The Everett Ellin Gallery opened in 1959 on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. In this first iteration of his gallery, he showed California abstract expressionist artists, including Bruce Beasley, to whom he gave his first show.
Ellin's hunger to see the world of abstract expressionism in its native environment led him to take a job in New York as Director of the Contemporary Art Department at French & Company. Recommending him for the job was Clement Greenberg, "the mastermind and spiritual leader of the gallery," as Ellin put it in the Smithsonian Interview. Greenberg also served as his mentor during his directorship. It was this experience at French and Company that brought him into direct contact with the most high-profile figures in contemporary art at the time, including David Smith, whose successful show at the gallery was organized by Ellin. When French and Company changed leadership in 1960, he returned to Los Angeles to open his second gallery, Everett Ellin Gallery Inc., on Sunset Boulevard, where he organized a version of his David Smith show. His time in New York also allowed him to bring the works of Jean Arp, Helen Frankenthaler, several Dadaists, Arshile Gorky, and Jasper Johns (in a retrospective show among others), to Los Angeles.
