Forum Gallery

About the Gallery
Forum Gallery was founded in New York City in 1961 by Bella Fishko, as a gallery of American figurative art. Among the first artists represented were Raphael Soyer, Chaim Gross, David Levine and Gregory Gillespie. The gallery is a founding member of the Art Dealers Association of America. From inception, Forum Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program has been augmented by mounting curated, thematic exhibitions of historic importance, in keeping with the gallery’s focus on humanism.

Forum Gallery’s program expanded internationally in the 1980’s, and the gallery soon represented the American artists William Beckman and Robert Cottingham as well as the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum. Today, Forum Gallery represents more than thirty American and European artists and estates, including Chilean born master Guillermo Muñoz Vera, Spanish realist Cesar Galicia, and Austrian artist Xenia Hausner. American artists whose work is now represented by Forum Gallery include Steven Assael, Linden Frederick, Rance Jones, Alan Magee, G. Daniel Massad, Anthony Mitri, Alyssa Monks, Clio Newton, Brian Rutenberg and Tula Telfair.

About the Presentation
Forum Gallery presents four decades of paintings by American artist Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000).

Gregory Gillespie painted memorable self-portraits, haunting fantasy landscapes, disturbingly surreal genre scenes and monumental, dimensional paintings, incorporating astonishing trompe l’oeil illusions and imaginary themes. His unerring eye for detail, masterful technique and uncompromising independence combined in deeply personal, often hallucinatory visions of the world. Impossible to categorize, Gregory Gillespie captivated diverse and devoted collectors, critics and curators.

Gregory Gillepie’s first New York exhibition was at Forum Gallery in 1966. The 30 year old artist was then at the American Academy in Rome on a Fulbright grant, followed by three Chester Dale fellowships. At age forty, Gillespie burst into the national spotlight with a retrospective exhibition at the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1977. Forty solo museum and gallery exhibitions followed. He was shown regularly by the Whitney Museum of American Art, in International exhibitions of American contemporary Art, and a second retrospective, A Unique American Vision, organized by the Georgia Museum of Art traveled to four more diverse institutions in 1999.

Now, twenty-five years after his untimely death by suicide in 2000, Gregory Gillespie’s complex, psychologically charged paintings, propelled by his visual anarchy and consummate skill, are as fresh and compelling as they were during his lifetime.