Edith Halpert

Who is Edith Halpert?

Edith Halpert or Edith Gregor Halpert was a pioneering New York City dealer of Modern art. Halpert brought recognition and market success to many avant-garde American artists over her forty-year career from 1926 through the 1960s. Her establishment, The Downtown Gallery, one of the first in Greenwich Village, introduced or showcased such modern art luminaries as Stuart Davis, Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Jacob Lawrence, Charles Sheeler, David Fredenthal, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Ben Shahn, Jack Levine, Marguerite and William Zorach, and many others. Halpert arrived in the U.S. as a penniless Russian Jewish immigrant, transformed the landscape of Modern art, and died at age 70 a multimillionaire. Sotheby's credited her with having put modernist painting auctions on the map with the posthumous sale of her collection for $3.6 million in 1973.