Alfred Schmela

On November 23, 2018, the famous Düsseldorf gallery owner Alfred Schmela would have celebrated his hundredth birthday. To mark this occasion, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is organizing an exhibition that shows the wide-ranging network of this “pioneer of the avant-garde.” The exhibition illustrates the international spectrum of the gallery’s program, focusing on those central actors and art trends during the second half of the twentieth century—including Joseph Beuys, Nouveau Réalisme, Pop Art, and ZERO—to whose success and expansion Alfred Schmela significantly contributed. In this publication, the first on the singular gallery owner that is in both German and English, selected works by renowned artists such as Yves Klein and Gerhard Richter, with whom Schmela collaborated from the beginning of their careers, are presented, along with fascinating documentary material.