LONDON’S SAATCHI GALLERY LAUNCHES NEW COMMERCIAL SPACE

Charles Saatchi’s gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of London has announced the launch of a new commercial space called Salon, which was created to present and sell the work of leading international artists who have not experienced much exposure in the UK.

Directed by Philippa Adams, the senior director of Saatchi Gallery, Salon will open on February 24 with an exhibition of works from the 1950s and 1960s by the Japanese Gutai artist Tsuyoshi Maekawa. Organized by Lévy Gorvy, the show will also include a loan of paintings from Axel Vervoordt Gallery in Antwerp.

Adams said, “Salon has been created because there are limited opportunities for international artists to show at major museums in the UK. Saatchi Gallery, which attracts more than 1.5 million visitors a year, will provide that platform.”

The Tsuyoshi Maekawa show will be held concurrently with an exhibition of fellow Gutai painter Kazuo Shiraga’s works at Lévy Gorvy’s Old Bond Street location. Jiro Yoshihara founded the Gutai Art Association, a postwar avant-garde collective, in 1954. The first solo exhibition of Maekawa’s work was held at the Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka in November 1963. From that point until the group’s eventual dissolution following Yoshihara’s death in 1972, Maekawa was represented in every Gutai event.