Personalities from the art world who died in 2025

January 13. Oliviero Toscani (82 years old), iconoclastic Italian photographer, famous for his shocking advertising campaigns for brands like Benetton.

February 3. Helga de Alvear (88 years old), gallery owner of German origin established in Spain (Madrid), and who in 2021 installed her international collection of contemporary art in a museum built for this purpose in Cáceres.

February 4. Jean-Daniel Compain (73 years old), former director of the Fiac (International Contemporary Art Fair) and founder of the BAD+ (contemporary art and design) fair in Bordeaux.

February 9. Ginette Moulin (98 years old), granddaughter of the founder of the Galeries Lafayette department stores. A collector, she created the Famille Moulin endowment fund with her grandson Guillaume Houzé.

February 12. Mel Bochner (84 years old), American artist, one of the major figures of conceptual art, who placed the question of measurement at the center of his work.

February 15. Serge Lasvignes (70 years old), senior civil servant, former president of the Center Pompidou (2015-2021).

March 6. Ricardo Scofidio (85), New York architect whose firm redeveloped the “High Line” in New York, transforming the elevated railway into hanging gardens.

March 15. Agnès de Gouvion Saint-Cyr (75 years old), general inspector for photography at the Ministry of Culture for more than thirty years, nicknamed “the popess of photography”. Also responsible for the photography collection at the National Center for Visual Arts.

March 23. Michèle Chomette (86 years old), Parisian gallery owner specializing in old, modern and contemporary photography since 1985.

March 26. Kiyoshi Taménaga (89 years old), founder of the Taménaga Gallery in Tokyo and promoter of Franco-Japanese cultural exchanges.

April 5. Patrick Berko (74 years old), Belgian art dealer, major specialist in 19th century European painting.

April 19. Guy Ullens (89 years old), Belgian industrialist and billionaire, great collector of modern and contemporary Chinese art, co-founder in 2007 of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Ucca) in Beijing.

May 2. Dara Birnbaum (78 years old), American artist, important representative of video art, since the 1970s.

May 10. Koyo Kouoh (57 years old), Cameroonian curator, promoter of contemporary African art, curator of the 61st Venice Biennale, scheduled for 2026.

May 21. Eva, from the duo Eva & Adele (57 years old), German performance artist, half of the queer couple.

May 23. Sebastião Salgado (81), internationally renowned Franco-Brazilian photographer, famous for his black and white images of damage caused by deforestation in the Amazon.

June 4. Daniel Lelong (92 years old), co-founder in 1987 of Galerie Lelong & Co. in Paris

. June 14.

Joel Shapiro (83), American postminimalist sculptor, known for his simple and powerful geometric shapes in wood and bronze. June 16.

Denyse Durand-Ruel (91 years old), collector and patron. Alongside her husband, Philippe Durand-Ruel, she supported the New Realists since the 1960s. She is behind the publication of around twenty artist catalogs raisonnés. June 17.

Agathe Gaillard (83 years old), pioneer of Parisian galleries dedicated to photography. June 22.

Arnaldo Pomodoro (99 years old), Italian sculptor, famous for his imposing bronze spheres. July 6.

Jacqueline Munck (68), chief curator of heritage for the City of Paris at the Museum of Modern Art. July 21.

Takehiko Sugawara (62 years old), heir to traditional Japanese painting. August 7. François Chaslin (76 years old), architect and architecture critic. Editor-in-chief of the magazine Architecture Today

(1987-1994), he was also producer of the show “Métropolitains” on France Culture. August 31.

© Allison Bellido September 10.

Pierre Dunoyer (75 years old), French abstract painter, influenced by the philosophy of Heidegger. September 13.

Henriette Viallat (86 years old), French artist and wife of the painter Claude Viallat. October 9.

Richard Lagrange (71), senior French civil servant, regional director of Cultural Affairs successively in several regions, then director of the National Center for Visual Arts from 2008. October 20.

Christian Caujolle (72), French journalist and photographer, founder of the VU agency. October 27.

Mimmo Jodice (91 years old), photographer attached to his hometown of Naples and whose landscapes, architectures and ancient statues are imbued with metaphysics. October 29.

Alison Knowles (92), American conceptual artist, composer and poet, founding member of the Fluxus movement. October 31. Daniel Soutif (79 years old), critic and art historian, exhibition curator (“Le temps, vite”, in 2000 at the Center Pompidou). He was editor-in-chief of Mnam notebooks

then director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Center Pompidou. November 9.

Erik Boulatov (92 years old), co-founder of Sots art, an underground movement of the 1970s which diverted the codes of Soviet propaganda, but from which he emancipated himself. From the 1980s, it was exhibited in museums in Russia and abroad. November 13.

Guy Cogeval (70), French art historian and curator. He was director of the Museum of French Monuments in Paris, then director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and finally president of the Musée d’Orsay. In Orsay, he worked towards the merger with the Musée de l’Orangerie. December 5.

Frank Gehry (92 years old), American architect famous for his spectacular buildings such as the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Louis-Vuitton Foundation (read p. 9). December 6.