In 1980 the two employees founded Janelle Reiring from Leo Castelli Gallery and Helena Winer from Artist Space her first own gallery.
They chose Metro Pictures as their name, which roughly meant that this address was soon to become the most important gallery in the art metropolis of New York.
In fact, the meeting point became internationally legendary. Janelle Reiring and Helena Winer have now announced that they want to quit at the end of 2021. The two justified this step with the “demanding” pandemic situation and the likely “strongly changing art world”.
Major artists like Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince or Robert Longo were under contract with Metro Pictures. Postmodern art began with the Pictures generation and the boom in the art market has never been so strong.
What made the Pictures generation stand out, despite all the differences in the individual positions, was their concept of using existing images as the starting point for their own art. It was the first generation of artists born into a world ruled by Hollywood, television, and advertising. They drew their influence from this world of images, no longer from reality or even earlier beautiful landscapes.
An essential feature was that pictures from this school could also be sold. Collectors who hadn’t bought a work for the Pop Art days got back in, because after years of performances and videos there was finally something to hang on the wall again.
Shortly after the announcement, the gallery shared Hauser & Wirth in Zurich that she will represent Cindy Sherman in the future. The photographer and icon of self-staging had a decisive exhibition for her breakthrough at Metro Pictures in 1981 and has remained loyal to the gallery to this day.
–
