Quick Facts
Biography
Galerie Zak was an art gallery that was founded in Paris, France, in 1928 and specialised in modern European and South American art until its closure in the late 1960s.
The gallery was notable for hosting the first solo exhibition by Vassily Kandinsky in Paris, as well as exhibiting works by Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Jules Pascin.
The gallery was established by Jadwiga Zak (née Kon, 1885–1943) in 1928. She was known to all as Madame Zak, although her husband, the Russian/Polish painter Eugeniusz Zak (also known as Eugène Zak), had died in 1926. The gallery established by Jadwiga at 16, rue de l'Abbaye, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés on Paris' left bank, became an important venue for Polish and Latin American art. It sponsored the first exhibition by members of the Paris Committee, known as the Kapists.
During World War II, both Madame Zak and her son were taken to Auschwitz, where they died in 1944. Although French collaborators liquidated the contents of the gallery in 1941, the art dealer Wladimir Raykis (or Vladimir Reikiss), executor of Jadwiga's will, reopened its doors in 1946.