About - Galerie Tanit

History

Inaugural exhibition - December 1972 - Jan Kotik

Forty Years

For over forty years Galerie Tanit has played an important role in introducing American artists to German audiences and beyond. Galerie Tanit was founded by Naila Kettaneh-Kunigk and Stefan Kunigk in Munich in 1972. Walther Mollier became partner in 1981. After several moves the current exhibition space is located at Maximilanstrasse 45. Initial solo shows included Robert Rauschenberg (1975), Michael Heizer (1976) and Jasper Johns (1977). Early photography shows featured Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Industrial Buildings (1977) and Hamish Fulton’s Roads and Paths (1979).

Eighties and Nineties

The program of the nineteen eighties and early nineties focused on showing artists from the minimal, conceptual and arte povera movements: Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, Carl André, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden, John McCracken, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Merz, John M. Armleder, Olivier Mosset, Hamish Fulton and Urs Lüthi. Thomas Demand and Sylvie Fleury, then new-comers on the international art scene, were also represented (first shows in 1992 and 1993, respectively).

After 2002

After 2002 the program of the gallery gradually shifted to a younger generation of artists and introduced international artist like Jeremy Blake and Michael Lin to local audiences. The roster of the gallery was extended to include Adrian Schiess, Martin Assig, Julia Mangold, Catharina van Eetvelde and Xavier Noiret Thomé.

Present. Absence

The 2004 show Present. Absence – Contemporary Art from Lebanon indicated a new area of concentration which culminated in the opening of an exhibition space in Beirut, Lebanon, and a series of exhibitions that explored contemporary art from the Middle East.

Cologne, Brussels, Beirut

An additional exhibition space in Cologne (1989), opened with an extensive show of Dan Flavin, and a temporary experimental space “Windows” (1996) in Brussels in collaboration with Bernier Eliades Gallery, Athens, were followed by the opening of the new exhibition space “Espace Kettaneh-Kunigk” in Beirut in 2007. Today the Beirut space is located on the ground floor of the East Village building on Armenia Street in the Mar Mikhael area of town.