Yvon Lambert’s Paris Gallery Shuts Down

It wasn’t just Art Basel gossip. Yvon Lambert’s gallery rue Vieille-du-Temple in Paris will shut down in December after a grand finale courtesy of Anselm Kiefer.

The legendary Paris dealer, aged 68, says he’ll turn his focus to his collection, shown in a private mansion in Avignon, in the South of France.

The French publication Libération claims that Olivier Bélot, who has been at the gallery’s helm for the last three years, didn’t manage to position Lambert as a key player in the art world’s increasingly competitive global game.

It’s not as if the gallery didn’t try, though. But the London outpost, launched in 2008, stayed open for a mere six months. The New York gallery closed in 2011.

Lambert has been a central figure of the French art world since the 1970s, associated with the likes of Daniel Buren, Christian Boltanski, and Bertrand Lavier as well as American Conceptual artists Carl Andre and Brice Marden.

In 2011 the dealer bestowed 600 pieces from his collection to the nation, one of the most generous art donations ever received by the French state.