Gallery Henoch
New York gallerist George Henoch Shechtman knows a thing about location. He has been the first or one of the first dealers to recognize when the eyes of the art world were about to shift their attention from one section of the city to another. But he didn't start out surrounded by art. "I was born in New Jersey; my dad was a car salesman ... It was when I was an economics major at Rutgers University when I was bitten by the art bug." Shechtman opened his first gallery in 1966 on Christopher Street when Greenwich Village was the headquarters for all that was hip in the arts. He remained there until 1972, when his reputation as a dealer earned him a place at a prestigious Madison Avenue address.
These were also the years when abstraction and Minimalism were entrenched, but Henoch saw the appeal of photorealism and shared an interest in the genre with his friend, gallerist Louis K. Meisel, who is credited with coining the term most closely associated with artists like Richard Estes. The now renamed Christopher Gallery had a successful 10-year run on Madison Avenue. In 1982, Shechtman moved to SoHo, buying a large space-John Lennon and Yoko Ono had used it as a performance theater —and founded Gallery Henoch at 80 Wooster Street.
As SoHo approached meme status in 2000, Gallery Henoch migrated north to 555 W. 25th Street in Chelsea, where it remains today.
In an earlier interview for the New Jersey Star Ledger, Shechtman commented on the unbroken appeal of figurative art through the decades, "Oh, it's come a complete circle since I start- ed back in 1966. Now it's talent and subject together, which always under- pinned fine art, of course, but the mixture is different ... It's moving away from Photorealism towards a sketchier, more personal or poetic touch." That deeply felt personal approach is seen in abstractions of the sea, like Blue Ripple (2024) by Eric Zener, and the sun- dial-like lily pads of John Evans or the surrealist tinged Take Out (2024) by Mavis Smith. One can't underestimate the appeal of Sharon Sprung's intense portraits following her commission by Michelle Obama in 2016. Shechtman opined, "Sprung started out with me on Madison Avenue. I've watched her grow." Active beyond the confines of New York, Gallery Henoch will have a strong presence at Art Miami in December. Not a bad time to head south.
