Thaddaeus Ropac interview — from baffled boy to global gallerist

“I’m the only person in the art world who works hard in August,” semi-jokes the gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac as he gears up for his 40th anniversary celebrations and exhibitions this week in Salzburg.

The Austrian city, where Ropac first opened in a modest first-floor space in 1983, does indeed come alive each summer as culture vultures descend on the hilly idyll for its annual classical music festival. It has proved the perfect base for the unflashy Ropac to build a business across Europe and Asia that puts him in the top rank of global gallerists.

Salzburg’s summer rush is largely why he opened there in the first place. Ropac was born in the Alpine region of Carinthia, in 1960, and when he started his career all Austrian cultural roads pointed to Vienna, the capital. “I went there to find a space but felt I didn’t connect. Then I checked out Salzburg and it felt right, so creative. Everyone was carrying a musical instrument. I didn’t realise that after the summer it becomes a quiet, middle-European town,” he says.

He credits his passion for art, and some big-name introductions, to the groundbreaking German modernist Joseph Beuys. In 1979, Ropac was taken on a school trip to Vienna’s contemporary art museum, then in the grand Palais Liechtenstein, which had a room dedicated to a Beuys installation.

“There were metal gutters, a broken table, a lightbulb without a shade, a piece of soap and a bundle of clothes. I found it very irritating,” he says. “I went back the next day, and still found it irritating. But I picked up a leaflet, read about it and became fascinated.” Ropac then found out that Beuys was teaching in Vienna, went to hear him speak and was hooked. “He was so charismatic. At that point, I wanted to be an artist, but I felt that what I wanted to say wasn’t enough.”

So in 1982 he went to Beuys’s studio in Düsseldorf, knocked on the door, and found himself some unpaid work as the artist prepared for the landmark Zeitgeist exhibition in Berlin and his Documenta project in Kassel, which involved the planting of 7,000 oak trees. “I wasn’t Beuys’s assistant. At best I was the assistant to his assistant. But there was plenty to do,” Ropac recalls.

He describes himself at the time as “a dreamer who didn’t know much about art. I couldn’t really offer much.” He must have impressed more than he makes out. When his time with Beuys ended, the artist asked him what next, and Ropac answered that he wanted to open a gallery in Austria to introduce the new crop of artists he had seen in Germany. Beuys wrote an introductory letter to Andy Warhol, from whom Ropac got some works to show back home while on a US trip, and who also gave the budding gallerist an introduction to Jean-Michel Basquiat during his trip.

Ropac’s first meeting with Basquiat is perhaps not the stuff of legend that an international gallerist would like to relate. “He was in a basement, with loud music playing, and my English was patchy. I didn’t really understand anything he was saying to me,” Ropac says. The misunderstanding went both ways. Basquiat thought Ropac’s gallery was in Australia, not Austria — “he wanted to incorporate kangaroos in his work for his first show with me,” Ropac recalls gleefully — but when the artist caught on, he was even more enthused. “He realised it was the birthplace of Mozart. He liked the idea of music,” Ropac says.

Ropac’s Salzburg gallery gradually became the de facto discovery spot for the German-speaking art world, combining contemporary US artists with those closer to home, including Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Austria’s Valie Export. Unlike today, Ropac says, “artists didn’t expect you to sell their work. Every sale made in the first few years was a feast.” A turning point for the business was when he opened in Paris in 1990, with a show including two American names, Jeff Koons and the conceptual artist Elaine Sturtevant. “There was a new audience, that came of its own accord. Paris changed everything,” he says.

Since then, Ropac has opened a vast second space there as well as a gallery in London — the elegant Ely House in Mayfair — and was an early mover into South Korea, where he has a two-floor space in Seoul. Unlike most other big-brand galleries, Ropac is conspicuously not in New York. “The US is incredibly important to our business. But when you are in Paris and London, then you have the US market, really. I am thinking of growing further, but at the moment the focus is on Asia,” he says.

His Paris experience, opening one year before a deep global recession, keeps him level-headed today, when the market for contemporary and modern art has lost some of its froth. “It’s all part of the temporary ups and downs. We might do less turnover for one or two years, but small corrections help us to keep our feet on the ground, catch our breath and rethink,” he says.

In a fragile industry, it is a luxury that not all galleries can afford. Very few boast a staff of 130 worldwide, a roster of 72 artists and estates, and a programme of up to 40 shows per year. Ropac wears his success modestly and stands out as one of the more authentic dealers at this level. “He is one of those gallerists who gives huge consideration to where works are placed and really cares about the long-term support of the artists he represents,” says Melanie Clore, co-founder of the London art advisory firm Clore Wyndham.

Ropac’s dedication to his Salzburg roots means he has pulled out all the stops for his 40-year anniversary exhibition: it comprises nearly 70 artists across both of his galleries in town. The show pairs works made around 1983 with those made more recently; highlights include a 1980 Warhol portrait of Beuys and a 2022 portrait of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Elizabeth Peyton. Ropac’s long ties with the Salzburg festival are also evident and include a display of five large sculptures from the “Tankers” series by Antony Gormley in the baroque Kollegienkirche concert venue (July 29-August 13).

The gallerist still seems to welcome the hard work and often punishing schedule that today’s art market dictates, even during the summer months. He describes it as “a privilege” to be in the art world, and says his “biggest kick” still comes from “sharing the risk of what an artist does in their studio” — including, he notes, when it doesn’t work out as they would hope. His perspective isn’t so different from that of the boy baffled by Beuys and Basquiat. Today, he says “you have to test the waters of what you don’t understand. It is always about curiosity and looking ahead.”

1983 | 2023 is at Thaddaeus Ropac’s Villa Kast and Salzburg Halle, July 29 to September 30, ropac.net