page_title: Galerie Chalette
section_title: Aesthetic
hierarchical_section_title: Galerie Chalette / Aesthetic
caption_attribution_description: Galerie Chalette 1966 Robert Jacobsen Exhibition Catalogue Cover
context_page_description: Galerie Chalette was a private contemporary art gallery in Manhattan, New York, USA. It was founded by the married art dealers and collectors Madeleine Chalette Lejwa and Arthur Lejwa in February 1954. The Lejwas were refugees from the Nazi incursions into Poland and France. Initially, their gallery specialized in contemporary French and Polish prints and painting. Later they changed its focus to contemporary 20th century American and European Sculpture, and especially the work of Jean Arp.
  "La Chalette" was perhaps best known for organizing important group exhibitions which were then offered to various museums around the United States, including Construction and Geometry in Painting, and Structured Sculpture, as well as their major Arp exhibition, Jean Arp: from the collections of Mme. Marguerite Arp and Arthur and Madeleine Lejwa, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 1972.
  The gallery closed in 1978.
context_section_description: "The Galerie Chalette’s distinctive quality was that it represented one stylistic direction, namely geometric abstraction." "Theirs was a story of continuous work on behalf of this style of artist, carried out with great commitment and capital investment. They were collectors and gallerists, and these aspects were indissolubly bound together."
  The Lejwas published catalogues alongside each of their exhibitions, including color plates where possible and commentary by notable critics.  This practice reflected the Lejwas' loyalty to their artists and desire to see their artists' reputations and art established and available beyond the gallery's walls.  From a business perspective, this attention to the "secondary" art market (the resale of art following its original acquisition from the artist), contributed to La Chalette's increased stature as a gallery throughout the 1960s.
  The gallery developed a spare yet specific and easily identifiable style for its catalogues, which ranged from relatively simple productions to elaborately printed, numbered, limited editions.
caption: Robert Jacobsen (1966)
   Exemplar of the maximally spare cover, still with distinctive La Chalette design.
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