Di Donna Galleries

Located on New York City’s Upper East Side, Di Donna specializes in exhibitions and private sales of Surrealist, Modern and Contemporary Art. Founded by Emmanuel Di Donna, formerly Vice Chairman of Sotheby’s Worldwide, Senior Specialist and Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Evening Sales, the gallery advises clients on building collections, selling works privately and buying and selling through auction.

Since its inaugural exhibition René Magritte: Dangerous Liaisons, subsequent exhibits include André Masson, The Mythology of Desire: Masterworks from 1925 to 1945, and Paul Delvaux, the first monographic show of the artist’s work in the United States since 1969. In 2013 Di Donna mounted their first historical thematic exhibition Dada & Surrealist Objects in collaboration with Surrealism specialist Timothy Baum.

Broadening the scope of the exhibition program, the gallery opened with the acclaimed exhibition, Warhol: Jackie in the spring of 2014. Organized by Warhol expert Bibi Khan, the exhibition brought together over fifty portraits of Jacqueline Kennedy grouped in approximately twenty individual works which were inspired by media coverage of her husband’s assassination. The gallery’s exhibitions have been supported by artworks loaned from private collections, foundations, and museums namely the Calder Foundation, Foundation Paul Delvaux, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Hall Art Foundation, the Schorr Collection, Princeton University Art Museum, and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.

The gallery was initially located on the second floor of The Carlyle Hotel at 981 Madison Avenue, New York City, the former home of Ursus Books. In May 2016, the gallery moved a few blocks south to a new 6,000 square foot space at 744 Madison Avenue at East 64th Street.

The gallery was founded in November 2010 and was formerly known as Blain|Di Donna. A number of monographic, museum-quality exhibitions were staged there such as René Magritte, Dangerous Liaisons (2011); André Masson, The Mythology of Desire: Masterworks from 1925 to 1945 (2012); Jean Arp: A Collection of Wood Reliefs and Collages (2012), Paul Delvaux (2013), which was curated in close collaboration with the Paul Delvaux Foundation, and was also displayed in London. In October 2013 it presented Dada & Surrealist Objects (2013), which exhibits works by major artists including Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti. In October 2015, it presented a major survey of the Surrealist Landscape with Fields of Dream: the Surrealist Landscape featuring over 70 works, several loaned from prominent foundations and private collections. It includes works by Hans Bellmer, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Alexander Calder, Leonora Carrington, Federico Castellón, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Adrien Dax, Paul Delvaux, Oscar Domínguez, Enrico Donati, Paul Eluard, Jimmy Ernst, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Arshile Gorky, Marcel Jean, Jacqueline Lamba, René Magritte, Man Ray, Matta, Joan Miró, Gordon Onslow Ford, Wolfgang Paalen, Pablo Picasso, Kay Sage, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, and Antoni Tàpies.

Di Donna and Blain appeared on Art + Auction's "Power 100" list in 2010, with Di Donna featuring again in the 2012 edition.