Allan Stone obit

Allan Stone, a New York dealer who combined a broad expertise in Abstract Expressionism with a zeal for junk sculpture and realist painting and was perhaps as well known for amassing art as for selling it, died on Friday at his home in Purchase, N.Y. He was 74. . . Mr. Stone was considered an expert on the work of the Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Barnett Newman and Franz Kline as well as their contemporaries John Graham and Joseph Cornell. His gallery was especially known for imposing exhibitions of their work, often accompanied by catalogs for which he wrote essays filled with personal reminiscences and unusual insights.

But he was legendary in the New York art world for his obsessive collecting. His gallery (like his home) teemed with primitive and folk art, no matter what exhibition was formally on view. At one point he owned untold numbers of de Koonings and nearly 30 Bugatti automobiles. When the gallery moved in 1991 from its longtime site at 86th and Madison to a carriage house on East 90th Street, Ms. Stone said, long-lost artworks resurfaced.

Posted by David on December 18, 2006 8:57 PM