Nigel Greenwood; gallery owner
Hyfler/Rosner
Influential gallerist who helped shape contemporary British
art
Nicholas Serota
Wednesday April 21, 2004
The Guardian
In the early 1970s the number of galleries in London
committed to showing international developments in
contemporary art, and especially European art, could be
counted on the fingers of one hand. Nigel Greenwood Inc Ltd
was one of the four.
Alongside the Lisson, Situation and Jack Wendler, the
gallery of Nigel Greenwood, who has died aged 62, played a
crucial part in introducing the work of emerging artists to
the then small audience for contemporary art in London. He
achieved this with verve, without significant financial
backing and in a way that confounded the conventions of his
own upbringing.
Greenwood was born in Devon into a naval family and, after
schooling in Elstree and at Sherborne, won an exhibition to
read history at Christ Church, Oxford University. Once
there, he found that Oxford offered no opportunity to study
the art history that had become a passion.
Sent down at the end of his first year, not least because of
his inability to master Latin, he took himself to Italy as a
prelude to studying art history at London's Courtauld
Institute. He spent a year in Rome improving his Italian,
while teaching geography and, ironically, Latin at the
English school and by playing the romantic lead in
photo-romance magazines.
At the Courtauld he studied under Anthony Blunt and the
abstract painter and historian of cubism John Golding, who
became a lifelong friend. Greenwood graduated in 1965, but
was determined that his practice should be "to make history,
rather than to record it", observing in a characteristic
aside that the choice was made, "rather than dig around in
dusty old archives looking for yet more laundry bills of
Michelangelo".
Golding introduced Greenwood to his own gallery, Axiom,
where he served an apprenticeship as the gallery manager,
promoting the work of progressive British abstract painters
and artists working in the traditions of constructivism. By
1969, Greenwood was working independently, seeking less
conventional spaces in which to show artists whose work was
not being taken up by West End galleries.
Among his activities he assisted the Stockwell group of
sculptors, including Roland Brener, Roelof Louw and Peter
Hide, in realising a series of annual exhibitions in a
former industrial building in south London. These
established the tradition of independent exhibitions mounted
by artists.
Greenwood also took over a studio space in Glebe Place where
he operated as Nigel Greenwood Inc Ltd, a name deliberately
chosen for its transatlantic resonance and because he could
not bear the idea of being simply "limited".
At Glebe Place he showed in quick succession the paintings
of John Golding, works in mixed media by Keith Milow, the
now legendary first presentation in England of Gilbert &
George's Underneath The Arches and an exhibition devoted to
the books of Ed Ruscha. The range - abstract painting, a
first one-man show, performance and printed books - is
indicative of the programme that was to follow during the
next 20 years.
At the Courtauld, Greenwood had developed a sympathy for art
history based on observation rather than documents. This led
to a special affection for drawing and for gestural abstract
painting. Greenwood was an enthusiastic admirer of the work
of John Walker, and later promoted the emerging work of
Christopher Le Brun, Ian McEever and Terry Setch.
He particularly enjoyed the business of visiting the studios
of younger artists, engaging in conversation, discovering
talent and then presenting a first solo show followed by a
regular succession of exhibitions which nurtured and
promoted knowledge of the work in Britain and abroad. Keith
Milow, Gilbert & George, John Stezaker, David Tremlett, Rita
Donagh, Alan Johnston and later McKeever, Le Brun, Stephen
Cox and Dhruva Mistry all showed first and often frequently
with Greenwood early in their careers.
Greenwood was committed to what he called "introducing" the
work to an audience, and his idealism encouraged him to
follow the example of Ed Ruscha in publishing artists' books
in editions of 500 or 1000, rather than catalogues. He saw
this as a way of placing an "original" in the hands of an
audience that could not afford to purchase a unique work of
art. The gallery mounted the seminal exhibition Book As
Artwork in 1972 and several of his "exhibitions" were
essentially the launch of an important publication, as with
Gilbert & George's books Side By Side (1972), and Dark
Shadow (1976).
In 1971 Greenwood had established his gallery in the two
lofty ground floor rooms of an apartment in Sloane Gardens,
off Sloane Square, obliging him to live in the twilight of
the basement zone. Living "below the shop" suited a
character who thrived on the cut and thrust of sharp, witty
debate and a regular stream of visitors. Set up in the back
room, he would allow you to look first at the exhibition,
then at the international collection of artists' books which
lined the entrance hall before engaging you in conversation
or enthusiastically asking an assistant to show you further
material. And what a talent he had for choosing and then
inspiring his assistants. Lynda Morris, now director of the
Norwich Gallery, Mark Francis, later at the Whitechapel, now
at Gagosian via Pittsburgh, Ann Gallagher, now at the
British Council, Anna Moszynska, now teaching at Sotheby's
Institute of Art, and Anthony Wilkinson, now with his own
gallery, all found in Greenwood early employment,
introductions and wisdom.
Given his discerning eye and commitment, the gallery rapidly
gained respect, and sales to museums followed. However,
selling contemporary art in London has never been easy. With
very few British collectors, Greenwood found himself in
competition with his German and Belgian peers in selling the
work of British artists like Gilbert & George and David
Tremlett to foreign collectors.
The family atmosphere at Sloane Gardens always made a visit
a memorable experience, the more so after his marriage to
Hester van Roijen in 1977 and the birth of his daughter
Phoebe the following year, when the cries of a small baby
and later the laughter of a small child would fill the
gallery from one of the basement rooms. The marriage ended
in 1980, but the way in which Greenwood continued to share
in the upbringing of his daughter was a delight. From 1981
Greenwood's partner was François Gilles, and together they
formed a circle of close and intensely loyal friends.
In the early 1980s the nature of the art market changed.
Greenwood had never had much capital, being supported by
professionals, such as Brian Boylan, a director of the
design consultants Wolff Olins, rather than by bankers or
family money. He found himself under some pressure to
relocate to a more central and grander space in which larger
and more varied exhibitions could be presented to an
audience which was now more interested in the experience of
painting and sculpture than in conceptual art. The shows at
New Burlington Street, presented in a sequence of beautiful
top-lit spaces, were more conventional than those at Sloane
Gardens, but were displayed to great effect by Greenwood,
whose eye for hanging paintings was always sharp.
By now Greenwood was recognised as a major player in the
British art world and in 1985 he was invited to select the
Hayward Annual exhibition, the only dealer ever to be asked
to do so. He made a personal selection of artists across
several generations, and in a coup de theatre reinstalled in
the tall entrance gallery the huge drawings made by Gilbert
& George for the exhibition The New Art, which in 1972 had
announced the arrival of a new generation, including Richard
Long, Barry Flanagan, Art & Language and David Tremlett.
In 1992, following the downturn in the art market in the
late 1980s, Greenwood closed his gallery, having lost the
appetite for making an exhibition every month. Thereafter,
he continued as a private dealer and adviser, displaying his
flair in bringing together fine objects and a willingness to
recognise qualities inherent in many different kinds of art
across generations and periods. He also had an ability, rare
in someone of such achievement and experience, to recognise
the transience and capriciousness of success. He would enjoy
gently mocking the pomposity of an artist, critic or curator
who was taking himself too seriously, but was no less tough
on himself, deflecting recognition of his own achievements.
Throughout his life, Greenwood showed how to dispense with
convention by doing things in his own way and with an
inimitable fresh style.
He is survived by his daughter, Phoebe, and his partner
François Gilles.
Adrian Searle writes: Nigel Greenwood gave me my first solo
show, in 1988, I think to our mutual surprise. Getting him
to come to my studio was a frustrating business of cancelled
appointments. When he finally made it, he accidentally broke
my coffee pot, got paint on his trousers and found he had
locked himself out of his car. He gave me the show anyway.
This was typical. He was a man in slight disarray, but
forever enthusiastic, generous and thoughtful. His tastes
were broad, and he showed a bewildering, even erratic, range
of artists, all of whom, like himself, were marked by their
independent-mindedness. He was one of the few British
gallerists to look as much to Europe as to America in the
1970s, as enthusiastic for unknown artists as for those with
international reputations.
It is difficult for those not around in the London art world
of the 1970s and 80s to realise how difficult a world it was
for a young artist - yet Nigel's door was always open, and
he followed his enthusiasms with scant regard to financial
risk, even less care for fashion. He went his own way. He
may have been better at discovering artists than keeping
them, but if not for him several major careers would not
have been launched, others would not have been sustained
through lean years, and for two decades his gallery made the
British art world a better place. His greatest pride,
however, was in his daughter, Phoebe, now a journalist.
· Nigel Palin Greenwood, gallery owner, born May 28 1941;
died April 14 2004