Guillaume Gallozzi

Guillaume Gallozzi, (11 February 1958, Aix-en-Provence - 25 December 1995, Paris) was a French art dealer who was associated with graffiti art. He lived and worked in New York and rose to prominence in the 1980s and '90s for his promotion of graffiti pioneers and, later, of British art.[1] He had a reputation for being quixotic, brilliant and stylish ("more worthy of a novel than a brief obituary") per The Independent, UK),[2] and he played a role in the careers of some significant artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Stan Peskett and Steven Sykes. In the early 1980s Gallozzi and partner Joe La Placa (the latter went on to found All Visual Arts in London in 2007) opened the Gallozzi-La Placa Gallery in New York's TriBeCa.[1] In 1981 Gallozzi had presented the first significant solo exhibition of Stan Peskett's installation art in New York, subsequently becoming Peskett's dealer.

In the mid-1980s Gallozzi diversified into representing Italian Futurists, the Hudson River School and British surrealists, and mounted notable exhibitions until 1988, when the Gallozzi-La Placa Gallery ceased active operations. In the meantime however, Stan Peskett had introduced Gallozzi to the drama of war art, specifically to British war artists and, in 1989, working with The British Council USA (cultural department of the British Embassy in Washington DC) and its then cultural affairs officer Barbara Rosen, Gallozzi mounted a show of British War Artists[3] at the Navy Museum in Washington DC. Several of Gallozzi's catalogs, including those on war art, are collectors items, other examples being Metamorphose: British Surrealists and Neo-romantics 1992,[4] and the 1994 catalog featuring works of painter and performance artist Brion Gysin (Back in No Time, New York, 1994 ASIN B0000CPGRB), famously the favorite of William S. Burroughs. The only criticism leveled at the Gallozzi shows in the last few years of his life are that his tastes had become, if anything, too sophisticated, or "decidedly récherché" as The New Yorker magazine put it.[2] Gallozzi died in Paris on Christmas Day, 1995, aged 37, having fought brain cancer for some 5 years.[1]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 OBITUARY (January 06, 1996), Guillaume Gallozzi The New York Times.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Adrian Dannatt (February 07, 1996), OBITUARY: Guillaume Gallozzi The Independent.
  3. ↑ Guillaume Gallozzi (Gallery) (1989). The British War Artists: A Critical Perspective from the Trenches Through the Blitz : [exhibition]: November 2-December 16, 1989, Guillaume Gallozzi Gallery, New York City. The Gallery.
  4. ↑ Guillaume Gallozzi (New York) (1992). Metamorphose: British Surrealists and Neo-romantics, 1935-55. Guillaume Gallozzi.

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