Karsten Schubert (1961–2019)

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Karsten Schubert (1961–2019) | Karsten Schubert, the influential modern art dealer, writer and publisher, has died at the age of 57 after a long battle with cancer. Born in Berlin, but spending much of his adult life living and working in London, Schubert opened his first gallery on Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia, in 1986, with a solo exhibition of the British artist Alison Wilding. A champion of the YBAs, Schubert furthered the careers of Gary Hume and Rachel Whiteread, as well as many other British and international artists, such as Carl Andre, Gerhard Richter, and Bridget Riley. Concurrently, Schubert co-founded the publishing company Ridinghouse in 1995, producing catalogues, monographs and art criticism.

British art dealer gets prison sentence for grand larceny and fraud | Timothy Sammons, the British art dealer who stole between $10 and $30 million from clients in the US, UK and New Zealand, has been sentenced to four to 12 years in a New York state prison. A former Sotheby’s specialist, Sammons pleaded guilty to grand larceny, a scheme to defraud, and other criminal counts, having misappropriated money from his clients and used artworks that did not belong to him as collateral for personal loans, the court heard.

Portuguese authorities seize art from debt-ridden businessman | The Portuguese government has confirmed that it has seized a number of works belonging to the country’s prominent modern art collector, José Berardo, who owes almost €1 billion to three national banks. Much of Berardo’s collection, which was valued at €316 million in 2006 and includes works by Francis Bacon, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, has been on display in Lisbon museums for more than a decade.

Europe’s tallest artwork set to rise above Belgian motorway | A 250-tonne steel arc rising to 60m and set to stand over a motorway in Belgium will be the tallest public sculpture in Europe. Arc Majeur, designed by French artist Bernar Venet at a cost of €2.5m, will tower above the E411 between Namur and Luxembourg. Work on the sculpture will begin in August, with an official inauguration scheduled for October.

Wendell Dayton (1938–2019) | American sculptor Wendell Dayton, who had his first major exhibition at the age of 80 last year, has died. Born in Spokane, Washington, Dayton studied art at Indiana University before moving to New York in 1960, living in loft spaces and rubbing shoulders with many of the artists involved in the Abstract Expressionism and Pop movements. Dayton moved to Los Angeles in 1972, where he experimented with welded materials on a large scale, the results of which were shown at his retrospective at Blum & Poe in 2018.