Nicholas Logsdail has the pleasant luxury of possessing more art than he knows what to do with. After forty years running Lisson Gallery, he has embarked on a massive inventory project to rediscover, catalogue and restore some of the 3500 pieces he holds in storage and in her personal collection. Since they’ll be poring over all the old works, they might as well curate a show, no? Colin Gleadell uses the occasion to give a pocket biography of the dealer:
Barely out of his teens, Logsdail became a spearhead for conceptual and minimalist art in Britain, claiming Charles Saatchi as an early convert, and working closely with Nicholas Serota when he was director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. Between 1984 and 1999, his gallery artists accounted for no fewer than 14 Turner Prize nominations, five of whom – Deacon, Cragg, Anish Kapoor, Grenville Davey and Douglas Gordon – were winners.
Logsdail attributes his interest in art to the early influence of his uncle, the author Roald Dahl, who would take him on buying trips to Cork Street from the age of seven. He remembers vividly being driven home with a Francis Bacon in the boot and the thrill of being asked to help hang it. […]
More than 470 exhibitions later, Logsdail is sitting on an empire and contemplating its future. He bought the original gallery building in 1966 for £2,000, did it up, and sold it in 1987 for £550,000. Now he has seven properties in the same street, which he has turned into two distinct gallery spaces, and represents 35 artists.
Art Sales: The Dealer Who Opened Saatchi’s Eyes (Telegraph)
