The Basel-based Galerie Knoell will see components of its enterprise assumed by Hauser & Wirth from January subsequent 12 months. The mega-gallery will take over the lease of Knoell’s house at Luftgässlein 4, within the metropolis centre, and rent its founder, Carlo Knoell, as a senior director.
Knoell, the son of the esteemed Basel-based framer Thomas Knoell, started his gallery in 2011. It focuses primarily on the secondary market dealing of Twentieth-century artwork, and handles work from a lot of estates of artists from Switzerland and close by international locations, together with these of Méret Oppenheim and Verena Loewensberg. Hauser & Wirth represents the estates of a number of artists whose work is bought or exhibited by Knoell, together with Max Invoice, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Georges Vantongerloo.
With its predominant house now beneath the Hauser & Wirth umbrella, Galerie Knoell AG will stop its exhibitions and festivals exercise, however “will proceed to handle its personal stock and the estates and collections entrusted to it”, Knoell says. It can retain its second house in Basel, in Erasmus Home at Bäumleingasse 18.
Knoell will lead Hauser & Wirth’s new Basel gallery, with its “exhibition and enterprise actions” beneath his route, he says. A spokesperson for Hauser & Wirth says it has not acquired Galerie Knoell. Neither is Hauser & Wirth taking up illustration of artists or estates that Carlo Knoell works with at Galerie Knoell, the spokesperson says.
“Carlo brings recent views to our secondary market exercise—a vital a part of our gallery’s exercise for over 30 years,” says James Koch, a associate and govt director at Hauser & Wirth.
“The connection between Hauser & Wirth and our gallery has grown steadily over latest years,” Knoell says, including that his private dialogue with Hauser & Wirth’s president and co-founder Iwan Wirth “has constantly dropped at mild that we not solely share the identical ardour for artwork, but additionally our entrepreneurial spirit. For me, becoming a member of Hauser & Wirth due to this fact represents a pure development of our cooperation.”
The transfer permits for Hauser & Wirth to strengthen not solely its current secondary market presence, but additionally its ties to Basel. Whereas the gallery maintains six places throughout Switzerland (4 in Zürich, and one every in Gstaad and St Moritz), and has lengthy participated in Artwork Basel, this can be its first everlasting location within the metropolis. Till now, the one mega-gallery to keep up a everlasting presence in Basel has been Gagosian, which opened an area there in 2019.