Nierendorf, Karl, 1889-1947

Karl Nierendorf (1889–1947) was a prominent German art dealer who specialized in expressionist and abstract paintings, first running galleries with his brother, Josef, out of Cologne and Berlin. The rise of Nazism and the march toward war, with its accompanying attacks on art and artists, prompted Nierendorf to visit and then resettle in the United States, establishing his own gallery in New York City (1937–1947). This new iteration of the Nierendorf Gallery quickly gained prestige by promoting European expressionism, but as U.S. attitudes toward Germany and Germans soured, Nierendorf increasingly reached out to avant-garde artists across the Americas, including European exiles, and even visited Mexico to court Wolfgang Paalen and Gordon Onslow Ford. Very little is currently known about Nierendorf’s dealings with pre-Hispanic art—this in spite of the fact that a well-disseminated image of him, held in the archives of the extant Galerie Nierendorf in Berlin, shows him holding and admiring a Colima dog vessel. Earl Stendahl hoped to collaborate with Nierendorf in the cultivation of East Coast clientele for pre-Hispanic art, but a shipment of fake objects procured by Guillermo Echániz, including alleged Zapotec urns, complicated these efforts. Stendahl and Nierendorf did continue to work together, mainly, though not exclusively, around the sale of modern paintings. Nierendorf died in 1947, and his collection was purchased by the Guggenheim, where it remains today.