Thannhauser Galleries

The Thannhauser Galleries were established by the Thannhauser family in early 20th century Europe. Their cutting-edge exhibitions helped forge the reputations of many of the most important Modernist artists.

(1859–1935) opened the first of the Thannhauser Galleries in Munich in the fall of 1909, after deciding to leave the gallery that he had previously opened with his friend Franz Josef Brakl. He called his new business the Modern Gallery (Moderne Galerie) and established it in the glass-domed Arcopalais at Theatinerstrasse 7, in the heart of Munich's shopping district. The gallery was, by most accounts, one of the largest and most beautiful art galleries in the city. Designed by local architect Paul Wenz, it occupied over 2,600 square feet of the glass-domed Arcopalais. The gallery was divided between two floors, with nine exhibition rooms on the ground floor and an open, skylit gallery on the floor above. Several of the rooms were set up as domestic environments, as was fashionable at the time.

In its early years, the Moderne Galerie (more commonly known as the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser) exhibited the work of some of the most notable French Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Italian Futurists. It also presented the earliest exhibitions of contemporary German movements and artists who would later come to define the avant-garde: Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists' Association of Munich) in 1909, and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911. Both exhibitions featured the work of Vasily Kandinsky, considered by many to be the pioneer of abstraction in art. The gallery also participated in the Armory Show of 1913, the watershed exhibition that introduced European Modernism to the United States, and mounted the first major Pablo Picasso retrospective during the same year.

In 1919, Heinrich Thannhauser's son, Justin K. Thannhauser (1892-1976), established a branch of the gallery in Lucerne (Luzern), Switzerland. He ran the branch until 1921, when he was called back to Munich to assist his father, who had developed a serious condition in his larynx. The Lucerne gallery continued to be under Justin's direction until 1928, when his cousin Siegfried Rosengart assumed control and changed its name to Galerie Rosengart.

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