Re-View, Hauser &Wirth

Hauser & Wirth’s newest exhibition, Re-View, is a survey of the collection of Berlin art dealer Reinhard Onnasch, and one of the highlights of London’s late-autumn art season. It’s unusual for Hauser & Wirth to hold a non-selling exhibition at this time of year when art buyers head to London in their droves, especially in light of the fact that Onnasch has something of a reputation for not selling work.

Dealers tend to reserve the term ‘museum quality’ for particularly special artworks. But over the years, Onnasch has found some of the items passing through his gallery’s doors too good even museums. Subsequently,  Re-View is an exhibition that any major museum director would love to hold. 

Presented with scholarly rigour by curator Paul Schimmel across all three of H&W’s West End galleries, you’ll see works from some of the 20th century’s most important artists, including George Brecht, Dan Flavin, Franz Kline and Richard Hamilton. There is enough in Re-View to keep students of modern art history occupied for months. But it is not just the amount to see here that impresses, nor is it the big names on display: it’s the quality of the collection and its historical significance. Wandering through it, we felt like a little bit like Indiana Jones, shouting desperately, while trying to rescue an artefact from his unscrupulous nemesis: ‘But that belongs in a museum!’

Onnasch was among the first gallerists to exhibit Gerhard Richter’s paintings in America, and is credited with introducing American artists Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg to Europe. Examples of the work of each are seen here. Dieter Roth’s Zwerge (an assemblage of garden gnomes and chocolate) provides a highlight in Hauser & Wirth’s Piccadilly gallery. In the spartan Savile Row exhibition spaces, the origins of abstract expressionism can be seen in the paintings of Clyfford Still – whose work from the 1950s still looks remarkably contemporary – while next door a history of New York Pop Art is told through the work of Jim Dine, Claes Oldenberg and others.

With around 80 works in the exhibition there’s more to see than we can hope to list. It is unlikely there’ll will be another chance to see all of these treasures together in public for a long time, so be sure to pay a visit to at least one of Hauser & Wirth’s galleries before December 14.

FREE

Addresses & Maps: 

Hauser& Wirth

Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, W1S 2ET  ‎

Nearest Tube: Piccadilly Circus