Gres Gallery, Part 1

[In my post “Washington Art Matters” (5 September 2013), I confessed that I’d considered writing about the Washington, D.C., art gallery of which my parents were part-owners in the 1950s and ’60s, Gres Gallery, but didn’t find enough background information.  Well, since then, I’ve come across a cache of material and I’m going to give it a try.

[Frequent readers of Rick On Theater will know by now that my family’s involvement with Gres Gallery when I was between 11 and 15 was a seminal experience for me and I’ve mentioned it many times on ROT.  (It was particularly important in my blog about my parents’ art collection, “A Passion For Art,” 21 November 2017.)  It’s always been a passing mention for the most part, however, and I now want to try to fill in some of the details of the gallery’s history—especially since it preexists the Internet by so much that there’s virtually (pardon the use of the term) no footprint on the Web at all.  Let’s see what I can come up with.  ~Rick]

Gres Gallery was originally founded by John and Tana Gres at 1744 Columbia Road, N.W., in Washington’s small Lanier Heights neighborhood (within the now-trendy Adams-Morgan area).  It opened on 19 September 1957 with a show of the Colombian sculptor Édgar Negret and painter Jack Youngerman.  

Tana de Gámez was a Spanish-born actress, radio announcer, novelist, and artists’ agent who was raised in Havana before emigrating to the United States and becoming a U.S. citizen in 1941.  (Mrs. Gres’s name is Tana, not Tanya as I wrote it in other posts because that’s was how it was spelled in my only source at the time, Washington Art Matters: Art Life in the Capital 1940-1990, the book that was the inspiration for the art show of the same title on which I wrote the report noted above.  She’s also not from South America as the book asserts.)  

One of Ms. de Gámez’s jobs after moving to New York City in 1936 was as a translator during World War II for the Voice of America, the U.S. government radio (and now TV) broadcaster that sends news and positive political propaganda around the world   Also working in the Spanish-language section was John Gres, a Cuban-born announcer and narrator, who would become de Gámez’s husband and her partner in Gres Gallery.  Tana Gres ran the gallery, which moved to 1729 20th Street, N.W., off Connecticut Avenue at R Street near Dupont Circle, in April 1958.  The new gallery space opened with a one-man show of Ecuadoran painter Manuel Rendon.

The authors of Washington Art Matters (Washington Arts Museum, 2013), Jean Lawlor Cohen, Benjamin Forgey, Sidney Lawrence, and Elizabeth Tebow, characterized the Gres at its inception this way:

What most artists wanted even then was gallery representation, an agent who not only provided space for shows but also promoted sales and kept the books.  Fortunately, the still-active commercial pioneers . . . were joined by a number of new galleries . . . .

One of the most ambitious was north of Dupont Circle,  the Gres Gallery . . . .

Tana Gres steered her gallery to noticeable success in the flourishing art scene of post-World War II Washington.  As I explained in “A Passion for Art,” the Nation’s Capital has a vibrant art community with many excellent museums, working artists, art schools and university departments, collectors, and commercial galleries, and Gres Gallery took its place among the best of the exhibit spaces, closing its first season in June 1958 with Past and Future (4 June-31 July), a show of some of the most successful artists from the previous year and showcasing new artists who’d be spotlighted in the coming season, prompting Washington Post art reviewer Leslie Judd Portner to declare the foregoing months “an unusually successful first season for this up-and-coming gallery.” 

Having “established something of a record for success” in its first 11 months, the Gres faced an existential challenge in August 1958.  Tana Gres was forced to retire from managing the gallery because of a serious heart condition.  The Martha Jackson Gallery, an important New York gallery of the day, and some prominent art collectors from Boston and New York City optioned to buy Gres Gallery and absorb 84% of its stock—if the remaining 16% were picked up by local Washington investors at $3500 per share (over $35,000 today).  Tana and John Gres would move to New York City where  Tana Gres would serve as a representative of the gallery.  Martha Jackson’s offer would expire at the end of September if no local support for the endeavor materialized.  That gave interested Washingtonians a month-and-a-half to pull something together if they wanted to save the “dynamic” little gallery (as the Post dubbed it) in order to “help” the Capital “hold [its] position” as an “important,” “emerging” art center.

On 14 September, the newspaper announced that Dr. and Mrs. Francis Threadgill had bought the gallery.  Threadgill was a prominent D.C. surgeon and his wife, the former Olga Briceño of Venezuela, was a novelist and newspaperwoman.  Olga Threadgill was a long-time friend of Tana Gres—two accomplished writers, they met in New York during the war—and, like Tana Gres, had ties to Latin American artists, making it a good bet that Gres Gallery would continue its strong focus on Spanish, South and Central American, Mexican, and Caribbean art.  The new owners announced that they would fulfill the plans for the 1958-59 season that Tana Gres had made, including an opening show at the end of September featuring the paintings of Abstract Expressionist Norman Carton, a native Pennsylvanian who worked in New York.  (The gallery would reincorporate under its new ownership in January 1959.)

The 25 September Washington Post reported that the new manager of the Gres would be Beatrice Perry, former director of the Sculptors Studio in Washington’s newly hip and upscale Georgetown.  Perry, the wife of Hart Perry, an international corporate executive and U.S. government official, was trained as an artist at the Chicago Art Institute and studied sculpture with Austrian-born Franz Plunder in New York and Americans William Calfee and James Caudle in Washington.  It was with this management set-up that my parents and about nine other local investors joined.  (It was the wives, like my mother—I often tagged along—who were the active participants.  Known as the Gres Corporation, they included Mrs. Robert Cabot, Mrs. Saxton Bradford, Stuart Davidson, Mrs. Samuel Efron, Mrs. Richard McKinley, Mrs. Sidney Rolfe, Mrs. Cord Meyer, Mrs. Robert Anderson, and Mrs. Lucille McGinnis.  Hope Efron and her husband Sam, an international lawyer, were good friends of my parents as far back as I can remember—their son Eric and I went to high school together for a while and then were neighbors in New York City when I moved here after my army service—and Davidson, an investment banker, was the group’s sole bachelor; he later went on to found Clyde’s Restaurants in the Capital area.)   

I’ve recounted this story a few times: My father came home one day in September 1958 and announced, “Guess what I just did!”  Obviously, we didn’t have any idea, so my dad explained he’d bought a share of an art gallery, and Mom asked, “What  kind of art gallery?”  “Modern art,” Dad said, to which Mom replied, “But we don’t know anything about modern art!”  Well, we were about to learn, and it was the beginning of a family adventure that would have repercussions beyond the life of Gres Gallery.

Under the new management, Gres Gallery opened for the 1958-59 season on 30 September with an exhibit of the paintings of Norman Carton (one of whose works, Intermezzo, my parents bought for me as a 14th birthday gift and which remains one of my most treasured pieces of art) and the abstract sculptures of Jorge Oteiza, a Spanish Basque artist.  The Washington Post celebrated the survival by the “newest and most provocative of the modern art centers here” of the near-crisis of Tana Gres’s sudden retirement.

Not that all ran smoothly right out of the gate.  The new Gres Gallery’s first show was almost scuttled before it even opened.  About two weeks before the 30 September opening of the Carton-Oteiza exhibit, four pieces of Oteiza’s sculptures—Empty Suspension, Dynamic Conjunction, Slow Forms Before Closing Space, and Metaphysical Box No. 1—were being held by the Baltimore office of the U.S. Customs Service.  The issue was one of duties.  And the official Customs definition of “sculpture.”  (Yes, there was one, based on a Supreme Court decision—from 40-45 years earlier.  Ummm . . . that would make it from 1913-1918.  What do you think?  Had art changed much in almost half a century?)   

The Spanish sculptor’s work is not just abstract, but, as Beati Perry acknowledged, is constructed of iron or aluminum pieces cut into shapes by machines and then bolted or welded together.  Therein lay the problem: the Customs rule for duty-free fine art rather than “new decorative art pieces” on which a 19% tariff was levied was that fine art must be “representations of natural objects or objects in nature,” according to J. Ross Prevost, U.S. Customs appraiser for the port of Baltimore.  He explained: “Modern art sculptures have metaphysical or abstract subjects . . . .   They don’t represent nature.”  Perry, who blamed the legal criteria and not the Customs Service, proclaimed: “It’s the unworkable law.  What was sculpture in the Renaissance isn’t enough for today.” 

(The law governing whether a piece of sculpture is art or “manufactured” or “fabricated” metal was under review by the Customs Service and a bill was introduced in the 84th Congress in 1957 to change the applicable law to reflect new criteria for modern sculpture “so there would be no question about admitting abstract art into the country duty-free.”  The bill failed to pass, leaving the definition of art the same as it had been for nearly half a century for customs purposes.  There was a second criterion in question as well, however.  The customs definition of fine art included that it must be made by hand or cast from hand-made molds, and Oteiza’s sculptures were largely machine-made.  A lawyer with customs experience explained that this regulation was in force to prevent machine-duplicated reproductions from flooding into the country duty-free in the guise of original works of art.)

When someone observed that Dynamic Conjunction looked like a pair of manacles, Prevost responded, “That’s close, but I just couldn’t say what it is.”  When the artist filled out the customs declarations for the sculptures, he described them as “iron, in crates.”  Therefore someone wondered why they couldn’t come into the country as scrap metal, which carried a 10% duty.  Perry pointed out that might be illegal, and would probably be dishonest: to pay the duty on the value of the metal in the sculptures and then turn around and sell them for thousands of dollars as art.  All a Customs official would say was, “They’re not scrap metal.”

Perry made her argument for the duty-free admissibility of the sculptures in the form of a very interesting analogy—the likes of which government bureaucrats are probably not likely to hear often:

If an artist created a machine-made iron sculpture of his concept of God, it could not be established whether it was like God or not.

Customs officials, if they refused duty-free status for the object, would be in a position of ruling that man could see God and so represent Him.

The case for metaphysical thought is similar.  No one can see them, but they can be represented as man attempting to relate himself spiritually to the universe.

Four days before the Gres exhibit was to open, the gallery “ransomed” the four artworks for $400, a 10% tariff, leaving the question of whether they’re art or not for a later debate.  It was a temporary solution, arranged with Olga Threadgill, new co-owner of the gallery, relying on the government agency to repay the money if it decided to deem the sculptures art—and collecting the full 19% tariff if they didn’t.  Perry reported that she heard the decision “will be a test case.”  On 30 September, the day of the exhibit’s opening at Gres, the U.S. Customs Service ruled that the four Oteiza metal constructions, which the artist labeled “theological boxes,” were, indeed, art objects and, consequently, could be brought into the country duty-free.  The decision allowed for the duty-free entry of sculptures that represent “other than natural objects.”  The Baltimore Sun offered the opinion that “The Customs Bureau edged into the slippery transcendental realm” when it decided Oteiza’s works were art.  Customs appraiser Prevost dubbed the decision “epoch-making.”  Celebrating the decision with champagne with her Gres colleagues, Perry said they’d now be requesting a refund of the $400 “ransom” paid to secure the release of the sculptures for the exhibit. 

Dynamic Conjunction is a sweeping assemblage of dark, curving iron bars, thin and flat and bending into each other, 13⅜ inches high.  Perry interpreted the works as expressions of “spiritually habitable space as a sort of metaphysical installation for man.”  She added: “The sculpture is intended to show man’s relation to the universe.”  According to Perry, the pieces “evolved from metaphysical discussions between the sculptor and the Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian.”  Dynamic Conjunction and Empty Suspension were prize-winners, awarded the First International Sculpture Prize in the international competition at the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 1957. 

So ended the preamble, and nearly the death-knell, of the new Gres Gallery’s first show.  Not the sort of notoriety the gallery might have wanted, but it worked out satisfactorily for the gallery and may have even helped prevent a similar occurrence for another exhibitor down the line by being a catalyst for changing the regulations governing importing modern sculptures into the United States.  Norman Carton and Jorge Oteiza ran at Gres until 28 October.  Post art critic Leslie Judd Portner praised the two artists: Carton for bringing “a strong sense of structure and cohesion to his canvases” on which “[p]aint is piled . . . with brush and palette knife until in some instances it stands an inch away from the surface of the canvas”; and Oteiza as a “nice contrast to Carton” who “employs an art of reticent angular geometries . . . .” 

(Accompanying a Washington Post article on the conclusion of the Customs Affair and reporting the opening of the Carton-Oteiza show was a photograph, probably staged, of Olga Threadgill and Beati Perry hanging a painting in the gallery.  The photo is captioned “An Art Itself,” referring to the “proper” hanging of a framed canvas, and shows Perry on a tall step ladder as Threadgill hands a painting up to her as she stands to Perry’s left.  I mention this illustration because I was present for many of these picture-hanging sessions.  I would accompany my mother to the gallery and while the adults were working on arranging the art—I’d have been too small to be much help with this—I’d be sitting at a folding table stuffing envelopes with the announcement of the opening or a schedule of upcoming shows.  I got pretty good at folding flyers and fitting them neatly into envelopes!)

At the same time as the run-up to the first show at the Gres under its new ownership and management, and even during the brouhaha of the Customs quarantine of the Oteiza sculptures, a different sort of attention was being focused on Gres Gallery, a much happier kind. 

On 5 October 1958, the Washington Post announced its fourth annual Christmas Painting Project, a contest for professional and amateur artists, high school and college students, and the general public.  $100 U.S. Savings Bonds were the prize for six winners—one each for a high-schooler and a college artist from public, private, and parochial schools in the District; the Virginia counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria, and Falls Church; and the Maryland counties of Montgomery and Prince Georges, and four for submissions from the public—for a Christmas-themed painting in any of a number of media.  The six winning submissions would be published in the paper in full color.  

After a preliminary jury of Post staffers made judgments on the basis of “suitability of technique and subject”—there were some criteria—“for color reproduction,” a final round of judging would be conducted on 3 December by a distinguished panel of three local art professionals.  Among these was Gres Gallery’s executive director, Beatrice Perry.  (The other two panelists were Franz Bader of the District’s Franz Bader Gallery and [Hereward] Lester Cooke of the National Gallery of Art staff.)  Perry’s name and position appeared in further announcements and display ads for the painting project that ran until the deadline (26 November), keeping the gallery’s presence before the Post’s readership for several weeks.   

On 21 October, the Post published a letter from the chairman of the Department of Art at the District’s American University complaining about Leslie Judd Portner’s coverage of Gres Gallery.  Ben L. Summerford (known, for some reason, as “Joe”), a painter himself, wrote, “Will Leslie Judd Portner’s crusade in behalf of the Gres Gallery never end?”  Calling for “an uncommitted critic” whose focus is “serious criticism and not social news, whose writing can be respected for an unbiased evaluation of art exhibited here . . . .”  While Summerford acknowledged that “Mrs. Portner at times has been such a critic,” he lamented her “lapses such as have occurred in the past six or eight weeks in which her obvious favoritism seriously prejudices her judgment in other areas.” 

Summerford’s principal problem with Portner’s criticism was that he counted her among those in the District who “have ignored serious art done in the city, and in many cases given preference to mediocre work done elsewhere.”  The critic critic labeled this tendency “a regrettable aspect of our provincialism” and admonished the paper and Portner that if they “are concerned about art in Washington, they could do much to afford the climate in which it could exist.”  

(In the 1950s, the Nation’s Capital was still suffering from an inferiority complex regarding its indigenous culture—what Summerford called our “provincialism”—competing in the minds of Washingtonians, especially native-born residents, non-transients, and those not serving in the federal government, with New York City, a scant 250 miles north and a short hop by train or plane.  I discuss this in “Washington Art Matters” and reference a review of that show, ironically at American University where Summerford taught, by John Anderson in the Washington City Paper in which he also wrote of this phenomenon, asserting, “Washington Art Matters ostensibly intends to illuminate the importance of Washington’s art scene, but it’s awfully hung up on Manhattan—a common and ultimately counterproductive affliction in this town.”)

It might be worth noting here that Summerford was one of the artists who founded the Jefferson Place Gallery, a cooperative that was Gres’s principal competition—and neighbor in the Dupont Circle area of D.C.—in 1957.  Washington Art Matters observed of the friendly rivalry that Gres

created a social scene—with Larry Rivers, for example, playing jazz piano into the night.  Alice Denney [director of the Jefferson Place Gallery] remembers that gallery goers would arrive at her less-endowed operation the Jefferson Place Gallery trailing balloon bouquets from the Gres’s more elaborate openings.

Jefferson Place, located south of Dupont Circle at 1216 Connecticut Avenue near 18th Street, N.W.—four minutes south of Gres—focused on local artists, especially the Washington Color School (see my post, “The Washington School of Color,” on 21 September 2014).  Beati Perry didn’t want Gres to become known as a Washington gallery so she eschewed local artists.  As a consequence, several artists like Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis—and, you can imagine, Ben Summerford and his Jefferson Place  colleagues who were largely a group of American University artists—never showed at the gallery.   According to Washington Art Matters, Gres had already “created excitement among collectors who until then bought only in New York and Chicago.”

By 27 October, several other readers had chimed in on Summerford’s point.  Richard E. Trees of Washington wrote in “to second Mr. Summerford’s criticism of” Portner, but his issue wasn’t with the coverage of Gres.  (Trees complained about the Post critic’s assessment of an unnamed artist from an unidentified exhibit.  He took issue with what he saw as “almost . . . criticizing the artist[‘s] personality and ignoring his art.”)  On the other hand, Washingtonian Penelope J. Wright replied to Summerford: “Despite recent criticism of Mrs. Portner’s evaluation of the present exhibition at the Gres Gallery [the Carton-Oteiza show], I hope that The Post will continue to give so competent a critic as Mrs. Portner a free voice.”

A third letter-writer, Manuel Baker, took up Summerford’s objection to Portner’s putative bias for outside artists over local ones.  The director of Washington’s I.F.A. Galleries (the initials stood for “International Fine Arts,” but no one called it that) declared, “I wish to register a sharp protest against the unwarranted criticism leveled against Leslie Judd Portner . . . by Ben Summerford.”  Listing Summerford’s complaints, Baker wrote, ”As the director of a gallery which has been exhibiting the work of both local and out-of-town artists for the past eight years, I find all these criticisms invalid.”  The letter-writer went on to praise Portner for her support of “a progressive gallery” whose “demise would have dealt a severe blow to the entire art community . . . .”  He asserted, “Mrs. Portner should be applauded and not criticized for her efforts, which played no small part in saving the gallery” (when Tana Gres had to retire precipitously).  Noting that the Post art reviewer had been covering local artists extensively  and that those outside artists she’d reviewed were “artists who have achieved substantial recognition,” Baker’s conclusion was:  “To deprive Washingtonians of the pleasure of seeing and reading about their work would be the height of ‘provincialism.’”

In preparing this article, I perused all of Portner’s reviews of Gres Gallery’s shows, and I can report that, while she praised the exhibits and the art on display, she was no less effusive about the shows at other galleries—including the Jefferson Place.  Most of the notices Portner published on Gres shows were part of omnibus columns covering several art shows in town, so she wasn’t spotlighting Gres to the exclusion of other local outlets.  In addition, if she seemed enthusiastic about this new gallery, perhaps it was because it was a new gallery in a town just coming into its own culturally and every new outlet—gallery, museum, theater, ballet troupe, orchestra—was an exciting and significant arrival on the scene.  Also, as Manuel Baker observed, the Gres almost died aborning, after a remarkably successful nine-month gestation period.  I’m biased, of course, and I was very young and impressionable when Gres was operating, but it was a pretty remarkable place.  It was the art world counterpart to the Little Engine That Could.  Portner, I think, can be excused for her apparent enthusiasm.  It wasn’t bias, but a response to something obviously special. 

According to a report in the Post at the time of Tana Gres’s departure in August, the gallery, “self-sustaining since the third month of its existence,” “has established something of a record for success” by grossing $10,420 from art sales (the equivalent of about $90,450 today) in its eleven months of operation.  Works had been purchased by the Phillips Collection in Washington, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Art (now the S.F. Museum of Modern Art), the Yale University Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas, and the Frankfurter Kunstkabenett.  Galleries such as the Martha Jackson, Betty Parsons, and Parma in New York also bought art from Gres and other galleries and museums brought Gres artists to New York to exhibit.  Artists of note—“who have achieved substantial recognition,” as Manuel Baker of I.F.A. put it—who exhibited at Gres included José Luis Cuevas, Mexican painter and sculptor; Colombian sculptor Édgar Negret; New York painter Anna Walinska; tapestry-maker Marie Tuiccillo Kelly from Pittsburgh; and a group of the most important German artists of the first half of the 20th century such as Kurt Schwitters, Georg Grosz, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee.  Ambassadors from the artists’ home countries usually attended the openings and sometimes gave embassy receptions in honor of the artist and her or his work in the exhibit. 

This all sounds like success to me—the kind that appropriately gets press coverage.  But Portner herself reported in December some other marks of Gres’s status.  Noting that when she started reporting on the District’s art scene in 1950, there was only one “professional art gallery” among a handful of tea rooms, antique shops, and movie houses that sold “art” on the side.  Now Gres is among the five that then existed in Washington.  (The other four were the Jefferson Place, the  Obelisk, the Art Rental, and the Hiratsuka Nippon Galleries.)  The Post journalist observed after only one year in the business, an “indication of its standards is that the Carnegie International Exhibition, currently in Pittsburgh, is exhibiting 11 of its regular artists.”  She added that among the 11 was Antoni Tàpies, Spanish painter and sculptor who was scheduled to have his first U.S. one-man show at the Gres in March 1959, and who won the Grand Prize at the Carnegie.  The other 10 artists at the Carnegie from Gres Gallery were José Bermudez, a Cuban-born American known for drawings, sculptures, and watercolors; Luis Martínez Pedro, Cuban painter; Manuel Rendón, Ecuadorian painter; Matta (aka: Roberto Matta), painter from Chile; Mexican painter José Luis Cuevas; sculptor Jorge Oteiza from Spain, New York painter Norman Carton, born in Pennsylvania; New York-based sculptor Louise Nevelson, born in the Ukraine; New York-based artist in prints, paint, and sculpture Jack Youngerman, born in Missouri; and Édgar Negret, Colombian sculptor.  Portner concluded, “This is quite some recognition for a brand-new gallery.”

Paralleling Portner’s assessment of Gres’s success, Baltimore Sun art critic Kenneth B. Sawyer, writing about two years later, lamented the dearth of contemporary American coverage in the Capital’s art museums, “something of a scandal to the vast foreign element that peopled the embassies of the city.”  But he added, “Recently, things have been looking up,” reporting that new galleries have opened and filled the vacuum.  Naming several District galleries, Sawyer declared that “the best of them is the Gres.”  He called it “an ambitious gallery” whose “aims are international in scope and contemporary in direction.”  Under Perry’s management, he found, “it has provided some of the brightest moments of art that Washington has known in recent years.”  A few months later, the Sun art reviewer concluded, “The Gres will continue its policy of exhibitions by contemporary European, Oriental and American artists in the vanguard of current thought.”  Given that a little over a year earlier, Sawyer had expressed doubt about Gres’s “staying power,” this sounds to me like high praise for the gallery’s importance in the Capital area’s art scene.

If someone wants to fault Gres for not showing Washington artists, that’s a fair criticism.  I like the work of Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Lou Stovall, Lila Asher (a childhood friend of my late mother’s), and Sam Gilliam.  (There are posts on many of these artists on Rick On Theater: “Morris Louis,” 15 February 2010; “Lila Oliver Asher,” 26 September 2014; “Picasso, Bearden, Gilliam, and Gauguin,” 26 June 2011.  There’s extensive mention of Noland in “Washington School of Color,” referenced above, as well as some passing references in “Picasso, Bearden, Gilliam, and Gauguin.”)  I now think Beati was wrong to reject them back then—but it was her choice and I don’t think those artists suffered professionally for Gres’s rebuff.  (My mother told me a few years ago that both Louis and Noland approached Beati for shows at Gres and were turned down.  I wonder if Summerford made the same application.)

For the most part, things went swimmingly for Gres Gallery and its new owners, managers, and shareholders after the Customs Affair and the Critical Cavil.  (It was all very exciting to 11-going-on-12 me, of course.)  On 29 October 1958, Gres opened its first Fernando Botero show with Ambassador José Gutiérrez Gómez of Colombia officiating.  (The show, which Portner dubbed one of “the two most interesting shows in town this week,” paired the emerging Colombian painter with the much-more-established  Louise Nevelson, the mid-career American sculptor known for her monochromatic, abstract shadow-box constructions.  It closed on 25 November.)  The diplomat had given a reception at the embassy the day before in honor of the painter who was arguably the most famous—or would become so—of all the artists Gres showed.

Gres  was only the second gallery in the U.S. to mount a solo Botero show; the first was at the Pan-American Union (now the Organization of American States, or OAS) from 17 April to 15 May 1957.  Between 18 October and 12 November 1960, Gres held its second one-man show of the paintings of the Colombian’s art; it’s my recollection that MoMA bought the artist’s Mona Lisa Aged 12 from this Gres exhibit.    (Also from Gres’s second Botero exhibit, my mother, brother, and I bought the artist’s Boy with Guitar, sometimes called Boy with Mandolin, as a 42nd-birthday gift for my father.  Of course, my brother, then 11¾, and I, a month shy of 14, didn’t really contribute any cash to the purchase—we didn’t really have any—but Mom paid in the low three figures for the 3¼′ x 4¼′ painting which 58 years later is assessed at 1000 times as much!)

On 30 November 1958, the gallery opened Collages by Robert Keyser.  I don’t recognize the name, and his work doesn’t look familiar to me now, but the timing’s right for this to have been the source of a short-lived but significant influence on me.  Here’s the story (which I’ve told before in an abbreviated version):

It was the practice for Gres openings that the vernissages, the receptions for the artist or artists on the eve of the exhibit, rotated among the shareholders and were held at their homes.  The artists, if they were in town for the opening, were usually there as well, and this was part of what made our experience with the gallery so impressive: I not only saw a lot of new art “up close and personal” (remember, I was often at the gallery when the shows were hung), but I got to meet the artists—real, honest-to-God, professional artists!  (Since Keyser came from New York for the opening, he’d have been at the party, assuming I’ve got the right show.)

Pieces of the art to be shown were bought to the homes and displayed along the walls or propped up on mantels so the guests could get a preview of the show—an enticement, I guess you’d say.  My parents hosted many of these over the 3½ years we were involved with Gres, and I usually attended; I was often the greeter, “butler,” and cocktail waiter when my folks entertained.  One of the art parties my parents held was for a collagist—almost certainly Keyser, given the date and how soon after we got involved with Gres this happened—and I was helping when we laid out the art in prep for the reception. 

I was intrigued by the collages we were placing around our living room; Keyser’s work was described as composed of “many kinds and colors of paper . . ., including graph paper, wall paper samples and even old wrapping paper.”  I’m not sure I’d ever seen a collage—or knew what one was—before this introduction.  When the guests had started to arrive, and I was taking coats and drink requests, one man, someone my parents knew as I recall, was looking at a piece on the mantel.  I don’t remember if the man said anything, but I piped up: “I can do that!”  The man instantly took up my boast and said that if I made a collage, he’d buy it from me.  The challenge was on!

I immediately went upstairs to my room and, not having any other supplies at hand (or really knowing of any other suitable material—besides, Keyser worked in paper), I took some colored construction paper and started cutting and pasting.  It was an abstract assemblage, just shapes and colors without any intended meaning or message (what I now know as the foundation of the Washington Color School’s artistic principle).  Maybe 45 minutes or an hour later, I brought my creation downstairs and presented it proudly to the man who’d challenged me.  He lived up to his promise, too, and asked me what I thought the collage was worth.  What did I know?  I figured the materials were worth maybe 50 cents and, not adding anything for my time or labor—not even considering artistic inspiration—that’s what I quoted him.  He paid up (about $4.50 in 2018 bucks), and I was a successful artists (I’d never have known the designation ‘collagist’ at that time)—I’d sold something I created!

But the story had repercussions:

I went on to make construction-paper collages to give to friends and family instead of greeting cards.  One of my creations was sitting on a table in the apartment of my “Aunt” Viv, my mom’s best friend, when she was entertaining a local Society Lady.  The Society Lady spotted the collage as she was leaving and asked Aunt Viv what it was.  “Oh,” joked Vivian, who had a puckish sense of humor, “that’s an original Richard K*****.”  “Yes, I’ve heard of him,” responded the Society Lady, not knowing, of course, that I was all of 13 or 14 at the time.  Having committed herself, Aunt Viv couldn’t admit now that she’d been kidding the Society Lady—who took herself very seriously—so Viv just let the woman believe I was a famous artist of whom she might have heard.

End of story . . . not.

The anecdote, both parts, made the rounds in my family—my mother continued to tell it decades later—and eventually it reached the ears of my Uncle Herb from Massachusetts.  He and my Aunt Mac were in New York City a few years later, shopping in a gallery on Madison Avenue.  While Mac was browsing, Herb, who had a peeve about pretensions and phoniness, cooled his heels until a saleswoman asked if he needed help.  “Yes,” he replied, in all apparent seriousness (but with a secret glint in his eye), “I’m looking for some original Richard K*****s.”  After leafing through the shop’s collection of art and prints, the assistant told him, “I’m sorry, we don’t happen to have any at the moment, but we’re expecting some in shortly.  Shall I let you know when they come in?”  Needless to say, Uncle Herb—Mom used to call him a pixie—said she should.

I never did become a famous artist, by the way.

It’s one thing for an ambassador or chief of mission to make an appearance at a gallery opening, like Ambassador Gutiérrez Gómez of Colombia at the opening of the Botero show or the Chilean Chargé d’Affairs at the preview of the Matta exhibit.  That’s all about the official representative of a nation making a public fuss over a prominent son or daughter of the home country.  It’s like sending the Veep to the funeral of a foreign head of state—it’s part of someone’s official duties.  But it’s another matter when diplomatic officials from countries unrelated to the artist show up at an exhibit opening or other event.  Then it’s about the prestige of being seen at the gallery, spotlighting the venue rather than the artist.  In the case of Collages by Robert Keyser at Gres Gallery, the Washington Post reported that representatives of the British and French embassies attended the opening; so did the Turkish Press Attaché—even though Keyser was a New Yorker.  (Though meeting artists was a new and exciting experience for me at this time in my life, I went to school with the kids of senior diplomats, so it was no big deal for blasé li’l me; I used to go to the home of the Indian ambassador to play!  A few years after this, my dad would be an attaché himself.) 

[There’s more of this story to come and I hope that you’ll return on 10 July for the second part of “Gres Gallery.”  This has been a very personal and emotional visit for me, going back to a part of my life that I regard with great affection and a feeling of magic.  I hope some of that comes through to you readers.  At the same time, I want to record, in as complete an account as I can, the history of Gres Gallery, including some of my private recollections and some of the personal responses I had to this remarkable experience.  I’ve had to skip over a number of exhibits and leave out more than a few of the artists that Gres showed; I selected the ones I thought told something unique or important about the gallery. 

[I’m contemplating appending a list of the names mentioned in this article after Part 2—perhaps just the artists’ names, with their dates and the kind of art they made.  Maybe what I’ll do, if I go ahead with that plan, is to compile a list of Gres’s exhibits in chronological order and add it to the bottom of “Gres Gallery, Part 2.”]