Matthew Marks worked for the
Pace Gallery in New York City and
Anthony d'Offay in London prior to opening his own gallery. After working for three years at d'Offay, Marks moved back to New York City to open his own gallery, a space on
Madison Avenue. The Matthew Marks Gallery had its first exhibition, Artists' Sketchbooks, in February 1991, including
Louise Bourgeois,
Francesco Clemente,
Jackson Pollock, and
Cy Twombly. Matthew Marks Gallery opened its first space in Chelsea — a converted single-story garage with skylights at 522 West 22nd Street — in 1994, with a show of Ellsworth Kelly. In 1996, the gallery teamed up with two other galleries –
Gladstone Gallery and
Metro Pictures – to acquire and divide up a warehouse at 515 West 24th Street. By 1997, the gallery closed its space on Madison Avenue. Over the following years, two more spaces in Chelsea were added. Since 1998, Matthew Marks Gallery and another gallery—first
Pat Hearn Gallery (1998), later
Greene Naftali Gallery (2008, 2018)—have organized "Painting: Now and Forever", a large-scale, ongoing survey of contemporary painting, every 10 years. In 2012, Matthew Marks Gallery opened two locations in
West Hollywood, Los Angeles, == The Armory Show ==