Nigel Palin Greenwood was an erudite and independent-minded art dealer

Art dealer

An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...

.

Early career

Nigel Greenwood was educated at Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...

 (reading history) and at the Courtauld Institute (art history). He started his career in the art world at the Axiom Gallery in London. In 1968 he participated in the exhibition "Prospect" in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

.

In 1970 he started his own gallery at 60 Glebe Place, Chelsea

Chelsea, London

Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...

, where he presented work by Gilbert & George (the famous "Underneath the Arches

Underneath the Arches (song)

"Underneath the Arches" is a 1931 popular song with words and music by Bud Flanagan, and additional lyrics by Reg Connelly. It was one of the most famous songs of the duo Flanagan and Allen....

/Singing Sculptures" performance), Keith Milow

Keith Milow

Keith Milow is a British artist, born in London , lived in New York , now lives in Amsterdam. He is an abstract sculptor, as well as a painter and printmaker. His work can be characterized as architectural, monumental, and minimal....

, John Walker

John Walker (painter)

John Walker is an English painter and printmaker.Walker studied in Birmingham. Some of his early work was inspired by abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction, and often combined apparently three-dimensional shapes with "flatter" elements...

, Ed Ruscha and Mino Argento

Mino Argento

Mino Argento is an Italian artist, whose works comprise abstract paintings on canvas and paper.-Life and work:Mino Argento was born in Rome, Italy in 1927. He worked in architecture as a young man...

.

Pioneering gallerist

In 1971 the gallery established itself at 41 Sloane Gardens. Alongside the Lisson

Lisson Gallery

The Lisson Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Bell Street, Lisson Grove, London, founded by Nicholas Logsdail in 1967. The gallery represents such artists as Ai Weiwei, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Jonathan Monk, Julian Opie, Richard Wentworth and Turner Prize winners Anish Kapoor...

, the Situation gallery and Jack Wendler, Nigel Greenwood Inc Ltd, as the gallery was named, became the fourth London gallery to play a crucial part in introducing emerging artists to the art world

Art world

The art world is composed of all the people involved in the production, commission, preservation, promotion, criticism, and sale of art. Howard S. Becker describes it as "the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things,...

. Greenwood enjoyed visiting the studios of younger artists, and presenting their work in solo shows. Gilbert & George, Keith Milow

Keith Milow

Keith Milow is a British artist, born in London , lived in New York , now lives in Amsterdam. He is an abstract sculptor, as well as a painter and printmaker. His work can be characterized as architectural, monumental, and minimal....

, David Tremlett

David Tremlett

David Tremlett is a Cornish sculptor, installation artist and photographer. He currently lives and works in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, Great Britain.- Biography :...

, Rita Donagh

Rita Donagh

Rita Donagh is an artist known for her realistic paintings and painstaking draughtsmanship.Formerly, Rita Donagh taught at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where she met Richard Hamilton, whom she later married. She also taught at the University of Reading, the Slade School of Art, and...

, Alan Johnston

Alan Johnston

Alan Graham Johnston is a British journalist working for the BBC. He has been the BBC's correspondent in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip, and is currently the correspondent in Rome...

 and later Christopher le Brun

Christopher le Brun

Christopher Le Brun is known primarily as a painter. He is also a dedicated printmaker, for which he was elected to the Royal Academy in 1996 , coincidentally the year in which he made his first sculpture. He studied painting at the Slade School of Art and Chelsea School of Art...

, and Dhruva Mistry

Dhruva Mistry

Dhruva Mistry CBE RA is a sculptor, born in Kanjari, Gujarat, India in b 1957.-Early life and education:Dhruva Mistry , having worked in Great Britain between 1981 and 1997, returned to Vadodara...

 all showed first with Greenwood. He also worked with American artists, like Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....

 and Ed Ruscha, German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernard "Bernd" Becher , and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser , were German artists working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures.- Biography :Bernd Becher was born in Siegen...

 and the Italian artist Mino Argento

Mino Argento

Mino Argento is an Italian artist, whose works comprise abstract paintings on canvas and paper.-Life and work:Mino Argento was born in Rome, Italy in 1927. He worked in architecture as a young man...

.

In 1985 the gallery moved to New Burlington Street. Greenwood continued to show his favoured artists and added new names including German painter Jörg Immendorff

Jörg Immendorff

Jörg Immendorff was one of the best known contemporary German painters; he was also a sculptor, stage designer and art professor.- Life and work :...

, Swiss artist Martin Disler

Martin Disler

Martin Disler was a Swiss painter, drawer and writer. He is associated with the Neue Wilde painting style....

, and Danish artist Per Kirkeby

Per Kirkeby

Per Kirkeby is a Danish painter, poet, filmmaker and sculptor.-Biography:1962 Studies at the Experimental Art School in Copenhagen; works in the School on painting, graphic arts, 8 millimeter films and performance pieces...

. By now Greenwood was recognised as a major player in the British art world. In 1985 he was invited to select the Hayward Gallery

Hayward Gallery

The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...

 Annual Exhibition, the only dealer to be asked to do so.

The financial collapse of the Greenwood gallery in 1992 disturbed the London art world. After this, Nigel Greenwood worked as a private dealer and adviser (to the Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

, amongst others).

Tributes

Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Galleries, wrote in his obituary in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

:

His tastes were broad, and he showed a bewildering, even erratic, range of artists, all of whom, like himself, were marked by their independent-mindedness. He was one of the few British gallerists to look as much to Europe as to America in the 1970s, as enthusiastic for unknown artists as for those with international reputations. (...) He went his own way. He may have been better at discovering artists than keeping them, but if not for him several major careers would not have been launched, others would not have been sustained through lean years, and for two decades his gallery made the British art world a better place.

Adrian Searle

Adrian Searle

Adrian Searle is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. He curates art shows and also writes fiction.-Career:...

, chief art critic of The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

 and formerly a painter, wrote:

Nigel Greenwood gave me my first solo show, in 1988, I think to our mutual surprise. Getting him to come to my studio was a frustrating business of cancelled appointments. When he finally made it, he accidentally broke my coffee pot, got paint on his trousers and found he had locked himself out of his car. He gave me the show anyway.

Catherine Lampert wrote in her obituary in The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

:

The pinnacle of his respect was always reserved for living artists, and others listened to learn who deserved such elevation.