Larry Gagosian was born on the 19th April 1945, in Los Angeles, California, USA of part-Armenian origin, and is a dealer of modern and contemporary art. He is the owner of the Gagosian Gallery chain, and runs 13 Gagosian Galleries worldwide. He has been active in the art industry since the late 1970s.
How much is the net worth of Larry Gagosian? It has been estimated that the overall size of his wealth is as much as $300 million, as of the data presented in the beginning of 2017. Art is the main source of Gagosian’s fortune.
Larry Gagosian Net Worth $300 Million
Firstly, Larry Gagosian eventually graduated from UCLA in 1969 with a degree in English Literature. He moved into art (branch name: Go-Go) after operating a poster shop in Santa Monica, before opening a gallery for contemporary art in San Francisco in 1977. Among his first artists were Richard Serra, Frank Stella and Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose works he mainly sold to film makers in Hollywood, and also to industrialists from the American West Coast. In 1985, Gagosian opened a gallery in a penthouse on Madison Avenue, New York, and the same year he launched another gallery based in Soho alongside his partner Leo Castelli. At the beginning of the 1990s, another gallery in New York was opened, in which the heavy weight sculptures by Walter de Maria and Richard Serra were exhibited. Serra’s sculpture “Intersection II” was sold directly from the garage to the Museum of Modern Art. Gagosian’s net worth was well established.
Furthermore, Gagosian has created a gallery empire that makes him one of the world’s most powerful artisans. He shows the painters and sculptors he represents in his own galleries at eight locations in New York, Beverly Hills, London, Rome and Athens as well as at international art fairs. In addition, he gives exhibitions of these artists worldwide in museums and private art galleries. For an exhibition of the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, he utilised the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles in 2008.
Gagosian does not represent young, up-and-coming artists, only those well known. He represents among others Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Glenn Brown, Frank Stella, John Currin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Jasper Johns, Gilbert and George, and Nan Goldin. The annual turnover of art made by Larry Gagosian is estimated to be $925 million dollars, which undoubtedly increases the total size of his net worth.
In 2003, the USA government accused Larry Gagosian and three of his business partners of avoiding $ 26.5 million of income tax. In 2016, Gagosian hit the headlines because of a Picasso gypsy, apparently sold twice; the case was brought before a New York court and settled in the middle of 2016, after payment of financial compensation at an unknown level.
Finally, in the personal life of Gagosian, rumours abound of a brief marriage, and possibly a current one and with a daughter, but are unconfirmed.
