TIAMSA is pleased to announce its nineteenth book discussion, on The Valentine Gallery: The Forgotten Story of Valentine Dudensing, Matisse, Picasso, and the US Market for Modern Art (1926–1947) (Bloomsbury, 2026). Author Julia May Boddewyn will discuss her new book with Christel H. Force.
The event will be moderated by Véronique Chagnon-Burke (Chair-TIAMSA and Co-Founder of Women Art Dealers Digital Archives). All are welcome to join the discussion!
To attend the discussion please register on the link.
About the book:
Before the Museum of Modern Art opened in 1929, there were only a few places in New York to see contemporary art from Paris. The Valentine Gallery was one of them. In the intimate and elegant rooms of a townhouse on Fifty-seventh Street, the public witnessed the country’s first solo shows of the startling paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and Joan Miró, the first retrospective of Henri Matisse, and the only lifetime solo exhibition of Piet Mondrian. In 1939, Pablo Picasso’s awe-inspiring Guernica made its U.S. debut there.
Despite its preeminent reputation as a leading center for modern art in its day, the Valentine Gallery name has been lost to history. With no notice to the press, Valentine Dudensing, the founder and director, closed his gallery in May 1947 and seemingly disappeared. His death two decades later went unreported by the press.
This is the first book to examine the key role the Valentine Gallery played in shaping the canon of modernism. Dudensing cultivated the country’s leading art collectors, establishing the market and bringing these artists to the American consciousness in the process. Many of the radical paintings that he presciently imported from Europe are now the cornerstones of U.S. museum collections.
Relying heavily on primary source materials, including the gallery’s long-lost sales records discovered in the attic of an ancient French château, the author has meticulously researched Dudensing’s business activities and presents previously unpublished information about how the dealer sourced, promoted, exhibited, and sold seminal paintings by the School of Paris.
For further information : masoom.pincha@artmarketstudies.org
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