Idea

About

Art was founded in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer who had emigrated from Vienna to England shortly after the outbreak of war. In Vienna, Lloyd's family had been art and antique dealers for three generations and Fischer had dealt in antiquarian books. They were joined in 1947 by David Somerset, later Duke of Beaufort.

In 1951 the gallery initiated its programme of 19th and 20th century masters with an exhibition of the complete bronzes of Degas, followed by exhibitions of Géricault, Courbet, Cassatt, Monet, Pissarro and Sisley, Léger, Renoir, Laurens, Gris, Ensor and crowned by an exhibition of Van Gogh self-portraits in 1960. In the same year it opened a second gallery, Art New London, to exhibit mainly, but not exclusively, a post-war generation of international artists such as Alberto Burri, Piero Dorazio, Juan Genovés, Richard Lin, Georges Mathieu and Arnaldo Pomodoro. These exhibitions were seen to set new standards for commercial galleries both in scope and in catalogue design. Many were recognised as museum quality exhibitions and the gallery became a focus for international collectors, museum directors and connoisseurs as well as art history students.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's Art was the first gallery to introduce a London audience to exhibitions of German and Austrian painting of the 20th century. Exhibitions such as Art in Revolt - Germany 1905-1925, Kandinsky - the Road to Abstraction, The Painters of the Bauhaus, Egon Schiele, Munch and Nolde, and a major Kurt Schwitters retrospective were truly ground-breaking for London. At about the same time, the gallery started to show major contemporary artists and to promote British artists on an international scale in conjunction with the British Council. Art also signed up some of the most important British artists of the time including Francis Bacon, Lynn Chadwick, Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Victor Pasmore, Graham Sutherland, as well as emerging artists such as Avigdor Arikha, Frank Auerbach, John Davies, R.B.Kitaj, Joe Tilson and others.