Tony Shafrazi, the legendary Iranian-American art dealer known for spray-painting Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" and launching the careers of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, has returned to the art fair circuit after more than a decade away. The 80-something dealer is presenting works by sculptor Zadik Zadikian and painter Brandon Deener at the Independent 20th Century fair in New York, marking his first fair participation since being banned from Art Basel in 2012.
Shafrazi's journey in the New York art world began in the late 1960s when he arrived as a transplant from Iran via London. Within just 24 hours, he had met Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, quickly becoming embedded in the tight-knit art community of the era. Through sculptor Richard Serra, he was introduced to Zadik Zadikian, an Armenian sculptor from Yerevan, Soviet Armenia, who became obsessed with plaster and gold leaf work.
Zadikian became the first artist Shafrazi ever exhibited, with their collaboration beginning in 1978 when Shafrazi brought Zadikian's "1,000 Gold Bricks" installation to his new gallery in Tehran. The installation served both literal and metaphorical purposes, with gold representing hope, temple, and absurdity. However, the entire installation was lost during the Iranian Revolution just months later. "We lost each and every brick in the revolution," Zadikian recalled last week.
This week's Independent fair marks a reunion and comeback for both men, now in their 80s. Zadikian's work at Shafrazi's booth includes a column of gilded plaster bricks titled "Made in USA," which echoes Constantin Brâncuși's "Infinite Column" while nodding to the first work he showed with Shafrazi in the 1970s. Alongside Zadikian's sculpture, Shafrazi is presenting a multi-panel set of canvases painted to resemble Jiffy baking-mix boxes by Memphis-born artist Brandon Deener.
Elizabeth Dee, founder of the Independent fair, expressed amazement at Shafrazi's dedication to the presentation. "He's more involved in this presentation than anything in his life as a dealer," she said. "He's involved like an artist, like a writer, like a producer, and it shows that caring more, not less, is what makes the market follow you." Dee sees his return as proof that risk and care, not just branding, can still move markets.
Shafrazi, who now lives in Palm Beach but frequently stays at Casa Cipriani in lower Manhattan, remains as passionate and eccentric as ever. He has prepared minutely detailed pamphlets for each artist in his booth, demonstrating his deep engagement with their work. His three-hour conversations span centuries, touching on everything from the Byzantine Empire to Elon Musk's SpaceX and Warhol's drawing methods.
Brandon Deener came to painting after a career in music, and his practice remains deeply rooted in jazz. His paintings evolve like musical riffs, and he has created works depicting Miles Davis and John Coltrane, layering graffiti textures with lyrical lines. Two years ago, Shafrazi took Deener on a transformative trip through London and Paris, introducing him to monuments of Western art he had never formally studied. "After the trip, he came away with a greater vision of history, a greater vision of life, and a greater conception of what his art could address," Shafrazi explained.
The dealer's approach to artists reflects his belief that "players create an inspired melodic tune that comes from the particular nature of their instruments, and the sounds that they come up with, totally new, become the signature." Deener's first international solo show, "Resonance," at Paris's Galerie 75 Faubourg last year featured 15 large oil paintings that fused grief, resilience, and improvisation, with jazz running through the canvases like a heartbeat.
Shafrazi's relationship with Zadikian has remained constant over the decades, marked by the dealer's characteristic persistence. "For five years he was pushing me to do a presentation like the one now on view at Independent," Zadikian said. "He said it would be a hundred times more powerful than PS1." Shafrazi was deeply involved in the creation of "Made in USA," with Zadikian noting that "we had five people working 13 hours a day for two weeks. One hundred seventy units—I'm exhausted. But Tony contributed everything, even hunting down the right pigments from New York."
For those who know Shafrazi only as an anecdote or curiosity, his return might be jarring. He is remembered primarily for spray-painting "KILL LIES ALL" on Picasso's "Guernica" at the Museum of Modern Art in 1974, for which he was arrested and charged with criminal mischief before being released on $1,000 bail partly paid by Richard Serra. He's also known as the dealer who embraced graffiti art and gave Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat their platform, and as the impresario who sold Francis Bacon to American collectors with evangelical zeal.
Shafrazi opened his first New York gallery in SoHo in 1979, when the neighborhood still felt like a rehearsal space for the emerging art world. The streets were half-empty after dark, with cavernous lofts and raw floors providing the perfect setting for his stable of artists who carried the city's pulse: Haring with his chalk lines and restless urgency, Kenny Scharf's explosions of cartoon color, and Donald Baechler's deliberately awkward collages. He also dealt in established artists like Bacon and Warhol, toggling between the canonical and the insurgent.
The gallery's openings were legendary events—crowded, humid, half-party, half-spectacle. Collectors came not only to buy but to be seen buying, or simply to absorb whatever new energy was being released that night. Shafrazi played the role of impresario with gusto, welcoming some, provoking others, always ensuring that nobody left without a story. He believed that "the responsibility of the dealer was to make significant, meaningful exhibitions," often adding with perfect timing that "the point was also to make some business happen, of course."
By the 2000s, the art scene had shifted, and Shafrazi withdrew from fairs while his reputation settled into anecdote. However, he never stopped working—selling privately, advising quietly, and talking endlessly. After closing his 25th Street gallery in 2011, he began operating under the name "Gallery Without Walls," a nod to André Malraux's "Museum Without Walls," which considered the democratization of art and the idea that everyone builds a personal museum shaped by what they've seen.
The mythology of the "Guernica" incident has never left Shafrazi. His famous phrase has puzzled the art world for decades, with some assuming he meant "All Lies Kill." Speaking with Jerry Saltz in 2008 for New York Magazine, Shafrazi described it as a "Finnegans Wake"-style construction meant to work in either direction. He claimed the act was about "retrieving the painting from art history, about making it absolutely up to date, to give it life," arguing that the painting had been "neutralized by the museum wall" and he wanted to "make it scream again."
This paradox of defacer and caretaker was perfectly encapsulated at a 2008 gallery opening that fell on his birthday. At the after-party, two strippers dressed as cops wheeled out a cake iced with a perfect rendition of "Guernica." Dealer Gavin Brown climbed onto a table, handed him red icing, and shouted, "Write, Tony! Write!" Shafrazi first traced "I AM SORRY," causing the room to go quiet, then after a long pause, added "NOT!"
Zadikian, reflecting on working with Shafrazi again after all these years, paused before saying, "It's very strange to be reliving the past." However, for both men, this return represents not just a look backward but a continuation of their lifelong commitment to art that challenges, provokes, and transforms. Shafrazi's presence at Independent 20th Century serves as a reminder that in an increasingly corporate art world, individual passion and vision still have the power to move both audiences and markets.
