Galerie 1900-2000 Closes New York Branch: ‘Business Was Quite Slow’

During the multi-year market slowdown, many galleries large and small have either closed down or retrenched. Founded in Paris 1900-2000, Galerie opened a New York location on Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side in February 2023 as a joint venture with Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, but the Manhattan outpost is closing. Its last exhibition ended in September.

“We decided to close the gallery primarily because while we had some wonderful contacts with excellent public and private collectors and better institutional contacts, business was pretty slow,” David Fleiss, one of the gallery’s directors, said in an email. Fleiss noted that paintings by Francis Picabia were auctioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and that other artists’ works were also exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.

“But we opened the gallery during a difficult time in the world, which resulted in a pretty slow market, so we decided to close temporarily,” Fleiss said. He did not rule out a return to New York in the future.

In the post, Fleiss highlighted the gallery’s 2023 exhibitions in New York, such as “Air de New York. Marcel Duchamp & Francis Picabia”; “Views Revealed: Jean Dubuffet and Alan McCollum,” 2024; “7 Paintings and 1 Drawing: Francis Picabia and Harold Ancart,” curated by Ancart, 2024; 2025 The 2017 exhibition “Eduardo’s Birthday Party on Via Gabriel” was curated by the artist Oscar Murillo and included works by Arshile Gorky, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta and Murillo.

The gallery is organizing two exhibitions in partnership with the Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois Gallery: starting in 2023, “I Remember You Clearly at the Chelsea Hotel,” which includes artworks from the historic hotel’s collection by artists such as Aman and Andy Warhol; and “Elles,” which features artists from the gallery’s collection as well as works by Surrealist Leonora Carrington from the Galerie 1900-2000.

Galerie 1900-2000 was founded in the French capital in 1981 by Marcel Fleiss, who had been co-founder of the Galerie des Quatre Mouvements in Paris, first to showcase modern and contemporary art, especially Dada and Surrealism. Joined by his son David in 1991, the gallery has exhibited at fairs such as TEFAF (Maastricht and New York), Art Basel (Switzerland, Paris and Miami Beach), Independent New York, Frieze Masters London and the now-defunct FIAC Paris. The Paris gallery has hosted exhibitions dedicated to artists such as Joseph Cornell, Keith Haring, Sol LeWitt, Dora Maar, Frances Picabia and Ed Ruscha, as well as movements such as Fluxus.