Galerie Simon

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler opened the Galerie Simon in September 1920 only months after the German-born art dealer had returned to Paris from exile in Switzerland. Located at 29 bis rue d’Astorg, Galerie Simon was instrumental in dealing Cubist paintings and sculptures between the wars. The gallery was named after Kahnweiler’s business partner, André Cahen, who was also known as André Simon, and continued the work of his prewar Parisian Galerie Kahnweiler, which had played a leading role in championing the Cubism of Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso until fall 1914.

When Kahnweiler returned to France from Bern in February 1920, he relied on the help of his friends and acquaintances to re-establish his business. Collector Hermann Rupf, who had provided him with housing and general assistance in Switzerland, supported Kahnweiler financially in reopening his gallery and was repaid in works of art. Simon was key in getting the new gallery registered; German nationals, who only recently had been allowed to reenter France, were not permitted to own businesses at the time. Finally, artist Amédée Ozenfant, whom Kahnweiler met in Switzerland during the war, helped to find the new gallery’s location.

Between September 1920 and early 1922, Galerie Simon built up its art inventory. It did this in part by managing the stock that the Kahnweiler syndicate—Alfred Flechtheim, Hans Forchheimer, Gustav Kahnweiler, Louise Leiris, and Rupf, operating under the pseudonym “Grassat”—had acquired on behalf of the dealer during the four Galerie Kahnweiler sequestration sales held at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris between June 1921 and May 1923. These purchases consisted primarily of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by the Cubist artists that Kahnweiler had first represented, as well as André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. As early as February 1922 Galerie Simon also organized exhibitions—the first was a monographic presentation of the Spanish painter José de Togorès—but such events were irregularly scheduled through the 1930s. Highlights include the June 1928 retrospective of Gris, which commemorated the artist’s untimely death the previous year, and the June 1934 monographic exhibition of Paul Klee, which secured Kahnweiler exclusive representation of the artist. Galerie Simon also represented such artists as Arno Breker, Paul Klee, Henri Laurens, and André Masson, as well as the artists Kahnweiler represented before the war, including Braque, Gris, Léger, Manolo, and Picasso.

In 1941, following discriminatory legislation issued after the rise of the Vichy regime, Kahnweiler’s stepdaughter Louise Leiris acquired the Galerie Simon to prevent its closure as a Jewish-run business (as both Kahnweiler and Simon were Jewish). The gallery, renamed the Galerie Louise Leiris, continues to operate today.