Paris Dealer Kamel Mennour Buys Galerie Malingue

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Kamel Mennour Buys Galerie Malingue, Taking Over Its Avenue Matignon Showroom in Paris

A storied address in Paris's 8th arrondissement is entering a new phase. Dealer Kamel Mennour has purchased Galerie Malingue and will assume control of the gallery's 4,300-square-foot space at 26 Avenue Matignon, in the Matignon district, a corridor long associated with modern-art dealing.

In an emailed announcement, the gallery framed the acquisition as both continuity and recalibration: the Avenue Matignon venue will be used to present“significant works by modern, post-war and contemporary artists” sourced from private collections. The program, the statement added, is designed to sit alongside Mennour's primary-market activity and his“longstanding work with artist estates over the past 25 years.”

Mennour, who opened his Paris gallery in 1999, has in recent years sharpened his focus on historical material, a shift the new space is meant to amplify. The gallery's statement pointed to recent exhibitions of works by artists including Alberto Giacometti, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell, Henri Matisse, Tsuguharu Foujita, and Yayoi Kusama.

“This new location has been conceived as an exhibition space for works by artists who have truly shaped art history, artworks that come from important collections and that are of museum quality,” Mennour said in a statement. He added that the venue will support presentations of historical works, as well as monographic and thematic exhibitions, with an eye toward“a dialogue across different generations of artists.”

The purchase also marks a generational handoff within the French trade. Galerie Malingue was founded by Daniel Malingue more than five decades ago, establishing a reputation for Impressionism, Surrealism, and modern and postwar art. The gallery's roster, as listed on its website, spans pillars of the canon: Georges Braque, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Cézanne, Eugéne Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, Juan Gris, René Magritte, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Dorothea Tanning, and Vincent van Gogh.

Beyond sales, Malingue has been a familiar presence in the scholarly infrastructure of the market, frequently lending to major museum exhibitions and producing catalogues raisonnés - comprehensive, research-driven inventories of an artist's oeuvre.

Mennour's own program has been built around contemporary practice, with a stable of about 40 artists that includes Daniel Buren, Douglas Gordon, Camille Henrot, Alicja Kwade, Ugo Rondinone, and Lee Ufan. In 2023, the gallery launched the Mennour Institute, an initiative supporting research and education in modern and contemporary art through doctoral fellowships, education programs, and philanthropy.

Speaking with ARTnews at TEFAF Maastricht, Mennour underscored the personal dimension of the acquisition, describing Malingue as“like a god to my generation.” With the Avenue Matignon space now under his stewardship, Mennour is positioning the gallery to move more deliberately between the primary market and museum-caliber historical works - a hybrid model increasingly central to Paris's top tier of dealers.

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