Today we’d like to introduce you to Tarrah von Lintel.
Tarrah, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
For a couple of years, my father had a gallery in the house we lived in at the Starnberger See near Munich, Germany. His concept was the combination of antiques and Pop Art—mostly prints—which is a period I remember vividly. I ended up, however, studying finance and investment, followed by a short career in banking, after which I switched to the art world in search of something more fulfilling. In 1989, I first worked for Galerie Claire Burrus and then Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, before opening my own gallery in Munich in 1993, where I focused mainly on New York painters, some of whom, like Stephen Ellis, Catherine Howe, Antonio Murado, and Mark Sheinkman, I still represent today. In 1999, I moved the gallery to New York, and, after 15 successful years there, I decided to move the gallery to Los Angeles in 2014. I loved my time in New York, and it went well, but I just didn’t like where the community was heading. The massive increases in real estate prices seem to dictate programming and our personal lives more and more. In Los Angeles, I saw a bourgeoning art market with a better quality of life. I was able to find a fantastic gallery in a prime location (Culver City right next to Blum & Poe).
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Being a gallery owner in the contemporary art world, with ever changing markets is the definition of a rocky road. We represent living artists, which means that their work is constantly changing, often reacting to world events. The market, for the most part, however, loves consistency. During financial crisis or periods of uncertainty, art purchases are usually the first thing to be curtailed. Art is not strictly necessary for survival, but artists and gallerists still have similar expenses during those down years such as the dotcom bubble in 1999, the attacks of 9/11 in 2001 and the global financial crisis of 2008.
Real estate is the other big problem we all face. It almost always follows the same cycle. Due to our need for large spaces artist and gallerists are the forced to operate in less desirable out of the way neighborhood’s, but invariably they become the cool areas and prices skyrocket, forcing us to relocate or adjust. It happened in New York and I am seeing the same thing happen in Los Angeles in just the last 3 years.
Please tell us about Von Lintel Gallery.
We represent about 25 artists, whose work we typically exhibit in two year cycles. Our goal is to build viable careers for them, which we accomplish by selling the work to collectors and museums and by getting them into national and international exhibitions in museums and other galleries.
I started out concentrating on abstract painting, but over the last 20+ years, I became more and more interested in art that wasn’t necessarily what it looked to be. I now work with a lot of unique or camera-less photography, which could easily be mistaken for painting or drawing, and, on the other hand, I have painters and artists who work exclusively with paper, whose work is often mistaken for photography or prints. The most important thing for me is to work with art that will keep a dialogue with the viewer for a very long time, something that doesn’t become part of the decoration.
I am most proud of our long term relationships with our artists and our ability to place our artists work in Museums on a consistent basis, among them the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; the International Center of Photography; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the High Museum; The Getty; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; and London’s National Gallery of Art.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I find that the one advantage of aging is the willingness to trust one’s instincts more. If I were to start over I would rely more on my instincts. Other than that, I think that every failure and every success makes you what you are. It’s just an issue if you keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
Pricing:
- Our prices for unique photography range from $ 1500 to $ 40,000
- Our prices for paintings and drawings rate from $ 1500 to $ 120,000
Contact Info:
- Address: Von Lintel Gallery
2685 S. La Cienega Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90034 - Website: vonlintel.com
- Phone: 310 559 5700
- Email: [email protected]
Photo credit Eamon Conklin
photo credit Eamon Conklin, artist Klea McKenna
photo credit Eamon Conklin
photo credit Melanie Willhide
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