Blue-Chip Art Galleries are Opening Destinations Around the World Featuring Salzburg

By Ted Loos 

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Another influential dealer with galleries around the world, Thaddeus Ropac, took the opposite trajectory: Forty years ago, he started his business in a summer place, the picturesque Austrian mountain town of Salzburg, and expanded from there. It is best known as the home of the Salzburg Festival, this year running from July 19 to August 31, featuring a wide lineup of opera, music, and drama performances, all framed by the nearby peaks of the Alps. Salzburg is the hometown of Mozart himself, not to mention that its Baroque architecture was immortalized in the Sound of Music.

“When I began, I didn’t understand the impact the music festival would have,” says Ropac, who hails from southern Austria and, later on, opened additional locations in Paris, London, and Seoul. It quickly became clear that music lovers were a great audience for his artists. “Opera is so high-end, and people are coming through and renting houses and going to performances,” he says. “And during the daytime, they want to see art.”

His gallery is located in a 19th-century mansion, Villa Kast, that backs onto the lush Mirabell Garden. From July 26 to September 28, Ropac will open a show of new works by the acclaimed German painter Anselm Kiefer, a gallery artist and close confidant of the dealer since the mid-’90s, and there is a concurrent show of work by Joseph Beuys and John Cage.

The “relaxed and elegant atmosphere” of this summer hub primes his international visitors to appreciate art, says Ropac, echoing a theme of every dealer who chooses to capitalize on a summer place location. “You hear so many languages in the gallery,” he adds. “It shows the special spirit of Salzburg. You can really feel the creative energy.”