The 12 best art galleries in Paris

Emmanuel Perrotin opened his first space in 1990, at twenty-one, and has run the most restless and most global of the Paris galleries ever since, with branches in New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Dubai and Los Angeles. He gave Takashi Murakami and Maurizio Cattelan early shows and still represents them, with JR, Sophie Calle, Daniel Arsham, KAWS, Johan Creten, Bernard Frize, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Xavier Veilhan, Wim Delvoye, Iván Argote, Jean-Marie Appriou, Claire Tabouret, Lee Bae and the Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman foundation. In Paris the main gallery has been at 76 rue de Turenne, in a Marais hôtel particulier, since 2005, with a second space on impasse Saint-Claude behind it and two more on avenue Matignon.

Perrotin shows change over on the Art Basel Paris calendar: Creten’s ceramics and bronzes, built around a wall of his late father’s early computers, close on October 10, and on October 17 the gallery opens Alma Allen’s first show with it, new bronzes cast from hand-sized models, and a solo show of Lee Bae’s charcoal works, with the group show Panorama following on October 19.

Thaddaeus Ropac opened in Salzburg in 1983 and in the Marais, on rue Debelleyme, in 1990; in 2012 he added a 2,000-square-meter former boiler factory in Pantin, just outside the Périphérique, which remains the largest and most spectacular gallery space in the Paris region, and the gallery also has spaces in London and Seoul. It represents Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Alex Katz, Antony Gormley, Robert Longo, David Salle, Martha Jungwirth, Daniel Richter, Tom Sachs, Lee Bul and Ali Banisadr, with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Joseph Beuys and Günther Uecker estates and the Irving Penn Foundation.

The Marais gallery has a late Uecker nail painting, split with an axe, with the photographs of its making, through October 31, and on October 19 opens Jordan Casteel’s first exhibition in France; Irving Penn’s portraits follow in November. In Pantin, Kiefer’s Nymphäum, more than twenty monumental paintings, runs to October 25, and David Salle’s Venice paintings open on October 21.

Gagosian came to Paris in 2010, with a gallery on rue de Ponthieu, a side street off the Champs-Élysées, and added a second in 2021 on rue de Castiglione, by the place Vendôme. Its program here draws on the whole of the world’s largest gallery, from Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Jenny Saville, Urs Fischer, Rachel Whiteread and Georg Baselitz to the estates of Cy Twombly, Richard Serra, Brice Marden and Helen Frankenthaler, and the Paris shows are often the historical ones.

This autumn is a case in point. Jennifer Guidi’s oil-and-sand landscapes close on October 10, and on October 19, with Art Basel Paris ahead, the rue de Ponthieu gallery opens the first solo show of Lee Krasner’s work ever held in France: paintings and works on paper from the 1960s, building to the large canvas Comet, lent by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Gagosian, rue de Castiglione has Sterling Ruby until October 3.

David Zwirner opened in Paris in October 2019, taking over 108 rue Vieille du Temple, the skylit Marais building where Yvon Lambert ran his gallery from 1986 to 2014. The program is the New York gallery’s, Yayoi Kusama, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Kerry James Marshall, Wolfgang Tillmans, Oscar Murillo, Raymond Pettibon and Lisa Yuskavage, with the estates of Ruth Asawa, Alice Neel, Josef and Anni Albers and Donald Judd, and the shows here are as considered as any in the city, with catalogues to match.

The current exhibition marks forty years since Lambert opened at this address with Cy Twombly: thirty-two artists both dealers have championed, with archive material from Lambert’s shows of On Kawara, Richard Serra and Lawrence Weiner, through October 10. Oscar Murillo’s new paintings open on October 19.

Chantal Crousel opened her gallery in 1980 and has run it for forty-five years with a program that is both deeply international and resolutely her own, now with her son Niklas Svennung. Wolfgang Tillmans, Pierre Huyghe, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Gabriel Orozco, Mona Hatoum, Thomas Hirschhorn, Haegue Yang, Anri Sala, Jean-Luc Moulène, Roberto Cuoghi, Tarek Atoui, Wade Guyton and Mimosa Echard are among its artists; many of them had their first Paris shows here. Since 2007 the gallery has been on rue Charlot, in the northern Marais, over two floors.

Tillmans’s Glade / Clairière, photographs and a floor of industrial rope loops built around the idea of the line, closes on October 10. On October 19 three shows open at once: Jutta Koether’s first with the gallery, Nick Mauss on the second floor, and a selection of works by Atoui, Cuoghi, Huyghe, Amy Sillman and Haegue Yang.

Daniel Templon opened his gallery in 1966 and showed the American Minimalists and Pop artists in Paris when few here would, from Judd and Flavin to Warhol and Lichtenstein; it has been at 30 rue Beaubourg, across from the Centre Pompidou, since 1972, with a second space on rue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare since 2001 and galleries in Brussels and New York. Now run with his son Mathieu, it represents the Anthony Caro estate, Gérard Garouste, Jim Dine, Chiharu Shiota, Kehinde Wiley in Europe, Jan Fabre, Philippe Cognée, Omar Ba, Billie Zangewa, Claude Viallat, Iván Navarro, Prune Nourry, Abdelkader Benchamma and Robin Kid.

This autumn Grenier-Saint-Lazare has Caro’s late Kenwood Series, thirteen sculptures in stoneware, stone and steel rarely shown in Europe, through October 24, and Beaubourg has Robin Kid’s silkscreened aluminum cereal boxes and layered paintings through October 31. Garouste follows in November.

Jay Jopling founded White Cube in London in 1993 and opened its Paris gallery on avenue Matignon in October 2021, the first of the big international arrivals in the 8th arrondissement. The roster is the one that made the gallery’s name and then outgrew it: Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Anselm Kiefer, Doris Salcedo, Theaster Gates, Christian Marclay, Danh Vo, Mona Hatoum, Georg Baselitz, Julie Mehretu, Gilbert & George, Michael Armitage, Ibrahim Mahama and Howardena Pindell.

The Paris space is a townhouse gallery, closed for lunch and on Sundays and Mondays. Marclay’s monotypes and collages from record sleeves close on October 10, and Emin’s small bronzes and new paintings open on October 20, with a preview on the evening of October 19, timed to Art Basel Paris.

Max Hetzler opened his gallery in Stuttgart in 1974 and in Cologne and then Berlin became the dealer of the German painters of the 1980s, Albert Oehlen, Martin Kippenberger and Günther Förg among them. He opened in Paris in 2014, on rue du Temple in the Marais, and now has two spaces there, at nos. 46 and 57, with galleries in Berlin and London. The program joins Oehlen, Thomas Struth, Bridget Riley, Glenn Brown, Rebecca Warren, Edmund de Waal and Ida Ekblad to the Karel Appel Foundation and the Raymond Hains estate.

Sergey Kononov’s Mémoires closes on October 10, and on October 19 the gallery opens Elmgreen & Dragset’s Les Fous d’En Face, which runs to mid-December. Marian Goodman is across the street, so the two make one visit.

Marian Goodman opened her Paris gallery in 1999, in a hôtel particulier with a courtyard at 79 rue du Temple, and made it as serious an address as her New York one, with a bookshop, the Librairie Marian Goodman, down the street. The artists are the gallery’s: Gerhard Richter, William Kentridge, Steve McQueen, Tacita Dean, Pierre Huyghe, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall, Julie Mehretu, Giuseppe Penone, Gabriel Orozco, Nairy Baghramian, Annette Messager, Danh Vo, Rineke Dijkstra and Bruce Nauman.

The gallery is between shows after Messager’s closed on September 26. On October 19 it opens a two-artist exhibition pairing Tacita Dean and Bruce Nauman, through December 19, one of the Marais shows to see in Art Basel Paris week.