Gallery
Thaddaeus Ropac opened his first gallery in Salzburg in 1983 at age 23, after working briefly with Joseph Beuys. The artists he showed in the first years included Basquiat, Baselitz, Kiefer, and Rauschenberg. That gallery is now one of the most influential in the world, and its Salzburg address remains the anchor.
In 1983, a 23-year-old from Carinthia named Thaddaeus Ropac rented a storefront on Getreidegasse and hung works by Joseph Beuys, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Georg Baselitz, and Anselm Kiefer. The rent was modest. The Festival brought collectors every summer. What looked like a calculated gamble on a small baroque city turned out to be one of the more consequential decisions in the postwar art market.
The gallery moved to Villa Kast, a 19th-century townhouse on Mirabellplatz, in 1989, gaining the address and the exhibition rooms to match its growing international ambitions. Paris followed. Then London and Seoul. But Salzburg stayed the anchor: the original gallery still occupies Villa Kast, and in 2015 Ropac added the Salzburg Halle, a 2,600 m2 industrial exhibition space designed specifically for monumental works and large-format installations that a 19th-century villa could never accommodate.
The effect on the Festival season is measurable. The Salzburg Festival has always attracted serious collectors, but Ropac’s sustained presence over four decades gave them a contemporary art circuit to run alongside the opera programme. Exhibitions timed to the Festival open in late July or early August and run through September. The roster has consistently included artists at the top of the international market, Anselm Kiefer, Erwin Wurm, Tony Cragg, among others, many of whom also have work in the city’s public spaces. Kiefer, whose AEIOU pavilion is the first commission of the Walk of Modern Art, is one of Ropac’s longest-standing represented artists.
The Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Villa Kast is at Mirabellplatz 2, a short walk from Mirabell Palace and Mirabell Gardens. Entry is free. Open Tue-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 10am-1pm; extended hours during the Festival season. No booking required. Combine with Mirabell Palace and Mirabell Gardens on the same visit. The Salzburg Halle, the larger exhibition space for monumental works, is at Vilniusstrasse 13; check ropac.net for what is showing and whether both spaces are open.
People
entrepreneurb. 1960
Austrian gallerist who opened his Salzburg gallery in 1983, two years after a first space in Lienz, making the city the base for one of the most influential contemporary art dealerships in the world. His Salzburg gallery on Mirabellplatz shows Baselitz, Kiefer, Rauschenberg, and Warhol. Later expanded to Paris and London.
