The Collection

Ileana Sonnabend

Ileana Schapira was born in Bucharest, Romania, on October 28, 1914, the daughter of an industrialist. At nineteen she met Leo Castelli, whom she married the following year. After fleeing Europe during World War II due to Nazi persecution, the couple settled in New York, where Castelli opened a gallery in their home in 1957.
After their divorce in 1959, Ileana pursued her own path in the art world. In 1960 she married Michael Sonnabend, a Dante scholar, and two years later opened the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris, showcasing American artists and emerging Italians such as Mario Schifano (1963) and Michelangelo Pistoletto (1964), followed by Gilberto Zorio, Mario Merz, Giovanni Anselmo (1969), and Jannis Kounellis (1972).

In 1970 she opened a gallery in New York, relocating it the following year to SoHo, alongside the Castelli Gallery — sparking the migration of the contemporary art scene to that district. The SoHo gallery opened with Gilbert & George’s now-famous performance Underneath the Arches.

Live performance became a cornerstone of Sonnabend Gallery’s program in the 1970s — from Jannis Kounellis’s Da inventare sul posto (1972) to Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972), where the artist performed unseen beneath the gallery floor, vocalizing his fantasies to visitors above.

Ileana Sonnabend’s insight, passion, and curatorial rigor echo the spirit of another great Mantuan patron: Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, one of the Renaissance’s most celebrated champions of the arts.

Ileana Sonnabend photographed by Lina Bertucci at the Sonnabend Gallery, New York 1989

The Collection

Ileana Sonnabend

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