Patricia Faure Gallery records, 1952-2006 (bulk 1970-2006)

Biographical/Historical Note

The Patricia Faure Gallery in Los Angeles exhibited internationally recognized artists such as Richard Artschwager, Philip Guston and Morris Louis along with less-known local artists such as Gwynn Murrill, Craig Kauffman and Jack Goldstein. Gallery owner Patricia Faure (née Enk) was born on April 8, 1928 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a Catholic industrialist family. At age 15, she moved with her widowed mother and one of her sisters to Los Angeles, California to pursue a career in modeling. While Faure was a student at Hollywood High School, she attended a presentation by Vincent Price who was promoting his museum in Beverly Hills, the Modern Institute of Art. Price offered her a volunteer position at the museum in exchange for membership. This early experience of working in a museum sparked Faure's interest in art.

In the late 1940s, Faure moved to New York to expand her modeling career with the Ford Modeling Agency and to attend the New School of Social Research. It was there that she became friends with a circle of writers, artists and musicians that included Larry Rivers, Ad Reinhardt and Willem de Kooning. After her divorce from her first husband, drummer Phil Peyton, Faure moved back to Los Angeles in 1955 and became very involved with the growing art scene. She made friends with artists from the Ferus Gallery including Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Kienholz and John Altoon. Faure took up photography and began taking pictures of these artists, and upon marrying her second husband Jacques Faure in 1959, moved to Paris and worked full time as a fashion photographer. After 11 years, the couple returned to Los Angeles along with their daughter, Zazu.

It was in 1972 that Faure began her career as an art dealer for the Nicholas Wilder Gallery. When Wilder closed his gallery and moved to New York, Faure partnered with Betty Asher to start a new commercial gallery that mixed exhibitions of well-known artists represented by New York galleries (such as Leo Castelli, Paula Cooper and Pace) with established but lesser-known, local artists. Unlike some of the other Los Angeles galleries of its time, Asher/Faure gallery was a corporation complete with outside financial backers, and its mainstream and mostly marketable roster reflects this. Though Asher retired in 1990, the gallery continued to operate as Asher/Faure until her death in 1994. That same year, Faure moved to a new space at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica and reopened the gallery under her own name. In 2005 Faure sold the gallery to Samuel Freeman, who continued to operate it as the Patricia Faure Gallery until 2008, the year Faure herself passed away.

Scope and Content of Collection

The Patricia Faure Gallery records document the business of the gallery when it was known as Asher/Faure between 1979-1994 and under Faure's own name between 1994-2008. The archive provides a glimpse into the history of one of Los Angeles's renowned galleries as well as into the evolving taste and buying habits of its collectors.

The artist files in Series I form the bulk of the archive and document the artists Faure represented including sculptors Richard Artschwager, Craig Kauffman, Gwynn Murrill, John Okulick and Joel Shapiro, and painters Llyn Foulkes, Sam Francis, Wade Hoefer, John M. Miller, and Margaret Nielsen. This section contains mostly exhibition announcements and photographic images of artists' works in the form of prints, transparencies, slides and negatives. Some files also include sales and inventory lists, clippings, correspondence and resumes. Miscellaneous and unidentified color slides and transparencies are filed at the end of the series (box 29).

Faure's interest in mixing established New York artists with newer Los Angeles artists is exemplified in the exhibition files in Series II. The first section of the series relates to group shows held between 1979 to 2006 and comprises mostly photographs as well as exhibition announcements and clippings. The photographic material consists of prints, transparencies, slides and negatives documenting exhibition installation shots and artists' works. Also included in this section are business papers such as sales and inventory lists, correspondence and resumes. The second portion of Series II features a group of color slides documenting both group and solo shows between 1983-1992.

Series III contains mostly financial papers for both Asher/Faure and the Patricia Faure Gallery from 1978 to 2006 and includes gallery sales, financial reports and tax papers. Another significant portion of the series is comprised of business correspondence pertaining to sales, donations and exhibitions with other galleries, museums, collectors and artists. Other files included in this section are operational documents for the gallery spaces, mailing lists, exhibition ephemera and clippings.

A small section of personal papers belonging to Faure which contains mostly insurance and financial papers is in Series IV.

Arrangement

Arranged in four series:
Series I. Artist files, circa 1956-2006 (bulk 1970-2006);
Series II. Exhibition files, 1952-2006 (bulk 1979-2006);
Series III. Business files, 1978-2006;
Series IV. Personal files, 1987-2005.

Restrictions

Access

Open for use by qualified researchers, except audiovisual materials which are unavailable until reformatted, and materials in Box 56, which are sealed until 2087.

Publication Rights

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Indexing Terms

Subjects - Names

Subjects - Corporate Bodies

Subjects - Topics

Genres and Forms of Material

Contributors

Related Material

See also the Betty Asher papers (2009.M.30) and the Patricia Faure oral history (2010.M.6). An additional interview by the Archives of American Art can be found on their website.

40 monographs and 4 serials were transferred to the library. These publications may be found by searching the Library Catalog for the Patricia Faure Gallery Collection.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Patricia Faure Gallery Records, 1952-2006 (bulk 1970-2006), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2010.M.13

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2010m13

Acquisition Information

Gift of Samuel Freeman in 2010.

Processing History

Processed by Sheila Prospero under the supervision of Andra Darlington from 2010-2012. Six folders of papers were out of scope from the collection and deaccessioned in November 2013.

Container List