Curated by British painter Peter Doig, “The Street” opens in November at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue space. The exhibition will showcase Doig’s new works alongside significant pieces from major collections, including works by Balthus, Bacon, Beckmann, Celmins, Clough, de Chirico, Forrester, Hélion, Rothko, Wong, and others.
British painter Peter Doig, who recently ended a 23-year relationship with Michael Werner gallery, is now partnering with Larry Gagosian. In a recent interview, Doig called for more transparency in the art market to protect emerging artists, revealing that despite his paintings generating nearly £380 million since 2007, he earned only around £230,000. Doig had a conflict with his former gallery over their refusal to disclose buyers or prices and discovered secondary sales of his work. Since leaving the gallery, he has successfully exhibited new works at the Musée d’Orsay and the Courtauld Gallery.
Larry Gagosian was inspired to invite Peter Doig to curate one of the final exhibitions at his 980 Madison Avenue gallery after seeing Doig’s project at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where Doig displayed his own paintings alongside works from the d’Orsay’s collection. The upcoming show, opening on November 1, will feature Balthus’s 1933 painting The Street on loan from MoMA, alongside works by artists such as Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann, and Mark Rothko.
Gagosian has a unique approach to collaborating with museums, often securing challenging and expensive artworks for his exhibitions. For “A Foreigner Called Picasso,” he borrowed pieces from institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fondation Beyeler. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring reflections by Doig and a discussion with art historian Richard Shiff on Balthus’s The Street.
Doig mentioned that the exhibition emerged from over a year of discussions and offers an exciting chance to showcase works by painters he admires for their creativity and ability to surprise. He observed that Larry Gagosian quickly recognized the value of an exhibition led by a painter’s vision instead of a curator’s or gallerist’s, making him the ideal collaborator to bring it to life.
Peter Doig, born in Edinburgh in 1959, grew up in Trinidad and Canada before studying at Saint Martin’s and Chelsea School of Art in London. Since 2002, he splits his time between London and Trinidad. His work is featured in major global collections and has been shown in prominent exhibitions such as Tate Britain (2008), National Gallery of Scotland (2013), and Musée d’Orsay (2023–24). He taught at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2004 to 2017 and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994. Doig received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in 2008 and served as a Tate Trustee from 1995 to 2000.
