Harold Ancart, Painter of Abstract Vistas, Joins Gagosian After Departing David Zwirner

Harold Ancart, who is known for his depictions of abstracted views, has joined the roster of Gagosian just a few months after departing David Zwirner, marking a rare instance of an artist leaving one mega-gallery for another. The artist will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Gagosian’s New York gallery in 2023.

Ancart, who joined Zwirner in 2018, produces painted abstractions and concrete sculptures, rendering subjects from the natural world, like trees, seascapes and icebergs in pared-down forms.

Born in Brussels and based in New York, Ancart is featured in this year’s edition of the Whitney Biennial. He landed his first major show with a U.S. institution when, in 2016, the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston gave him a solo show. The exhibition presented a series of 27 works on paper displaying abstracted street scenes and landscapes that Ancart created during a road trip across the U.S.

Prior to joining Zwirner, he first landed representation with Brussels’s CLEARING, later landing deals to work with Xavier Hufkens and the Los Angeles–based David Kordansky Gallery.

After Ancart joined David Zwirner, the secondary market for his work heated up. In 2019, an oilstick painting of flowers fetched $1 million at Sotheby’s New York contemporary evening sale, setting a record for the artist.

The record was fetched in the same year that Ancart completed a major Public Art Fund commission, mounting Subliminal Standard, a painted concrete sculpture in Downtown Brooklyn’s Cadman Plaza Park that doubles a handball court. The year before, he produced another site-specific installation, titled Painting the Night, at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France.

Neither Ancart nor a representative at David Zwirner gave a reason for the artist’s departure when news of it was first reported in March by Artnet. While not unheard of, the move between blue-chip dealers is unusual for a mid-career artist on an upward trajectory.