{"id":293598,"date":"2026-02-20T14:53:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/293598\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:53:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:53:20","slug":"the-powerhouse-gallerists-behind-spruth-magers-have-never-lost-an-artist-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/293598\/","title":{"rendered":"The powerhouse gallerists behind Spr\u00fcth Magers have never lost an artist. Here\u2019s why"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a frigid January day in Berlin but, inside Spr\u00fcth Magers\u2019 head office in the central Mitte district, the mood is one of excitement. When I meet the veteran gallerists Monika Spr\u00fcth and Philomene Magers, they are visibly thrilled by the news that a short film co-directed by one of their stable, the multidisciplinary artist Alexandre Singh, has just been nominated for an Academy Award.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is pretty new for us,\u201d says Magers, beaming warmly. <\/p>\n

\u201cActually we get an Oscar every year,\u201d Spr\u00fcth jokes drily, before adding more seriously, \u201cthe only other artist to win one was Steve McQueen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A\u2018Hatchet\u2019 (2025) by David Salle \u00a9 John Berens, courtesy Spr\u00fcth Magers<\/p>\n

The announcement arrives alongside another milestone in Los Angeles. Just down the road from the Academy headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard, Spr\u00fcth Magers\u2019 LA outpost is marking its 10th anniversary with a programme tracing the gallery\u2019s long-standing Californian connections. During LA art week it will open an exhibition dedicated to David Salle, the New York-based painter whose work is rarely seen in LA but who studied at the California Institute of the Arts under the late conceptualist John Baldessari. Fittingly, he inaugurated the Wilshire space a decade ago and will also be the focus of the gallery\u2019s booth at Frieze LA.<\/p>\n

The art market is a confusion. There\u2019s much more money involved, and it has aspects of speculation. That often has nothing to do with cultural or artistic quality<\/p>\n

Monika Spr\u00fcth<\/p>\n

Baldessari was one of several LA-based artists in Spr\u00fcth Magers\u2019 roster \u2014 alongside Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha and Sterling Ruby \u2014 who drew the gallery to the west coast in 2016. \u201cWe\u2019d been working with artists there for 30 or 40 years, and we were always travelling [to the city],\u201d recalls Magers. At the time, the local collector base was still modest compared with New York (where Spr\u00fcth Magers would open in 2022) and only a few international galleries had established a foothold. For Magers, however, it simply \u201cmade sense\u201d to be closer to their artists. Spr\u00fcth agrees. \u201cWe were quite happy to avoid New York at that moment,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause we felt more at home within the discourse of artists who were more familiar to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A\u2018Camel (Albino) Contemplating Needle (Large)\u2019 (2013) by John Baldessari \u00a9 John Baldessari Family Foundation Courtesy Estate of John Baldessari; Spr\u00fcth Magers. Photo: Roberto Marossi<\/p>\n

That artist-centric approach has underpinned their success across four decades. Today, Spr\u00fcth and Magers are among the most influential gallerists in the art world, regularly featured on ArtReview\u2019s Power 100 list and representing more than 70 artists and estates. The pair have long been known for their fierce championing of conceptual and feminist practices. Spr\u00fcth, who describes herself as a \u201cfailed artist\u201d, cut her teeth as a gallerist in Cologne\u2019s \u201cvery lively, quite male-dominated\u201d art scene in the early 1980s. From the outset, her focus was on contemporary female voices.<\/p>\n

\u201cCindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Louise Lawler and Rosemarie Trockel were part of that very early programme,\u201d she says. \u201cArt historically, we felt that was necessary \u2014 to give visibility to great female artists and to develop role models for a younger generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Black-and-white\u2018Untitled Film Still #18-A\u2019 (1978) by Cindy Sherman \u00a9 Cindy Sherman. Courtesy the artist and Spr\u00fcth Magers. Photo: Timo Ohler.<\/p>\n

In 1991, Magers launched her own gallery in Bonn with a programme favouring conceptual, critically rigorous work. Early shows included Sylvie Fleury\u2019s designer shopping bags, Ad Reinhardt\u2019s Black Paintings, and Baldessari\u2019s photographs and text paintings from the 1960s. The two women, who knew each other through Magers\u2019 gallerist mother, merged their galleries in 1998, eventually establishing their vast flagship in a former social club in Berlin in 2008.<\/p>\n

Today, Spr\u00fcth Magers operates four spaces in Europe and the US, alongside offices in Seoul, Beijing, Hong Kong and Cologne. Like other mega-galleries, it has had to embrace a multi-city model in order to keep pace with an international circuit of art fairs and exhibitions. Even so, the pair insist they have been restrained in their expansion. \u201cWe always say we try to be as small as possible, but to work well for our artists we have to be a bit global,\u201d says Spr\u00fcth.<\/p>\n

\"TwoPhilomene Magers (seated, left) and Monika Spr\u00fcth (standing, right) at the gallery in Berlin \u00a9 Photographed for the FT by Robert Rieger<\/p>\n

Yet that balance has become harder to maintain as the art market has transformed. Spr\u00fcth notes that it now bears little resemblance to the one she entered in the 1980s. \u201cThe art market is a confusion,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s much more money involved, and it has aspects of speculation \u2014 you see that in the auction houses. That drive often has nothing to do with cultural or artistic quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

We focus on artists we believe have real cultural relevance \u2014 who genuinely contribute something to the conversation<\/p>\n

Philomene Magers<\/p>\n

For Magers, this speculation has also fuelled a broader commodification of political and social discourse. While she views these conversations as important, she\u2019s wary of how galleries have sought to capitalise on them by taking on large numbers of artists simply because their work addresses these themes.<\/p>\n

\"An\u2018Untitled (Your Body Is A Battleground)\u2019 (1989) by Barbara Kruger \u00a9 Courtesy the artist, The Broad Art Foundation and Spr\u00fcth Magers<\/p>\n

Spr\u00fcth Magers, she adds, resists that tendency. \u201cWe try to focus on artists we believe have real cultural relevance \u2014 artists who genuinely contribute something to the conversation at a specific moment in time, rather than fulfilling expectations or chasing financial gain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A more welcome shift for the pair has been the expansion of the art canon, which has seen many of their long-standing women artists \u2014 Sherman, Holzer, Kruger \u2014 move from the fringes into the spotlight of major institutions. Magers, however, is clear-eyed about the current rightwing backlash against historically marginalised voices.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really sad situation,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you look at history, you always have phases when things are advancing into a humanistic vision of the world. And then a certain part of the population feels neglected, which I think we see in this rather misogynist development that is taking place right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Watercolour\u2018The Mountaintop\u2019 (2025) by Kara Walker \u00a9 Kara Walker. Courtesy Spr\u00fcth Magers. Photo by Jason Wyche<\/p>\n

For a time, she adds, progress seemed secure. \u201cIn the last couple of years we reached a certain threshold where everything felt, in this part of the world at least, quite advanced and safe. And now we see this is all up for discussion again.\u201d<\/p>\n

That discussion is confronted head on in their Berlin space, where a new body of cut-out collages, pastels and watercolours by Kara Walker (to April 4) feels especially urgent amid the Trump administration\u2019s renewed attack on diversity and attempts to minimise Black history. Flailing figures and violent allusions stalk these troubling panoramas, which unsettlingly employ a storybook aesthetic to evoke the US\u2019s racist past. In Los Angeles, Walker is also part of a concurrent group exhibition, Monuments, which unfolds across Moca and The Brick, where she has taken a plasma cutter to a decommissioned Confederate statue and reconfigured it as a disorientating abstract sculpture.<\/p>\n

\"AInstallation view of the \u2018Monuments\u2019 exhibition at The Brick, featuring Kara Walker\u2019s work made from a mutilated Confederate statue \u00a9 Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy of MOCA and The Brick<\/p>\n

While Spr\u00fcth and Magers emphasise that their role as gallerists isn\u2019t to make statements, Walker\u2019s excoriating Berlin show is nonetheless testament to their enduring commitment to some of the most politically engaged, vital artists working today. Magers stresses the importance of sticking to core principles in such times. \u201cIt\u2019s very important that we just keep doing what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The approach has paid off: the gallery has never lost an artist. Asked why, Spr\u00fcth has a simple answer. \u201cMore or less, it\u2019s because we are old-fashioned and serve the artist. Of course we also sell art \u2014 but we don\u2019t sell art in order to have a private plane.\u201d<\/p>\n

spruethmagers.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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