Renos Xippas inaugurated his gallery in Paris on October 19, 1990 with a major exhibition dedicated to Takis. For this very first exhibition, presented on three floors, Takis worked with the specific features of the gallery’s architecture and conceived an environment made of magnetic sculptures. Thereafter, numerous exhibitions were organized with Takis who became overtime a historic and iconic artist of the gallery.
At the time, the Marais area in Paris was far from experiencing today’s art hustle, with only a few galleries settled there. Xippas gallery opened on three levels in the building it still occupies: 108 rue Vieille du Temple.
Renos Xippas with Yvon Lambert during the opening of the gallery, October 1990.
Takis, Renos Xippas and Alexander Iolas, 1981
Renos Xippas in his Paris gallery
The gallery quickly became a platform to promote and discover international artists including Chuck Close, Lucas Samaras, Wallace&Donohue, Peter Halley, Vik Muniz, Robert Irwin, Vera Lutter, among many others.
Xippas has also played an important role in the career of French artists such as Philippe Ramette, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Valérie Jouve, Bertille Bak, Farah Atassi, Yves Bélorgey, Yvan Salomone, Dominique Blais…
The gallery’s architecture has been remembered since by all visitors thanks to a range of large windows on the first floor and to the long wooden staircase leading to it.
View of the exhibtion “Takis. Système solaire (antigravity)”, Xippas Paris, 2003
View of the exhibtion of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot Xippas Paris 2012
A new chapter in the gallery’s history opened with La Réserve, inaugurated in 2005 at Pacy-sur-Eure, one hour ride from the French capital.
A large rehabilitated warehouse of 2000 m2, imagined as an experimental and collaborative place, such a private art center, it aimed to show ambitious projects of the artists of the gallery and major curated exhibitions with invited artists. The art space was inaugurated with a large solo exhibition of Vik Muniz, featuring works from his most emblematic series to the date.
During the following decade, major group and solo exhibitions were organized. Among them, “Du machinique et du vivant” (2007), a group exhibition curated by Regis Durand, which invited Parisian galleries and artists they represent to participate in a common project. Another group show, “Palimpsest, a good pretext” (2008), organized the following year, brought together works by the artists of the gallery along with the works by young French artists shown for the first time in the gallery.
La Reserve was also conceived as a platform for monumental artworks, such as Vera Lutter and Vik Muniz two-artists show “Big is better” (2008).
Since 2000’s, the gallery has been expanding internationally.
In 2003, Renos Xippas opened a gallery in Athens. This one-of-a-kind space of minimalistic design in downtown Athens, with a library and an art residency studio could host multiple concurrent exhibitions. At a time that Greek galleries and institutions shown almost exclusively works of Greek artists, Xippas gallery made the difference. Chuck Close, Peter Halley, Thomas Struth, Vik Muniz, Vera Lutter, Darren Almond, Rineke Dijkstra were only a few of the very many that Xippas gallery in Athens had the pleasure of introducing to the Greek public.
The gallery became one of the first meeting points of international contemporary art in Greece and, as such it was embraced enthusiastically by both the public and the artists.
This was followed by the opening of a gallery in Montevideo in 2010 which marked the beginning of Xippas’ development in Uruguay.
In 2010 Xippas Montevideo opened its doors, and so began a new chapter in our history and in the art world of Uruguay.
The gallery is located on the ground floor of the spectacular former Gran Hotel Colón, a magnificent 19th century building in the heart of Montevideo’s old town. The gallery’s interior complements the grandeur of its façade and its modern and minimalist white cube acts as a window onto the city’s art world.
From its new location, the gallery has consolidated its interest in the Latin American art scene through its collaboration with both renowned and up-and-coming artists of the region.
Vik Muniz, Marco Maggi, Ricardo Lanzarini, Yamandú Canosa, Dani Umpi, Janaina Tschäpe, Eduardo Stupía, Pedro Varela, Cao Guimarães, Rafael Carneiro, Rita Fischer and many others have collaborated in group exhibitions.
Xippas established itself from the outset as an international contemporary art platform, stimulating dialogues between artists across our various locations as well as bringing international art to Uruguay and promoting Latin American art in the old continent.
In 2011, Xippas opened a gallery in the heart of Geneva’s art district, in the renowned Quartier des Bains, near the MAMCO. The gallery became an important actor of the Swiss art scene, representing and discovering numerous Swiss and International artists.
In January 2020, in Punta del Este (Uruguay), a new gallery space opened on a 6 hectares natural site, in the famous South American seaside resort.
With an exhibition space covering 700 square meters amidst a rural landscape, located on Route 104, also called “Art Route”, this unique gallery is designed to host major exhibitions by local and international artists. The gallery also welcomes artists for residencies and hosts special projects in its exceptional location.
Among the most recent exhibition spaces to open, is Baronian Xippas, inaugurated in 2019 in Brussels following a long collaboration between Albert Baronian and Renos Xippas. Based on a common vision, shared values and a belief in adopting an open, human and accessible approach, Baronian-Xippas uses its experiences to embrace new possibilities and chances for the artists and the global art scene, resulting in a new dynamic on the Belgian and international art markets and increasing the international exposure of their artists.
In December 2020, and also in Belgium, a new Baronian Xippas space opened in Knokke.
