Abstract
Dulce D’Agro (1915-2011) was a painter who founded the Quadrum Gallery in Lisbon. Active between 1973 and 1995 and a pioneering force in promoting Portuguese and international avant-garde art, the gallery opened at a time of major political and economic upheaval, a year before the Portuguese Revolution of 25 April 1974. Invoking commercial failure and a deep “love for modern art”, D’Agro reacted to that context by radically changing the gallery’s strategy, investing her personal fortune in renewing its artistic programme. This article analyses archival sources and compares these with the literature on the subject, discussing the gallery’s path of development, its shift towards a conceptual programme and the role that the art critics played in contributing to those changes, while also examining the international network that D’Agro built through her regular participation at art fairs, creating artistic value and consensus among agents about her artists and the gallery’s programme.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Women Art Dealers |
| Subtitle of host publication | Creating Markets for Modern Art, 1940-1980 |
| Editors | Véronique Chagnon-Burke, Caterina Toschi |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Chapter | 16 |
| Pages | 263-279 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781350292451 |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Dec 2023 |
Keywords
- Women art dealers
- Art Markets
- Contemporary Art