Yares Art is pleased to present the Gallery’s 60th anniversary exhibition memorializing its founder Riva Yares and her illustrious career that spanned over six decades. The history of modern and contemporary art is not only the story of artists, but also of visionary dealers who shaped its course. Riva Yares stands as a testament to this legacy. This exhibition features an acclaimed roster of fifty modern and contemporary artists whose works Yares exhibited and championed during her lifetime. 

Underscoring Riva’s remarkable legacy, the renowned art critic and poet, Edward Lucie-Smith has written:
Her durable, long-standing commitment as an art dealer was derived from three unique personal qualities. First, she possessed great flair and financial shrewdness, and she supported the right artists at the right time. Second was the sheer force of her personality, something akin to a force of nature, fascinating, capricious, unpredictable — to borrow the apt phrase ‘a whim of iron.’ Third, and perhaps most important, is the fact that she was in love with art. Loving art is rather different from liking art. It implies a hunger for visual sensations. For Riva, this hunger was linked to a finely tuned discrimination.

The revolving, five-month long exhibition will feature major works by Arman, Milton Avery, Johan Creten, Thomas Downing, Friedel Dzubas, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Dorothy Fratt, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Graham, Hans Hofmann, Yves Klein, Penelope Krebs, Morris Louis, Conrad Marca-Relli, Roberto Matta, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Manuel Neri, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Irene Rice Pereira, Larry Poons, Man Ray, Rotraut, David Smith, Jesús Rafael Soto, Frank Stella, Günther Uecker, and Esteban Vicente, among others.

In 1964, Riva Yares founded Yares Art in Scottsdale, Arizona, setting forth on a journey that would leave an indelible mark in the Southwest. She expanded the footprint of the Gallery in 1987 by adding two floors, declaring: “This is a commercial gallery that has the look and feel of a well-run museum.” The Gallery’s second venue opened in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1991.The exhibitions that were presented in these two venues introduced Color Field painting, as well other notable Abstract Expressionist artists to new and diverse audiences in this region of the United States. Her contributions to this field is that much more impressive having left her son, Dennis, the charge to extend its presence in New York, where, in 2016, he founded and launched the Gallery’s third major venue in the prestigious Fifth Avenue and 57th location in midtown Manhattan.