Ceysson & Bénétière
Nancy Graves , United States
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"Tout le monde se précipite"
Nancy-Graves-1977-Aphel-Pastel-on-paper-97x127cm©A.Mole-Courtesy-C&B
Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Nancy Graves graduated from Vassar College in 1961. She went on to earn an MFA in painting from Yale University in 1964, alongside Robert Mangold, Rackstraw Downes, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, and Richard Serra, whom she was married to from 1964 to 1970. Her career took off in 1969, five years after graduating, when she became the youngest artist—and only the fifth woman—to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art. Subsequently, Nancy Graves’ work has been featured in hundreds of museums and galleries worldwide, as well as in numerous solo museum exhibitions. She then received commissions for large-scale site-specific sculptures, and her works entered the permanent collections of major international art museums. Often invited to give lectures on her work, it was extensively documented during her lifetime. In 1991, she married veterinarian Avery Smith. Nancy Graves traveled the world and closely followed the major intellectual and cultural debates of her time. Cancer took her life at the age of 54, bringing her brilliant career to a premature end.
Solo show of Nancy Graves
From May 21 to June 20, 2026
The gallery
Founded in Saint-Étienne in 2006 by François Ceysson and Loïc Bénétière, and joined by Bernard Ceysson as artistic advisor, the Ceysson & Bénétière gallery has developed locations in Luxembourg, Paris, Geneva, New York, and Lyon.
Multiplying exhibition spaces has never been, for us, an obsession or an end in itself. Rather, it is a way to better serve our collectors, whose trust we greatly value. Above all, in a context in which artistic creation is now expanding and circulating more widely than ever, it is about presenting more effectively the artists we have chosen to support—because we are convinced of their talent and, for some of them, of their historical importance as key figures of the Supports/Surfaces movement.
Art is both a means and an object of knowledge. It enables us to be in the world and to think about it. This is what these artists have expressed, in and through their works. This is also the endeavor of the younger American and French artists whose works we are proud to present. They are forging a path beyond postmodernity, beyond the contemporary understood as an avatar of the isms of the past, toward a new modernity that bears no resemblance to a completed “modernism.”
Gallery artists
Wilfrid Almendra, Amina Benbouchta, Trudy Benson, Roger Bissière, Robert Brandy, Pierre Buraglio, Denis Castellas, Franck Chalendard, Alan Charlton, Max Charvolen, Claire Chesnier, Stephané Edith Conradie, Olivier Debré, Mounir Fatmi, Philippe Favier, Daniel Firman, Christian Floquet, Clédia Fourniau, Gloria Friedmann, Nancy Graves, Antwan Horfee, Rémy Jacquier, Phillip King, Sadie Laska, Lauren Luloff, Tomona Matsukawa, Jean Messagier, Champion Métadier, Nicolas Momein, Tania Mouraud, Alexander Nolan, ORLAN, Aurélie Pétrel, Bernard Piffaretti, Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini, Roland Quetsch, Lionel Sabatté, Frank Stella, Rachael Tarravechia, Nam Tchun-Mo, David Tremlett, Mitja Tušek, Bernar Venet, Jean-Luc Verna, Bao Vuong, Wallace Whitney, Jesse Willenbring, Yves Zurstrassen
