André Emmerich (October 11, 1924 – September 25, 2007) was a German-born American gallerist who specialized in the color field school and

pre-Columbian art Pre-Columbian art refers to the Visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Americas, visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North America, North, Central America, Central, and South Americas from at least 13,000 BCE to the European con ...

while also taking on artists such as

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considere ...

and

John D. Graham John D. Graham (, Kyiv, Ukraine – June 27, 1961, London, England) was a Ukrainian–born United States, American Modernism, modernist and Figurative art, figurative painter, art collector, and a mentor of modernist artists in New York City. B ...

Early life and education

Emmerich was born in

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

, Germany, to Lily (née Marx) and Hugo Emmerich. His grandfather was an art dealer who collected for

J. P. Morgan John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. As the head of the banking firm that ...

. His Jewish family fled to Amsterdam when he was seven. They immigrated to

Queens, New York Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

in 1940. He graduated with a BA in history from

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...

in 1944. For ten years he lived in Paris, where he was a writer and editor, working at ''Réalités'' and ''Connaissance des Arts'' magazines, the Paris edition of ''

The New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

'' and '' Time-Life International''.Obituary
nytimes.com, September 26, 2007.

Art dealer

Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionism, abstract expressionist Painting, painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of th ...

introduced Emmerich to "the small group of eccentric painters we now know as the New York Abstract Expressionist School"."A Sculpture Farm in the Country"
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''; accessed October 21, 2017. During the second half of the 20th century the Emmerich Gallery was located in New York City and since 1959 in the

Fuller Building The Fuller Building is a skyscraper at 57th Street and Madison Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Walker & Gillette, it was erected between 1928 and 1929. The building is named for its original main o ...

at 41 East 57th Street and in the 1970s also at 420 West Broadway in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

and in

Zürich, Switzerland Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

. The gallery displayed leading artists working in a wide variety of styles including

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

Op Art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses distorted or manipulated geometrical patterns, often to create optical illusions. It began in the early 20th century, and was especially popular from the 1960s on, the term "Op ...

, Color field painting,

Hard-edge painting Hard-edge painting (also referred to as Hard Edge or Hard-edged) is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstra ...

Lyrical Abstraction Lyrical abstraction arose from either of two related but distinct art movement, trends in Post-war Modernist painting: * European ''Abstraction Lyrique'': a movement that emerged in Paris, with the French art critic Jean José Marchand being cr ...

Minimal Art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or conc ...

, Pop Art and Realism, among other movements. He organized important exhibitions of

and wrote two acclaimed books, "Art Before Columbus" (1963) and "Sweat of the Sun and Tears of the Moon: Gold and Silver in Pre-Columbian Art" (1965), on the subject. In addition to David Hockney, and John D. Graham the gallery represented many internationally known artists and estates including;

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

Morris Louis Morris Louis Bernstein (November 28, 1912 – September 7, 1962), known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D ...

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

Kenneth Noland Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s as a minimal ...

Sam Francis Samuel Lewis Francis (June 25, 1923 – November 4, 1994) was an American painter and printmaker. Early life Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California,

, Sir Anthony Caro, Jules Olitski, Jack Bush,

John Hoyland John Hoyland RA (12 October 1934 – 31 July 2011) was a London-based British artist. He was one of the country's leading abstract painters. Early life John Hoyland was born on 12 October 1934, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to a working-class fami ...

Alexander Liberman Alexander Semeonovitch Liberman (September 4, 1912 – November 19, 1999) was a Ukrainian-American magazine editor, publisher, painter, photographer, and sculptor. He held senior artistic positions during his 32 years at Condé Nast Publicatio ...

Al Held Al Held (October 12, 1928 – July 27, 2005) was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings. As an artist, multiple stylistic changes occurred throughout his career, ho ...

, Anne Ryan,

Miriam Schapiro Miriam Schapiro (also known as Mimi) (November 15, 1923 – June 20, 2015) was a Canadian-born artist based in the United States. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of feminist art. She was also considered a leader of the Pa ...

, Paul Brach, Herbert Ferber, Esteban Vicente, Friedel Dzubas, Neil Williams,

Theodoros Stamos Theodoros Stamos (Greek: Θεόδωρος Στάμος) (December 31, 1922 – February 2, 1997) was a Greek-American painter. He is one of the youngest painters of the original group of abstract expressionist painters (the so-called " Irasc ...

Anne Truitt Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921December 23, 2004), born Anne Dean, was an American sculptor of the mid-20th century. She became well known in the late 1960s for her large-scale minimalist sculptures, especially after influential solo shows at André ...

Karel Appel Christiaan Karel Appel (; 25 April 1921 – 3 May 2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-gard ...

Pierre Alechinsky Pierre Alechinsky (; born 19 October 1927) is a Belgian artist. He has lived and worked in France since 1951. His work is related to tachisme, abstract expressionism, and lyrical abstraction. Life Alechinsky was born in Schaerbeek, Belgium, to ...

Larry Poons Lawrence M. "Larry" Poons (born October 1, 1937) is an American abstract painter. Poons was born in Tokyo; he studied from 1955 to 1957 at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, with the intent of becoming a professional musician. Afte ...

, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield,

Dan Christensen Dan Christensen (October 6, 1942 – January 20, 2007) was an American abstract painter He is best known for paintings that relate to Lyrical Abstraction, Color field painting, and Abstract expressionism. Christensen was born in Cozad, Ne ...

, Sherron Francis, Stanley Boxer, Pat Lipsky, Robert Natkin,

Judy Pfaff Judy Pfaff (born 1946) is an American artist known mainly for installation art and sculptures, though she also produces paintings and prints. Pfaff has received numerous awards for her work, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Founda ...

, John Harrison Levee, William H. Bailey, Dorothea Rockburne,

Nancy Graves Nancy Graves (December 23, 1939 – October 21, 1995) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in many public collection ...

, John McLaughlin, Ed Moses, Beverly Pepper, and Piero Dorazio, among others. While managing the gallery, Emmerich appeared as the imposter of a wine expert on the April 1, 1963 episode of the game show ''

To Tell the Truth ''To Tell the Truth'' is an American television panel show. Four celebrity panelists are presented with three contestants (the "team of challengers", each an individual or pair) and must identify which is the "central character" whose unusual ...

''. Between 1982 and 1996, Emmerich ran a 150-acre sculpture park called Top Gallant in Pawling, New York, on his country estate that once was a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

farm. There he displayed large-scale works by, among others,

Alexander Calder Alexander "Sandy" Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobile (sculpture), mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, hi ...

, Beverly Pepper, Bernar Venet,

Tony Rosenthal Bernard J. Rosenthal (August 9, 1914 – July 28, 2009),Grimes, William New York Times, July 31, 2009. also known as Tony Rosenthal, was an American Abstract art, abstract sculptor widely known for his monumental public art sculptures, created ...

Isaac Witkin Isaac Witkin (10 May 1936 – 23 April 2006) was an internationally renowned modern sculptor born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Witkin entered Saint Martin's School of Art in London in 1957 and studied under Sir Anthony Caro and alongside arti ...

, Mark di Suvero, and

George Rickey George Warren Rickey (June 6, 1907 – July 17, 2002) was an American kinetic sculptor known for geometric abstractions, often large-scale, engineered to move in response to air currents. Early life and education Rickey was born on June 6, ...

, as well as the work of younger artists like

Keith Haring Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the Graffiti in New York City, New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual l ...

. The cottage's in-ground pool had walls painted with ocean waves by Hockney. Many of the pieces later left for museums, including the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

, Storm King Art Center, and the

Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is a museum institution located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan. It has list of largest art museums, one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it cove ...

. In 1996,

Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

bought the Andre Emmerich Gallery, with the aim of handling artists' estates. One year later the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the main beneficiary of the Albers' estates, did not renew its three-year contract. The gallery was eventually closed by Sotheby's in 1998.

Personal life

Emmerich had three children with his first wife Constance Marantz. His sons are: Adam Emmerich, a lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, producer Toby Emmerich, and actor

Noah Emmerich Noah Nicholas Emmerich (born February 27, 1965) is an American actor and director best known for his roles in films such as '' Beautiful Girls'' (1996), ''The Truman Show'' (1998), ''Frequency'' (2000), ''Miracle'' (2004), '' Little Children'' (2 ...

. He died following a stroke in

on September 25, 2007, aged 82.

Legacy

André Emmerich's papers and gallery records were donated to the

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

between 1999 and 2002. Two additional accretions were donated by Emmerich's wife Susanne in 2008 and 2009, and another by James Yohe, Emmerich's former business partner, in 2009.Andre Emmerich Gallery records and Andre Emmerich papers, 1929-2008

; accessed October 21, 2017.

Bibliography

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Emmerich, Andre 1924 births 2007 deaths American art collectors American art dealers American people of German-Jewish descent The Atlantic (magazine) people German emigrants Immigrants to the United States People from Manhattan People from Queens, New York