Bruno Bischofberger, the Swiss gallerist known for his long relationship with Andy Warhol, has died.
Founding his eponymous gallery in 1963, the dealer met Warhol three years later in New York, taking work back for a group show; in 1968 Bischofberger bought eleven more early paintings from the artist, including Superman, Batman, a Coca Cola painting, and several large works from the Disaster series. Impressed, Warhol promised to give Bischofberger right of first refusal for all his new works, an agreement the artist stuck to for the rest of his life. Bischofberger would go on to take a stake in Warhol’s Interview magazine and produce L’amour, Warhol’s 1973 feature film.
In the 1970s and throughout the 1980s Bischofberger also gave solo exhibitions to Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Miquel Barceló, George Condo, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Dokoupil, Peter Halley, Mike Bidlo and Jean Tinguely. Bischbofberger encouraged Sol Le Witt, Dan Flavin, Kosuth and Bruce Nauman to make site-specific installations for their exhibitions with the gallery. In 1982 Bischofberger started to represent Jean-Michel Basquiat internationally.
In 2013, the gallery relocated to a former factory in the lakeside municipality of Männedorf, 20 km from Zürich, where Bischofberger commissioned his daughter Nina Bischofberger and her husband Florian Baier to redevelop numerous buildings.
Privately, Bischofberger collected folk art and pre-historic stone artworks from around the world.
