Helly Nahmad (London)

Helly Nahmad (UK) & Helly Nahmad Gallery London

Helly Nahmad (b. 23 November 1976) attended St Paul’s School, London before reading History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. In 1998, he founded Helly Nahmad London in Cork Street, Mayfair, and has built the gallery’s reputation for dealing exclusively in works by Modern and Impressionist masters of the 19th and 20th Century, including Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, René Magritte, Kasimir Malevich, Joan Miró. Helly is a frequent commentator on the art market, and most recently was interviewed by CNN on his thoughts with regards to art and investing .

In 2011, Helly Nahmad (UK) organised and curated the first ever exhibition of highlights from The Nahmad Collection, at Kunsthaus Zurich. The exhibition comprised over 100 masterpieces by artists from the Impressionist, Surrealist and Cubist movements, including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-August Renoir, Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, and George Braque. Works displayed included those which have been in the family collection for decades, and which have rarely been exhibited in public before. Helly Nahmad (UK) spoke about the exhibition to Jackie Wullschlager for Lunch with the FT.

The Kunsthaus exhibition was described by Helly Nahmad in an interview for the exhibition catalogue as ‘These works are those which are very rare and which we feel especially privileged to own…We hoped to create a coherent experience for the viewer and show what we feel are the highlights.’Commenting on exhibiting a large proportion of the collection for the first time, Nahmad said, ‘I think part of the attraction for us to exhibit at the Kunsthaus is to see where the collection stands today and how we, and the public, respond to it. Our aim is to look with fresh eyes and learn from this dialogue.’ The mini-site for the exhibition can be viewed here.

This exhibition was followed in 2013 by ‘Picasso in the Nahmad Collection’ at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, an exhibition of over 120 works from the collection brought together to celebrate the worldwide 40th anniversary of the artist. The exhibition was curated by the Director of the Musée Picasso in Antibes, Jean-Louis Andral, and Marilyn McCully, an expert on the artist.

Recent exhibitions at the Helly Nahmad Gallery in London have included a retrospective of Monet, which featured seventeen paintings by the Impressionist, including two views of London kindly loaned by the Kunsthaus in Zurich. The Financial Times called the exhibition "the best show in London this winter". This was followed by an ambitious exhibition of Matisse's female portraits and included a generous loan from Tate Modern of one painting, 'La Liseuse distraite' (1919), alongwith the artist's series of four monumental bronze female backs, entitled 'Nu de dos I-IV' which were conceieved circa 1909-30.

In 2014, Helly Nahmad London presented 'The Collector' at Frieze Masters 2014, a full scale imaginary collector's apartment set in Paris in 1968, curated by Helly Nahmad and designed in collaboration with two leading British production designers, Robin Brown and Anna Pank. Scott Reyburn of The International New York Times stated that "London dealer Helly Nahmad evoked that “true” collecting spirit." Further comments and reviews of The Collector at Frieze Masters 2014 can be found at Vogue Italia and The Guardian. After the exhibition, Helly Nahmad London commissioned a short film of 'The Collector', inspired by their Frieze stand; the full version can be viewed here.

Since then, Helly Nahmad has aimed to lend art works as widely as possible so that the collection can be accessed by the public. Recent loans to museums and institutions worldwide have included:

• - MoMA, New York
• - Guggenheim, New York
• - Albertina, Vienna
• - Centre Pompidou, Paris
• - The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
• - Musée d’Orsay, Paris
• - Fondation Beyeler, Basel
• - Musée Marmottan, Paris
• - Fundacio Miró, Barcelona
• - Fondation Maeght, France
• - Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
• - National Gallery of Art, Washington
• - Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany
• - Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• - J. Paul Getty, Malibu
• - Nasher Sculpture Centre, Dallas
• - Grand Palais, Paris
• - Reina Sofia, Madrid
• - Tate Britain, London
• - Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom

Helly Nahmad Gallery New York

Please note Helly Nahmad Gallery, New York is an entirely separate business, owned and operated by a different Helly Nahmad.

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