Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

It seemed utterly incredible when in 2002 Anthony D’Offay decided to close up shop with his gallery in Dering Street in London. After years of activity the famous English art dealer chose “The Guardian” to give the news of his sensational retirement, declaring that perhaps it was the right moment to leave “I am in excellent health and I will continue to muscle in with whatever is happening in the world of art, offering my support”. He exited in great style which created an upset in the art world and it seems that he had shocked many artists belonging to the D’Offay team. The gallerist was donned “London’s art king” for his capacity to discover great contemporary art talents. From the year that his gallery opened in 1980, D’Offay was an excellent agent for artists like Joseph Beuys, but he also dealt with representing big names that we find in history of art manuals today: Christian Boltanski, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Gilbert and George, Richard Long, Richard Hamilton, just to give a few examples. What’s more, in Anthony D’Offay’s last seasonal exhibit, works by Bill Viola, Francesco Clemente, Agnes Martin, Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer, Ron Muek, but also Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha and Chris Cunningham were housed. From 1990 D’Offay made the effort to represent Young British Artists (YBA) like Rachel Whiteread and Richard Patterson. After the shock that D’Offay created in the business art world in 2002, recent news had created an ulterior furore. We refer to the English dealer’s sensational gesture in his recent offer of a large amount of 725 works from different public collections of British art. To be precise, D’Offray will receive around 40 million euros from the donation against a value of around 170 million euros, collected by the English and Scottish government from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund. It would seem as if Anthony D’Offay has decided to grant the nation with a large share of his collections at a majorly discounted price. He already voiced in 2006 that the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate Gallery would like to acquire his collections, then valued at around 100 million pounds. But they waited two years to go public with this economic affair. Referring to Anthony D’Offay’s gesture, the director of the Tate Gallery Nicholas Serota seems to have declared: “A donation like this will completely revolutionise public offers of contemporary art in Great Britain”.