Michael Werner, the founder of his eponymous gallery, and Gordon VeneKlasen, a longtime partner of that gallery, will dissolve their partnership at the beginning of next year.
“After 35 years of collaboration, Michael Werner and Gordon VeneKlasen announce their separation as partners in Michael Werner Gallery,” Werner and VeneKlasen said in a joint statement to ARTnews. “Michael Werner and Gordon VeneKlasen will continue to collaborate on select artist projects, and museum exhibitions of the historical artists that Michael Werner represents.”
The two dealers will continue on in separate ventures. Werner will continue to operate his Galerie Michael Werner in Berlin. VeneKlasen will launch an international gallery, to be called VeneKlasen; he will take over the gallery’s current locations in New York, London, and Los Angeles. These changes will go into effect in February, and VeneKlasen will announce his program early next year.
Werner first launched a gallery, Werner & Katz, in Berlin in 1963, before launching Galerie Michael Werner in Cologne in 1969. (The latter location closed in 2022.) VeneKlasen joined Michael Werner Gallery in 1990 to open the gallery’s New York location. He became a partner in the enterprise in 2005, and he was the driving force behind the gallery’s expansions to London in 2012 and LA in 2024.
Michael Werner Galley has long been known for its program of German painters, including Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Markus Lüpertz, A.R. Penck, and Sigmar Polke. The gallery also represents major 20th-century artists like Marcel Broodthaers and James Lee Byars, as well as younger artists like Issy Wood, Sanya Kantarovsky, Raphaela Simon, and Florian Krewer. For 23 years, Werner represented Peter Doig, who departed the gallery in 2023. The two dealers did not announce which artists they will represent in their new ventures.
