernica
Guernica (, ), official name (reflecting the Basque language) Gernika (), is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part (along with neighbouring Lumo) of the m ...
'', which hung in
the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...
, with the words "KILL LIES ALL" in foot-high letters.
He deliberately wrote the confusing phrase, "KILL LIES ALL" instead of "ALL LIES KILL", as an allusion to James Joyce's novel, ''
Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a bod ...
'', so that it could be read from any direction.
When a guard finally grabbed him, Shafrazi shouted, "Call the curator. I am an artist."
The paint was easily removed as the painting was heavily varnished. It is believed that Shafrazi was protesting the announcement, the day before, of the release on bail of U.S. lieutenant
William Calley
William Laws Calley Jr. (born June 8, 1943) is a former American army officer and war criminal convicted by court-martial for the premeditated killings of 200 to 400 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the Mỹ Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, d ...
. Calley, then under house arrest following his conviction, in 1971, for his part in the
My Lai massacre
My or MY may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* My (radio station), a Malaysian radio station
* Little My, a fictional character in the Moomins universe
* ''My'' (album), by Edyta Górniak
* ''My'' (EP), by Cho Mi-yeon
Business
* Market ...
in Vietnam, had petitioned for
habeas corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, ...
; he had initially been sentenced to life imprisonment. Although his appeal was overturned in June, he was finally released from U.S. Army custody later in the year after having received a limited pardon from
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
.
Shafrazi was a member of the
Art Workers' Coalition The Art Workers' Coalition (AWC) was an open coalition of artists, filmmakers, writers, critics, and museum staff that formed in New York City in January 1969. Its principal aim was to pressure the city's museums – notably the Museum of Modern Art ...
, which in 1970 had staged a protest at MoMA by unfurling a copy of the famous
My Lai protest poster ''
And babies
''And babies'' (December 26, 1969) is an iconic anti-Vietnam War poster. It is a famous example of "propaganda art" from the Vietnam War, The poster is also discussed in ''Propaganda Prints: A History of Art in the Service of Social and Political ...
'' in front of the ''Guernica'' painting, which itself depicts the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon innocent civilians. Shafrazi was later given five years' probation, without a trial.
Art Basel 2012
Shafrazi dedicated his booth at Art Basel 2012 to his own artwork and caused a stir. After nine hours, he added other artists to his booth.
Art dealer
In 1976, only a few years after the spray painting incident, Shafrazi returned to his homeland and became the art advisor to
the Shah of Iran and
Kamran Diba
Kamran Diba ( fa, کامران ديبا, born 5 March 1937) is an Iranian architect and museum director, and prior to the Iranian Revolution, Diba worked entirely in the public sector in Iran. He is currently residing in Paris, France.
Biogra ...
, then director of the
Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, (Persian: موزه هنرهای معاصر تهران), also known as TMoCA, is among the largest art museums in Tehran and Iran. It has collections of more than 3,000 items that include 19th and 20th centu ...
.
Shafrazi went to about 15 of the top New York dealers at the time — including
Leo Castelli
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 ...
,
Ileana Sonnabend
Ileana Sonnabend (née Schapira, October 29, 1914 – October 21, 2007) was a Romanian-American art dealer of 20th-century art. The Sonnabend Gallery opened in Paris in 1962 and was instrumental in making American art of the 1960s known in Europe, ...
, Paula Cooper, John Weber, and Irving Blum — and helped assemble a 20th-century
art collection on the Shah's behalf within four years. As he did so his power expanded in the art market. The museum Shafrazi had constructed in Tehran to house this collection epitomized the Shah's modern Iranian state, thus the collection was predominantly Western: from
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passa ...
to
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
,
Pop
Pop or POP may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* Pop music, a musical genre Artists
* POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade
* Pop!, a UK pop group
* Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band
Albums
* ''Pop'' ( ...
and
Conceptual Art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called ins ...
, including works by
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. ...
, and
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...
.
In 1978, Shafrazi briefly opened his own commercial gallery in a small Tehran shopfront but closed it because of conditions in the country leading up to the
1979 Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...
.
He lost much of his art during that time but safely returned to New York City.
Shafrazi converted his rented apartment into a makeshift gallery where he slept on a small loft bed at night.
In 1979, he opened his first New York City gallery, and within a few years he had made his reputation handling talents like
Donald Baechler
Donald Baechler (November 22, 1956 – April 4, 2022) was an American painter and sculptor associated with 1980s Neo-expressionism. He had lived in Manhattan and Stephentown, New York.
Early life and education
Baechler was born in Hartford, ...
and then-hot graffiti artists like
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside ...
,
Keith Haring
Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his wor ...
, and
Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf (born November 23, 1958) is an American painter known for his participation in New York City's interdisciplinary East Village art scene during the 1980s, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Scharf's do-it-yourself pract ...
. Throughout the 1980s he exhibited numerous artists of various tendencies including
William S. Burroughs,
Patrick Caulfield,
Mark Dagley,
Gerard Hemsworth,
Michael Heizer
Michael Heizer (born 1944) is an American land artist specializing in large-scale and site-specific sculptures. Working largely outside the confines of the traditional art spaces of galleries and museums, Heizer has redefined sculpture in terms ...
,
Olivier Mosset
Olivier Mosset (born 1944 in Bern, Switzerland) is a Swiss visual artist. and
Keith Sonnier along with European artists like
Brian Clarke
Brian Clarke (born 2 July 1953) is a British painter, architectural artist and printmaker, known for his large-scale stained glass and mosaic projects, symbolist paintings, set designs, and collaborations with major figures in Modern and con ...
,
Enzo Cucchi
Enzo Cucchi (born 14 November 1949) is an Italian painter. A native of Morro d'Alba, province of Ancona, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with his countrymen Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria ...
,
Hervé Di Rosa
Hervé Di Rosa (born 1959 in Sète, Hérault) is a French painter.
Born in Sète, France, Hervé Di Rosa is a French painter who brings to life unique characters who populate his work in the form of paintings, sculptures, installations and animati ...
, and
Jean-Charles Blais
Jean-Charles and Jean-Carles is a French masculine given name. Notable people with the name include:
* Jean Charles, Chevalier Folard (1669–1752), French soldier and military author
* Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand (1817–1891), French engineer
* ...
.
In 1990, he opened a new 13,000-square-foot gallery at 119 Wooster Street, with an exhibition entitled "American Masters of the 60's" and including
Carl Andre
Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public art ...
,
Tom Wesselmann
Thomas K. Wesselmann (February 23, 1931 – December 17, 2004) was an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture.
Early years
Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati.
From 1949 to 1951 he atte ...
,
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...
,
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...
,
Frank Stella
Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City.
Biography
Frank Stella was born in Ma ...
, and
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 ...
.
In 1999, the
Francis Bacon estate chose Shafrazi as its United States representative. In 2004, the gallery opened another space on 26th Street with a large show of paintings by
Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
, Francis Bacon and
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside ...
.
Shafrazi's gallery closed in 2014.
[ His clients have included Donald Trump and ]Larry Silverstein
Larry A. Silverstein (born May 30, 1931) is an American businessman. Among his real estate projects, he is the developer of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City, as well as one of New York's tallest resident ...
.
Personal life
In 1995, Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant
Peter Mark Brant Sr. (born March 1, 1947) is an American industrialist, as well as a magazine publisher, film producer, and art collector. He is married to model Stephanie Seymour.
Early life and education
Brant was raised in Jamaica Estate ...
had Shafrazi serve as the best man
A groomsman or usher is one of the male attendants to the groom in a wedding ceremony and performs the first speech at the wedding. Usually, the groom selects close friends and relatives to serve as groomsmen, and it is considered an honor to be ...
at their wedding at an estate outside Paris.
Tony Shafrazi is also actively involved in supporting Children of Armenia Fund
The Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) ( Armenian: «Հայաստանի Մանուկներ» բարեգործական հիմնադրամ (ՔՈԱՖ)) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing educational opportunities and building infrastru ...
, a charitable organization, that aims to advance rural communities in Armenia. He is the Honorary Chair of COAF Honorary Board.
In 2020, Shafrazi publicly supported Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
for president.
See also
* Children of Armenia Fund
The Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) ( Armenian: «Հայաստանի Մանուկներ» բարեգործական հիմնադրամ (ՔՈԱՖ)) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing educational opportunities and building infrastru ...
References
External links
Gallery web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shafrazi, Tony
1943 births
American art dealers
American artists
American people of Armenian descent
Living people
Art crime
Iranian people of Armenian descent
People from Abadan, Iran
Alumni of the Royal College of Art
Iranian emigrants to the United States
Art gallery owners