The rediscovery of the art of Simone de Beauvoir’s sister

An exhibition of the art of Hélène de Beauvoir (1910-2001), sister of the great Simone, opened in a private gallery near Goodge Street last week. It was the first time Hélène’s work had been shown or received any attention in London, and young people in alternative clothing gathered to sip orange wine and listen, rapt, to the 75-year-old biographer and friend of the de Beauvoir sisters, Claudine Monteil, as her recollections helped elucidate Hélène’s abstract paintings. The reclamation of a new ‘lost’ artist was under way.

It is possible, these days, for gallerists to do good work – self-defining as allies and activists – while making a good fortune. ‘You don’t need to be a Goliath gallery,’ says Amar Singh, 35, the British art entrepreneur behind the show. The process is painstaking, slow and delicate; ‘the whole eco-system has to be right and then the magic happens,’ he says. ‘I’ve set world records a dozen times for overlooked women artists.’

He founded the Amar Gallery in 2017 to specialise, like the Berry Campbell Gallery in New York, in marginalised artists. ‘I salute and love Christine Berry and Martha Campbell. I was watching how they built the global market for these artists, and I was early to start doing it in Europe.’

Singh was the first to show Lynne Drexler in London, just before her prices soared. He included her in his 2017 group show of ab ex women, Hiding In Plain Sight, which coincided with the publication of Mary Gabriel’s brilliant Ninth Street Women – indeed, Singh hosted a party for it – all part of building that ecosystem. Drexler trained under Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann in New York, but then withdrew, in 1982, to live a hermit-like existence on Monhegan Island, Maine, occasionally letting a painting go to a passing tourist for $50.