Andre Anthony Emmerich

New York Times Obituary

André Emmerich, Eminent Art Dealer, Dies at 82

By GRACE GLUECK Published: September 26, 2007

André Emmerich, an influential Manhattan art dealer whose gallery was an early champion of the 1950s and ’60s school of Color Field painting and who also mounted important shows of pre-Columbian art, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82. Enlarge This Image

André Emmerich

His wife, Susanne, who confirmed the death, said he had had a stroke early this month.

Suave, erudite and faultlessly tailored, Mr. Emmerich presided over an extensive stable of American and European contemporary artists from 1954 to 1998, mounting elegant presentations in his pristine, understated uptown galleries, first on East 64th Street and then, from 1959 to 1998, in the Fuller Building on 57th Street.

In addition to Color Field painters like Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Helen Frankenthaler, he represented, among others, David Hockney, Sam Francis, Anthony Caro, Al Held, Herbert Ferber, Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky and John Hoyland.

And in an era when top galleries still held to quotas for female artists, Mr. Emmerich didn’t play along. He mounted the work of a number of women besides Ms. Frankenthaler, among them Beverly Pepper, Anne Truitt, Miriam Schapiro and Judy Pfaff.

He also handled many artists’ estates, including those of Milton Avery, John Graham and Hans Hofmann. In its heyday, Mr. Emmerich’s gallery had branches in SoHo and Zurich.

In 1982, he took an unpromising site in Pawling, N.Y., and fashioned it into a 150-acre sculpture park called Top Gallant. He ran it until 1996, and displayed large-scale works by Mr. Caro, Alexander Liberman, Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero and George Rickey as well as the work of emerging younger artists like Keith Haring. A swimming pool had its inside painted with mock waves by Mr. Hockey.

Always interested in the work of ancient peoples, Mr. Emmerich mounted insightful exhibitions of pre-Columbian art and classical antiquities. He became an authority on pre-Columbian art, lecturing and writing two books on the subject: “Art Before Columbus” (1963), and “Sweat of the Sun and Tears of the Moon — Gold and Silver in Pre-Columbian Art” (1965), a scholarly survey. He stopped showing the work because of increasing export restrictions.

In 1996, Mr. Emmerich sold his gallery to Sotheby’s but continued to direct it. After a run of 45 years, however, it was closed by Sotheby’s in 1998.

Mr. Emmerich had recently worked on an autobiography, “My Life With Art,” excerpts of which have been published in Art News, The Wall Street Journal and The New Criterion.

André Emmerich was born in Frankfurt on Oct. 11, 1924, to Hugo and Lily Emmerich. Feeling the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany, they took André, at age 7, and his younger sister, Nicole, to Amsterdam. In 1940, when he was 15, the family emigrated to the United States, settling in Queens. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1944 at the age of 19.

For 10 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 and Time-Life International. But, interested in art and following the example of his mother’s father, an art dealer in Paris, he left publishing to return to New York and devote himself to representing artists.

His early choices were much influenced by the critic Clement Greenberg, who favored the Color Field painters and Anthony Caro sculptures. In an excerpt from his autobiography published in The New Criterion in December 2004, Mr. Emmerich acknowledged Mr. Greenberg’s influence but pointed out that the gallery also showed work by artists who did not have that critic’s support, like Mr. Hockney, Mr. Francis and Mr. Held.

Although some of his artists were what might be called hot properties, Mr. Emmerich did not approve of buying art for investment. “Art has much more to do with the gut than with anything else,” he once told an interviewer.

Mr. Emmerich twice served as president of the Art Dealers Association of America and remained active on its board.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Emmerich is survived by his sister, Nicole Teweles of Milwaukee; three sons from his earlier marriage, to Constance Emmerich, Adam and Noah, of New York City, and Toby, of Los Angeles; and four grandchildren.

A meticulous man, Mr. Emmerich did not hesitate to show his displeasure when a staff member left the top off a marking pen. On the other hand, Mr. Caro said, speaking by telephone from his studio in England, Mr. Emmerich showed great aplomb when dealing with his sometimes-trying stable.

“It was amazing how he got on all of our wavelengths,” Mr. Caro said. He added: “He was loyal. He tried to do a hard thing, bringing difficult art to the public and never worrying how it was received. If it didn’t go, he stuck with it.”