Perry Rubenstein Gallery. Photo Joshua White.
Art dealer Perry Rubenstein has filed for bankruptcy in Los Angeles. A representative of his attorney, Victor A. Sahn of L.A.’s Sulmeyer Kupetz, confirmed that Rubenstein filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Mar. 17.
Perry Rubenstein Gallery has listed assets of between $500,000 and $1 million, with liabilities between $1 million and $10 million, according to papers filed Mar. 17 in California Central Bankruptcy Court, as reported on the website Business Bankruptcies. The gallery’s creditors include the IRS, the Los Angeles County tax collector, New York attorney Aaron Richard Golub, California law firm Browne George Ross and New York lawyer Claudio E. Iannitelli, among others, also according to the website.
Rubenstein has long experience in the art world, starting out as a private dealer in New York in the 1980s. After running a gallery on 23rd Street in New York since 2004, Rubenstein relocated to L.A. in June 2012, opening his 9,500-square-foot Hollywood gallery with a show of fashion photographer Helmut Newton. The space was designed by Culver City, Calif., firm wHY Architecture, which also designed the Venice Beach branch of New York gallery L&M Arts.
Rubenstein worked with artists including Iwan Baan, Zoe Crosher, Georg Herold, Amir Zaki, Richard Woods and Kamrooz Aram.
In 2013, movie mogul Michael Ovitz reportedly sued Rubenstein over the improper sale of two works by Richard Prince.
Telephone calls to the gallery did not go through Thursday afternoon, and a gallery director did not immediately respond to a message left on his cell phone. According to a neighboring dealer who spoke to A.i.A. by phone today, the gallery has been closed “for a couple of weeks.”
According to the New York Post‘s Page Six, Rubenstein and Sara Fitzmaurice, of art PR firm Fitz & Co., filed for divorce in January after being separated for a year.
News of Rubenstein’s bankruptcy filing was first reported by Josh Baer of the Baer Faxt.
