Samuel M. Kootz

Samuel M. Kootz (23 August 1898 – 7 August 1982) was a New York City art dealer and author whose Kootz Gallery was one of the first to champion Abstract Expressionist Art.
Between 1945 and 1966, in galleries on 57th Street or Madison Avenue, this "tall, genial southerner" represented avant garde American and European artists. In the 1930s and early forties, while working in advertising and the fabric industry, Kootz had found time to write about modern art. In two books and letters to the "New York Times" he decried realistic American regionalism and European-inspired abstraction while urging American artists to create a new form of expressive abstract art. His gallery became a proving ground for his aesthetic ideas. In 1947 he gained renown by holding the first American exhibition of wartime Picassos. He purchased the Picassos by flying to Paris in late 1946, introducing himself to Picasso and convincing him that sales of his work would help to support the Kootz Gallery's inventive young artists : William Baziotes, Romare Bearden, Byron Browne, Adolph Gottlieb, Carl Holty, and Robert Motherwell. Over the years Kootz continued to buy paintings directly from Picasso. Kootz also exhibited work by Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, James Brooks, Giorgio Cavallon, Arshile Gorky, David Hare, Hans Hofmann, Ibram Lassaw, Herbert Ferber, Raymond Parker, William Ronald, Tony Rosenthal, Conrad Marca-Relli, Georges Mathieu, Emil Schumacher, Pierre Soulages, Kumi Sugaï, Zao Wou Ki, and others. In 1962, the eminent critic Clement Greenberg praised Kootz by comparing him favorably to other dealers. While Greenberg considered some dealers to be successful "financially and artistically" and a few others to be "dedicated and creative," Kootz was the only one to whom he could ascribe all of those attributes.
Early years.
Samuel Melvin Kootz was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, 23 August 1898.
He received a Bachelor of Law Degree from the University of Virginia in 1921 and practiced law for a year. While attending college he spent many weekends in New York City, observing modern art in its most advanced art galleries, especially those run by Alfred Stieglitz and Charles Daniel. Between 1919 and 1921 he became acquainted with progressive artists, including Peter Blume, Charles Demuth, Preston Dickinson, Carl Holty, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, John Marin, and Max Weber. Kootz moved to New York in 1923, pursuing a career in advertising while involving himself in the city's art world. During this period he began to purchase art. For instance, in fall 1928 he bought Peter Blume's "The Bridge" for $600. from the Daniel Gallery.
Proselytizing for Modern Art.
Beginning in 1930 and continuing into the 1940s with books, articles, forceful letters to the "New York Times" and other activities, Kootz urged artists to sever their dependence on Europe, to drop the search for typically “American” art, and to find original, gutsy forms of expression. His first book, "Modern American Painters" (1930) offers critiques of Blume, Demuth, Dickinson, Arthur Dove, Kuniyoshi, Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Maurice Sterne, Max Weber, and brief descriptions of seven others, including Walt Kuhn and Niles Spencer. To publicize that book, Kootz organized his first exhibition "Twenty Modern American Pictures" at Demotte Galleries, 25 E 78 Street, New York, in March 1931. Its brief catalogue, with an introduction by Kootz, shows that the exhibition comprised many, but not all, of the painters in his book. Kootz reached a broader audience in December 1931, when his article in the art section of the "New York Times" criticizing chauvinistic attitudes toward American art raised strong reactions and weeks of responses.
In the 1930s Kootz showed an interest in modern photography by writing articles about Sheeler and Edward Steichen (see Kootz bibliography). When he left advertising in 1934 to become a silk converter he commissioned Stuart Davis, Kuniyoshi, and Dove to create fabric designs. Working for his own firm, Samuel M. Kootz Associates, he created photographic designs for fabric during 1935-36. 
The Kootz Gallery: 1945-1966.
After declaring (in "New Frontiers") that "the duty of the gallery and museum" was to give artists "a chance to be seen" 
Kootz decided to "open a gallery and sponsor exactly what I felt was the future of American painting." To show that his would be "an international gallery interested in quality," Kootz began with an exhibition of 
Fernand Léger, held in temporary quarters, in April 1945.
Dealing Privately.
In 1948 Kootz closed the gallery to deal privately as Picasso's "world agent" from an apartment at 470 Park Avenue. When that situation proved uncongenial and unsatisfactory he resumed operating a public gallery.
600 Madison Avenue.
In 1949 Kootz reopened the gallery at 600 Madison Avenue. Highlights of this era include: 
1018 Madison Avenue.
Following a "real upsurge of buying American painting" that had begun in the fall of 1955, the gallery moved to larger quarters at 1018 Madison Avenue in September 1956. The Gallery's opening exhibitions featured Soulages, Mathieu and Hans Hofmann, as well as "Art for Two Synagogues" with sculptures by Ferber & Lassaw. 
655 Madison Avenue.
As artists painted increasingly large paintings Kootz had felt cramped at 1018 Madison Avenue. 