Galerie Zak

Galerie Zak was a Parisian art gallery active from 1928 until the late 1960s that played a significant role in promoting modern European and South American art. Located in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter on the Left Bank, the gallery was founded by Jadwiga Zak, known as Madame Zak, and became a notable venue for Polish and Latin American artists in interwar Paris. Its historical importance is amplified by the fact that it was looted during the Nazi era, with both its founder and her son perishing in Auschwitz.

Jadwiga Zak (née Kon, 1885-1943) established the gallery in 1927-1928, following the death in 1926 of her husband, the Russian/Polish painter Eugeniusz Zak (also known as Eugène Zak). According to historian Barbara Brus-Malinowska, the gallery opened precisely on 20 December 1927 at 16, rue de l'Abbaye, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, adjacent to the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés along the north flank of the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The gallery quickly became an important venue for Polish and Latin American art. In January 1929, it hosted the first solo exhibition of Vassily Kandinsky in Paris. The gallery also sponsored the first exhibition by members of the Paris Committee, known as the Kapists. On 15 February 1939, the gallery purchased works that had been purged by the Nazis from German institutional collections as so-called degenerate art, intermediated by agents selected by Joseph Goebbels for the international art market. During World War II, the gallery collection was itself looted by agents of the Vichy regime before May 1941. Madame Zak and her son were deported to Auschwitz, where they died in 1944. Wladimir Raykis (or Vladimir Reikiss), executor of Jadwiga's will, reopened the gallery in 1946. The gallery closed in the late 1960s.

Galerie Zak specialised in modern European and South American art. Its programming encompassed avant-garde abstraction, Polish modernism, and Latin American art, positioning it as a crossroads for transnational modernist exchange in Paris. The gallery was particularly significant as a platform for Polish artists and for the Kapists, the Polish artists' group associated with the Paris Committee. It also dedicated exhibition space to women artists of American origin working in Paris. The gallery's acquisitions practices reflected those of many art dealers of the era, including purchases of works from the Nazi-degenerate art sales.

The gallery exhibited works by a distinguished roster of modern artists. These included Vassily Kandinsky, whose first Paris solo exhibition was held there in January 1929, as well as Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Jules Pascin, and Béla Czóbel. The gallery also showed works by Eugeniusz Zak, Pablo Picasso, Joaquín Torres García, Étienne Béothy, Gino Severini, and Giorgio De Chirico. The Kapists, or members of the Paris Committee, were given their first exhibition at the gallery.

The gallery was located at 16, rue de l'Abbaye, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district on Paris's Left Bank. This address placed it in one of the city's most culturally vibrant quarters, near the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés and alongside the historic Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Galerie Zak no longer exists as an operating gallery. It closed in the late 1960s after its postwar reopening by Wladimir Raykis in 1946. The gallery is now remembered as a significant but vanished site of Paris's modern art infrastructure, its physical location at 16, rue de l'Abbaye having served its function only during the gallery's active decades from 1928 to the late 1960s.