George Condo Is Now Represented by Hauser & Wirth – ARTnews.com

In December, ARTnews reported that George Condo, a juggernaut of contemporary painting, was in talks to join the roster of one of the biggest galleries. Now, the news is confirmed.

Hauser & Wirth has officially taken on Condo, in a sign of increased market fervor for the artist, who is known for his Picasso-like images of humans with mismatched body parts. He had previously shown with Skarstedt gallery (of New York and London), Sprüth Magers (Berlin, London, and Los Angeles), and Simon Lee Gallery (New York, London, and Hong Kong). Hauser & Wirth has planned its first Condo show for June at its Zurich location, to be on view during the festivities surrounding the Art Basel fair nearby.

“It’s this link between generations,” Marc Payot, a president of Hauser & Wirth, told ARTnews. “He’s really rooted in art history, going to back to Old Masters and creating links between artists we work with, like Philip Guston, Nicole Eisenman, and Avery Singer.”

Condo’s work has been seen across the world, including most recently at the 2019 Venice Biennale in Italy. In 2011, the New Museum in New York mounted a survey, and the show went on to travel to prime European institutions including the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the Hayward Gallery in London, and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. His work also appeared in the 2013 Venice Biennale, as well as editions of the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, the Whitney Biennial in New York, and the Biennale de Lyon in France.

Over the past decade, Condo has gradually racked up a significant market following, with Steven A. Cohen and Aby Rosen among the major collectors who are known to buy his work. His auction record, for a painting of a nude woman entangled in a cascade of geometric forms that sold for $6.16 million, was set at Christie’s New York in 2018. Condo has also become the subject of fascination in other realms, thanks in part to the appearance of his art on the cover of Kanye West’s celebrated 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Asked why Condo has been so popular, Payot said, “It’s that constant search for risk and innovation, not being afraid these giants of art history. That freshness is similar to that of a DJ, who uses existing music and changes it into something that is their own.”