Almine Rech Ruiz-Picasso (néeRech) is a French art dealer and owner of the eponymous contemporary art gallery. The gallery has exhibition spaces in Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Shanghai, Gstaad and Monaco. The gallery opened in 1997 in Paris.[1]
Early life and education
Almine Rech was born in Paris to a Vietnamese-French mother and a French father, Georges Rech,[2] who founded one of France's first ready-to-wear labels in the 1960s. She took up painting and drawing in high school and while at boarding school in Switzerland[3] before studying art, cinema and literature at Faculté des lettres de Paris and the École du Louvre.
Career
Early in her career, Rech did provenance research for Parisian auction houses. By the mid-1980s she was married to her first husband, businessman Xavier de Froment, for six years[4] and had started selling art, helping friends and clients part with modernist artworks from the likes of Pierre Bonnard, Kurt Schwitters, and Félix Vallotton.[5]
Rech began her career as a gallerist in partnership for 5 years with Cyrille Putman, the son of Andrée Putman, opening a gallery in the Marais in 1989 where they presented a single work by James Turrell, who did not have a European dealer at the time;[6] Robert R. Littman, the director of Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, a private museum in Mexico City, bought the work.[7]
Alongside other galleries including Air de Paris and Galerie Perrotin, Rech opened her own gallery on Rue Louise Weiss in the 13th arrondissement in 1997, as part of a city-sponsored initiative.[8] At the time, she worked with artists Ugo Rondinone, Joseph Kosuth, and other artists with minimalist and conceptual leanings,[9] including James Turrell and John McCracken.[10]
The Almine Rech gallery in Brussels, Belgium.
In 2006, the gallery moved to a larger, two-story space in the Marais district, before launching its current space in rue de Turenne in 2013. In 2008, Rech opened a second gallery in Brussels.[11] In 2014, she opened a 225 m2 (2,420 sq ft) gallery in London,[12][13] and added a 280 m2 (3,000 sq ft) space [14] – in New York in 2016.[15][16] In 2019, the gallery expanded to Shanghai, where it operates a 370 m2 (4,000 sq ft) space in the Amber Building — a three-story former People's Bank of China warehouse at 27 Hu Qiu Road –, sharing the floor with Lisson Gallery.[17][18] On the gallery's expansion, Rech has noted, 'Each step in expanding our platform has increased our ability to support and invest in a new generation of artists, which is a consideration at the very core of our gallery's DNA.'[19]
A second space opened in Paris on Avenue Matignon (with a further expansion of the space in 2022),[21] and a second New York gallery in Tribeca opened in October 2023.[22][23][24] In 2024, the gallery expanded in Monaco with the opening of a new space in the Carré d'Or district.[25][26] In addition to exhibitions hosted in the various gallery locations, Almine Rech participates in numerous art fairs including Art Basel, TEFAF, Paris+ par Art Basel, and Frieze.
The gallery presents its in-house published catalogs and editions through Almine Rech Editions, featuring a broad collection of new and limited-run books in print and online catalogs and select items can also be found at Almine Rech Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Monaco, and Shanghai.
Almine Rech represents numerous living artists, including:
Since 1997, Rech has been married to Bernard Ruiz-Picasso.[38] They lived in Brussels since 2006[39] but have since moved to Monaco, and also maintain a French country estate inherited from Picasso called Boisgeloup.[40]
Since 2002,[41] Rech and Ruiz-Picasso have been serving as co-chairs of the Madrid-based Fundación Almine Y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Para El Arte (FABA), which holds a collection of works by Pablo Picasso.[42] FABA also supports institutions, including Le Consortium in Dijon, France, Serpentine Galleries in London and the New Museum in New York.[43] In 2012, Ruiz-Picasso and Rech opened up Boisgeloup, inviting artists to exhibit on its grounds.[44]
