Galerie Gmurzynska presents Dan Basen
This September at Independent 20th Century, Galerie Gmurzynska will show the work of Dan Basen, a New York avant-garde artist active during the 1960s who died in 1970 at the age of 30. His artistic career was as colorful as was his life. Basen fluidly moved between Happenings, nouveau réalisme, Pop, assemblage, and experimental cinema while maintaining close ties with Beat poets and American Surrealists. Though he often showed alongside his well-known Pop contemporaries, Basen critiqued their commercial aesthetics, forging a singular and maverick path.
Yet his inclusion at important museum and gallery shows during this period also demonstrates just how much Basen was a part of the 1960s New York art scene. These include exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum, the Corcoran in Washington, the Wadsworth Atheneum under Wagstaff, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Whitney and the Met. In addition to his being represented by Allan Stone Gallery, Basen participated in Betty Parsons’ “Toys by Artists” exhibition and “The Box Show” at Byron Gallery, showing alongside Nevelson, Oldenburg, Tuttle and Warhol amongst others.
As Dr. Jonathan D. Katz proclaims in the accompanying monograph: “His curiosity, fecundity and brilliant inventiveness […] marked him as an artist’s artist and the very embodiment of the Sixties revolutionary fervor.”
We invite you to visit us at Booth B5 and experience the uncompromising vision of this remarkable artist.
Booth B5
Independent 20th Century
September 4–7, 2025
Casa Cipriani, 10 South Street New York, NY 10004