Sidney Janis
Sidney Janis ( born July 8, 1896 in Buffalo, † November 23, 1989 in New York ) was an American gallery owner and art dealer.
Career
Janis joined after attending high school in the company of his older brother, who ran a chain of shoe stores in Buffalo. In 1925 he met on his frequent trips to New York art writer Harriet Grossman, whom he married in 1925. Under her expert guidance, he visited numerous art exhibitions and won an appreciation for contemporary art. Mid-1920s, he founded the M'Lord Shirt Company his own textile company. A designed by him, short-sleeved shirt with two patch pockets proved to be a source of revenue, which behaves the young company to rapid success.
Art Collection
At the same time Sidney and Harriet Janis began to develop a passion for collecting art. First factory Janis bought an etching by the American painter James McNeill Whistler, he a year later exchanged for the small picture by Henri Matisse Interior at nice. When traveling to Paris in the early 1930s, the couple bought works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Piet Mondrian and Henri Rousseau.
In 1934, Janis was a member of the Supervisory Board of the Museum of Modern Art, together with Alfred Barr and Meyer Schapiro. On loan from the Museum he introduced nineteen works from his private collection, including works by Mondrian and cubist painting by Picasso is available. He later became chairman of the purchasing committee and was instrumental in the purchase of Picasso's Guernica in 1939. In the same year he sold the shirt factory in order to devote himself entirely to art.
Gallery
1942 Janis was involved in the organization of the New York exhibition First Papers of Surrealism, which had been organized by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, and the catalog he wrote the foreword. In 1946, Janis was a member of the jury of the Bel -Ami - art competition alongside Alfred H. Barr, Jr.. and Marcel Duchamp, who was announced for the U.S. film The Private Affairs of Bel Ami by its producer. In 1948, he opened the Sidney Janis Gallery in the West 57th Street with an exhibition of Fernand Léger. Then he showed Piet Mondrian (1949 and 1951 ), the Fauves (1950 ) From Brancusi to Duchamp (1951 ), The early Léger (1951 ), Henri Rousseau (1951 ), Josef Albers ( 1952) and Dada ( 1916-1923 ) ( 1953). Also in 1953 he presented with Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock in the exhibition 5 Years of Janis contemporary European and American artists over.
In 1962 he exhibited under the title International Exhibition of the New Realists 54 artists, the young Americans Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann and George Segal, the Europeans Arman, Daniel Spoerri, Christo, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle and Martial Raysse, Yves Klein, Enrico Baj, Tano Festa, Mimmo Rotella, Mario Schifano, Peter Blake, Peter Phillips and Öyvind. Sidney Janis, John Ashbery and Pierre Restany written catalog essays for the first major exhibition of Pop Art, but broke Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Adolph Gottlieb and Robert Motherwell to protest their connections to Janis. Willem de Kooning remained.
Harriet Janis Grossman died in 1963. In 1967, Janis gave another 103 paintings and sculptures by American and European art, including works by Picasso, Mondrian, Klee and Umberto Boccioni as a foundation to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1988, Sidney Janis, a foundation in which he earned his fortune, including nearly 500 works of art. He set himself, and his sons, Conrad Janis ( born 1928 ) and Carroll Janis to trustees. In January 1989 the Sidney Janis Gallery celebrated its 40th anniversary with a tribute to their early years and showed major works by Léger, Mondrian, Hans Arp, Matisse and Giacometti. Sidney Janis died in late 1989 at the age of 93 years in New York. The gallery was continued under the direction of Carroll Janis son until 1998 and then closed, as it came to inheritance disputes between the brothers.