Tibor De Nagy Gallery

Tibor de Nagy began in the 1950s as a salon for artists and poets, at a time when the art world was ruled by the angsty, macho bravado of Abstract Expressionism, and painting a tree, a body, or a vase of flowers — no matter how abstract — was a radical act.

Together, the group launched an artistic movement later dubbed the Second Generation New York School. The members embraced a love of gesture without the drama, and created conversational, lyrical, and human (rather than monumental) paintings, poems, and theatrical performances.

That rarified, detail-oriented mindset still defines the gallery today. In its small storefront space off Rivington Park, just around the corner from the New Museum, it shows slow, self-conscious painting, often small in scale, that asks you to come closer.

Here, a flick of the brush is never casual. What seems effortless holds entire worlds of intention. Each layer of paint feels like a sentence in a long, tender conversation: intuitive, associative, and alive to experience.

Tibor de Nagy was founded in 1950 by Tibor de Nagy, a Hungarian banker turned art patron, and John Bernard Myers, a writer, poet, and editor from Buffalo. The two first ran a marionette company before opening the gallery, which quickly became one of New York’s first modern spaces to champion painting alongside poetry, prose, and experimental theater.

Andrew Arnot, the gallery’s current owner, joined in 1989 and has carried forward its spirit of intimacy and discovery since taking over after de Nagy’s death in 1993.