Annina Nosei by ACC Art Books

10. 14. 34. 44. 50.

Foreword Vincent Gallo

A Conversation with Annina Nosei Robert G. Edelman

An Interview with Annina Nosei Jeffrey Deitch / Nicola Vassell

Annina Nosei on Basquiat Paul Tschinkel

An Afternoon with Annina Nosei Michael Bullock

62. 72. 80. 90.

Stories Project. Acc 54. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. David White

From Duchamp to Basquiat Antonio Gnoli

Annina Nosei Interviewed by Dieter Buchhart Dieter Buchhart

Unpublished Interview with Annina Nosei, New York City, 2011 Ginevra Addis

FOREW by Vincent Gallo

WORD

It is hard to describe someone, an entire person, all the things about them that make them different from the many other people you’ve known. It feels silly for me trying to describe someone unless I am brutally insulting them. That feels good. What I can do, in a less harmful, hurtful way, is talk about a person’s impact on me, or the impressions I’ve noticed from my time with them. No person I’ve ever met, been around, or worked with has had more of a beautiful impact on my life. I love and respect Annina Nosei more than anyone else in the world. I love her voice, I love her pretty face, and I especially love her brilliant and funny mind. She said to me once, “You are not interesting, you’re vulgar, primitive, crude, ignorant, uneducated, but your work is brilliant.” I realized that, in spite of everything limiting about me, I could make work better than myself, smarter than I am, and with a vision further than my own. My work would always have to be better than me, or it would fall way short. That was the greatest thing I ever learned. Vincent Gallo LOVES Annina Nosei FOREVER. March 29, 2026

A CONVERSA ANNINA NOS Robert G. Edelman

Robert G. Edelman is an art dealer and has worked as a private assistant for Annina Nosei.

ATION WITH SEI This private recorded conversation between Annina Nosei and Robert Edelman took place in Old Chatham, New York, in 2014.

ROBERT G. EDELMAN: My first, perhaps rather obvious question for art aficionado Annina Nosei is: at what point in your life did you discover or recognize your initial interest in art? Was it an encounter with an individual artist, some historically significant site in Rome, or a particular work of art perhaps? ANNINA NOSEI: My first encounter with art must have been when I was sixteen years old, because in a diary I kept, there is a sketch or drawing I made of myself wearing my hair in a ponytail—“coda di cavallo” in Italian. The drawing was titled Girl Looking at a Work of Contemporary Art, and the artwork within it was my imitation of a Cy Twombly. Twombly lived in Rome at that time, and there were exhibitions of his work at Galleria La Tartaruga. That was probably my first true encounter with contemporary art. But my deeper commitment to art, and my total immersion in it, was really provoked and encouraged by an older friend I had in high school who later became a highly respected art teacher: the painter Claudio Cintoli. Claudio was brilliant. He was enthusiastic about art, and he took me to see the major exhibition of Jackson Pollock at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, where I had previously gone to see modern Italian art—for example, the great paintings of the Macchiaioli, a group of artists whose work defined Florentine painting in the late nineteenth century. My father was from Florence, and art was often discussed in our family. There may even have been paintings in our house by Ottone Rosai. But it was not until I saw the Pollock 15

saying that they would, in fact, sublet my own space back to me afterwards. But they didn’t, so that’s why I closed. Many of the artists that you showed in Chelsea I found to be quite exceptional in the very personal vision of their work, including Guillermo Kuitca, Shirin Neshat, Graciela Hasper, Gian Marco Montesano, Jenny Watson, Cheri Samba, Julio Galan, Manuel Ocampo, and Stephen Mueller, among others. What were some of the qualities or distinctive elements in their work that appealed to you at that time? The list of artists is quite varied, and so there are different shared traits present in their work. The only common denominator is simply a very broad sense that I found in each of their works a certain authenticity of expression, and because of that, a distinctive strength in the technique and the artwork. What attracted me in each of their work was not a question of calling it originality, but rather that I found in each of their expressions an awareness and a clarity in the decisions about what they wanted to do. Each of these artists had a different type of language, but they were able to use their own iconography in a conscious, effective way, and they did not imitate the manner of somebody else, presenting a different kind of content but in the same, unique language. Each of them had a different, strong personality, and because of that, an originality. But it was their clear voice, in each case, that interested me. At one point you had described what you considered to be the essential ingredients in an artist’s work that would make it of interest to you, that it could not be one at the expense of the other. You said that for you to be interested the work had to have both a personal or social content, and the technical ability to bring the work to its full realization. Did you find American artists to be sometimes too focused on emphasizing the technical element or aspect of their work? Yes, and that relates to the fact that a major aspect of American visual culture is fundamentally graphic. In other moments and other conversations, we talked about another branch of American culture being the romantic aspect, looking, let’s say metaphorically, toward the West, while the pilgrims who stayed home concentrated on the object and on the narration of those objects that they kept in their little warm-by-the-fireplace houses in the Northeast. Because of that, and maybe also because of the memory of the words of Alfred Frankenstein that I mentioned earlier in the interview, that interest in the object itself led some American artists to concentrate on the graphic, illustrative, and narrative aspects of their work. And I can imagine that even now, with the incredible invasion of technological means and digital collaborations, that aspect is driving me crazy.

NV: He was dating Suzanne Mallouk at that time. JD: Yes, they were living together. AN: Yes. She is very intelligent. She later studied medicine. Suzanne was nice, but then things didn’t work out, I don’t think. I would say that he was in love with her, but at a certain point, she wasn’t there anymore. NV: Did you keep track of Jean-Michel, you know, follow his work and exhibitions up to the end? AN: Well, Baghoomian got in touch with Jean-Michel somehow, and later, in 1988, Baghoomian had a beautiful show. There were some incredible works, and in that exhibition he showed paintings that were very aware—very strongly aware of his situation, particularly one, which was called Riding with Death. He made a big party and invited all kinds of old friends. Then I left for Italy, and that summer he died.

ANNINA N BASQUIAT Paul Tschinkel

Video interview by Paul Tschinkel from Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960—1988) ART/new york No. 30, 1988

NOSEI ON AT

ANNINA NOSEI: “His intensity of emotions, not only was obviously demonstrated in his life, but was in each little drawing, or even in the poetry that he wrote on the walls. There was such an intensity. You immediately feel that you are in front of a real poet, even when the poetry were very minimal, like he wrote famous, Pay for Soup, Build a Fort, Set it on Fire. Lapidary sentences. Really extremely intense but poetic. And this he did every way in all the ways, with images, with numbers, with lines, with the crowns, which were somehow his signature, with his ideas... When he listed elements where he would put salt, gold, but also asbestos. Immediately the whole thing became a political issue and a social issue just by the presence of that word. In a painting like Per Capita, where he lists the capital income of all the various states of the United States, you just need to compare the numbers and it becomes political because it tells you a few truths. In works when he lists the human jobs, the works that people do. Immediately, you identify who does what and who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor. In other works, where he also drew the tepee of the American Indian—already, it’s political! Because he speaks for an American culture which has been forgotten or not given enough attention. So, in every work, in every painting or drawings, his concerns were social and political and ideological, as well as intimate and poetic. The political life that Jean-Michel had was always on his own first skin. In other words, it was felt from the moment he stepped, I suppose, from his bed out in the street to the way that he painted. It was always felt politics. It was completely authentic. So,

AN AFTERNO ANNINA NOS Michael Bullock

Blau Magazine Issue no.11, 2024

OON WITH SEI

Having launched the careers of Basquiat, Schnabel, and Salle, the gallerist-turned-ballroomdancer talks to Michael Bullock about partnering with Gagosian, the kindness of Mary Boone, and why she prefers paintings to tombs.

Art oracle, former gallerist, and award-winning ballroom dancer Annina Nosei ushered in a generation of world-renowned artists. Having grown up in Rome, she viewed the emerging 1980s New York City scene through the long lens of European art history, identifying some of the most significant works of her time. She started informally showing artworks in a SoHo loft she shared with Larry Gagosian in the late 1970s, and by the early ’80s, she had her own space and a reputation for discovery. Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, and David Salle all count among those she supported in the early stages of their careers. Nosei was particularly instrumental in launching the career of Julian Schnabel. She purchased his very first plate painting, The Patients and the Doctors (1978), and hung the ungainly, ambitious work in her foyer, where it would be discovered by Schnabel’s longtime gallerist, Bruno Bischofberger. Before my interview with Nosei, Schnabel took a moment to call me to sing her praises. With his signature bravado, he told me, “Nosei is a visionary, with the generosity and temperament of an artist.” While her record of discovery is broad and undeniable, her legacy will forever be linked to her unique relationship with one artist–Jean-Michel Basquiat, whom she met when he was twenty. She nurtured the young artist, encouraging him to transition from spray paint on buildings to acrylic paint on canvases. Shortly after that, she provided

STORIES PROJ ROBERT RAUS FOUNDATION, NEW YORK. David White

Transcript of interview with Annina Nosei conducted by David White, Senior Curatorial Advisor from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, March 7, 2024.

JECT. ACC 54. SCHENBERG Annina Nosei (b. 1939) is an Italian-born gallerist best known as Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first dealer. After stints working at the Ileana Sonnabend Gallery in Paris and as a professor in the U.S. during the early 1960s, she married contemporary art dealer John Weber (whom she met through Robert Rauschenberg) and began to show and deal contemporary works in 1979. Open 1981 to 2006, the Annina Nosei Gallery exhibited works by artists including Keith Haring, Barbara Kruger, and Shirin Neshat. She first encountered Rauschenberg’s work while assisting Michael and Ileana Sonnabend and met the artist during the 1964 Venice Biennale. Due to her longtime friendship with Cy Twombly, association with the ONCE Group, and a variety of gallery connections, she and Rauschenberg shared social circles throughout his lifetime.

DAVID WHITE: Okay, now we are recording. I see the little numbers are going up. I’m sitting here with Annina Nosei in her apartment in Manhattan on Riverside Drive, and we’re going to speak about her knowledge and involvement with Rauschenberg. ANNINA NOSEI: Yes, long time ago. I was in Paris one summer because I was with a group of actors together with Ken Dewey [(1934–1972), performance artist and director active in the Happening and Action Theater movements in the U.S.,] that was friendly with [Anna] Halprin [(1920–2021), forerunner of postmodern dance and founder of San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop], and there was a big show done in the theater. I forgot the name [Théâtre Récamier].

Yeah. That was a friend of ours. Mine, whatever. And then that’s why I knew Cy Twombly in my life. And then I met— And then he and Betty were such close friends from their school days, of course. That’s right. So, I would go there and they had the swimming pool, and I would go there and Tristano [son of Betty and Alvise and godson of Twombly] and my daughter would play in the swimming pool, et cetera. Nice. But also there are stories. Yeah. No, basically, we covered all the things that I was hoping to hear from you. I loved when you had told me that story briefly at Tristano’s opening. So, I can’t thank you enough.

FROM DUC TO BASQU Antonio Gnoli

Originally published in Italian in La Repubblica magazine, July 12, 2015.

CHAMP UIAT

The Italian gallerist, deeply loved abroad, recounts a life of passions and discoveries: “It’s all a matter of alchemy.” To me, her name is tied to the 1970s and 1980s: Annina Nosei, a successful gallerist and talent scout between Paris, New York, and Rome—the city where she was born. Annina lives in Manhattan, in a beautiful home overlooking the Hudson River. Every now and then, a couple of times a year, she returns to Italy. I meet her by chance at a dinner. At the table with her are an American antiques dealer, a young professional Latin American dancer, Luigi Ontani—whom I had “talked endlessly” with a few weeks earlier—and a couple of others. I sit opposite her. She eats with determination. She thinks with determination. She acts, I suspect, with determination. After all, I don’t believe it’s easy to make your way in New York. I know an old story, which she quickly denies: after discovering Jean-Michel Basquiat, Annina “chained” him in the basement of her gallery. She set up a studio for the artist and forced him to produce. “It’s all bullshit. Do you think Jean-Michel would have accepted any kind of constraint?” she says briskly, twirling her napkin like a matador’s cape.

UNPUBLISHED WITH ANNINA YORK CITY, 2011 Ginevra Addis

Ginevra Addis, Adjunct Professor and Research Fellow at UNIMIB and UCSC, Milan, conducted this interview as part of her M.A. thesis on the cultural and social sources of Basquiat’s work. Originally in Italian.

D INTERVIEW A NOSEI, NEW In 2011, in New York, Ginevra Addis, then a student and now Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB) and the Universitá Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (UCSC), Italy, began a study of the visual, cultural, and social sources of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work as part of her master’s thesis, after having already written her bachelor’s thesis on the artist’s exhibitions in Italy. She then started a research project aimed at investigating the layered cultural, iconographic, and contextual references in Basquiat’s work, and this led Addis to undertake field research based on the collection of first-hand testimonies, contacting figures who had played a significant role in his formation and professional career. Among them, a particularly important contribution was offered by Annina Nosei, his historic gallerist and mentor, whose testimony proved fundamental in reconstructing the sources that nourished his visual and intellectual imagination. The interview made it possible, first of all, to identify several key bibliographical references for the artist, including the catalogue devoted to Cy Twombly, published by Heiner Bastian for Propyläen Verlag (Berlin, 1978), which Nosei herself had given to him. Secondly, it offers useful elements for critically reconsidering certain recurring narratives that developed around the artist’s figure, shedding light on the role of assistants, the influence of other artists, his relationship with musical culture, and his interest in human anatomy, up to the editorial project Anatomy Portfolio, produced with Annina Nosei.

think that he was obsessed with it. Why? It is wrong to speak of themes of death in general terms, because each painting has a precise conceptual core. Interpreting his work systematically through this lens is an iconographic error. The only painting in which the theme of death is truly central is Riding with Death. In the interview for the catalogue of the exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981: The Studio of the Street, you stated that what had struck you was that, at such a young age, he was already aware of his own talent and of the impact his art would have on the public. Furthermore, you stated that he wanted to reflect on and develop his work in the rest of the world, because his orientation was not personal, but social. You later admitted that you had identified socio-political elements in his paintings. In which works, in your opinion, is this aspect most evident? Why did he have a socio-political interest? In Slave Auction and Per Capita, but especially in Per Capita. Also in the interview for the catalogue Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981: The Studio of the Street, you stated that Jean-Michel’s paintings had neither a beginning nor an end. Why? Because someone had told me that Basquiat’s paintings seemed unfinished, and I replied, “Of course, because his paintings had neither a beginning nor an end!” Did Basquiat ever tell you what he wanted to express with a particular painting? No, never. There is a painting, Untitled (Aaron), in which we find the name Aaron and, a short distance away, the words “Lemon juice” and “Soap.” Why, in your opinion, does he place three such different words in the same work? I don’t know; if he were alive, I would ask him. Basquiat had the basement of your gallery at his disposal in order to paint. Could you describe what his studio was like and how it was organized? The basement of my gallery was a basement room lit by two windows and a skylight. You can find photographs of it reproduced in various books.