Magda Danysz (born September 1974), is a French art curator and art dealer, she owns her galleries named Magda Danysz Gallery in Paris, in Shanghai, and in London.
Life and career
Magda Danysz started in the art business in the early 1990s, when she opened her first art space in 1991 when she was 17. She studied at the ESSEC French leading business school. She went on student exchanges at Osaka International University in 1995 and Buenos Aires University in 1998. After graduating in 1998, she opened her gallery in July of that same year in a brand new space. She curated projects in her gallery with artists from various disciplines, from street art to digital art.
Founder of the Danysz art galleries in Paris (since 1991), Shanghai (2009) and London (2019) as well as the Artcare and Artransfer startups (2021), Magda Danysz focuses on art, technology, and global change through culture. Throughout the years, she became an expert in street art, as well as digital art, contemporary photography, and Chinese contemporary art.
She brought Shepard Fairey to the French scene in the early 2000s (who did Barack Obama's official portrait for the presidential campaign), worked with such as JonOne since 1992, and also exhibited and promoted artists as Seen, Miss Van, Erwin Olaf, JR, Prune Nourry, Vhils and Ultralab. She participated in many art fairs around the world including Paris, Bologna, Brussels, New York, and even Miami. In June 2009 she was appointed to direct the building's Bund 18 gallery in Shanghai, China, which then became the Magda Danysz Gallery. She published an extensive anthology of street art. In 2015 she expanded her gallery business in London with her iconic pop up space called The London Project.
Since 2001 Danysz has taught cultural policies and economics at Sciences Po in Paris. She is on the board of the multimedia cultural art center Le Cube in Issy-les-Moulineaux, whose mayor André Santini appointed her to promote digital art and research.[citation needed]
Danysz’ commitment for art is far from limited to the walls of her galleries. She is curating public and private exhibitions, commissions, and projects around the world from Beijing to Singapore, via London or Luxemburg. In 2007, she was knighted Chevalier of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2010, she joined the Executive Committee of the Shanghai Biennale producing the Wrinkles of the City project by artist JR on the city scale.
In 2021, Danysz co-founded Artransfer, a platform aiming at streamlining the secondary art market and Artcare, a company supporting cultural actors in the artistic production of NFT and web 3.0 contents. In 2022, she is curating exhibitions with institutions such as the city of Paris (1982-2022: 40 years of Street Art in Paris) or the Condition Publique art center in Roubaix (The representation and place of women in the public space). As a writer she has published books ranging from artists' monographs to critical essays about Art.
Majors artistes represented
The following artistes are represented by Magda Danysz Gallery:
