Texts by Chris Stephens and Judith Goldman

John Kasmin, known to all simply as Kasmin, was the most important dealer in contemporary art in Britain in the 1960s. At the eponymous Kasmin Gallery on New Bond Street, he worked with the leading British and American artists of the day, notably Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Anthony Caro, Richard Smith, Robyn Denny, Gillian Ayres, Howard Hodgkin, and David Hockney. Kasmin gave many of these artists their first show and was an early champion of their art. A true pioneer, he introduced the work of American Abstract Expressionists and minimalists to Britain, and helped bring young British artists to American audiences for the first time. In the process, he transformed the London art world and became as recognizable as his gallery artists.

Less well known is that Kasmin is also an accomplished photographer, having started his working life as an assistant to the celebrated portrait photographer Ida Kar. Throughout his life, he has always carried his camera, constantly photographing – and being photographed with – his bohemian artist and writer friends and family members. This remarkable book is the first time that he has published a collection of his favourite and most intimate photographs. With a focus on the 1960s and 1970s, these images tell a rich story of a fertile period when Kasmin was working with an array of diverse creative figures. We see Newman, Frankenthaler, and others in their studios; we hang out with Clement Greenberg, Leo Castelli, and other important figures of the New York scene; we join Hockney as he learns to drive in Los Angeles and as he holidays in France with Kasmin and his children and their shared circle of friends, among them Celia Birtwell, Ossie Clark, and Wayne Sleep; we witness the same artist again in playful mood with his parents at home in Bradford; and we follow Kasmin as he and his close friend the travel writer Bruce Chatwin voyage to Africa and the Caribbean, and as he visits India with Howard Hodgkin.

Drawn directly from Kasmin’s personal archive, the book contains dozens of images that have never been seen before. Each photograph, whether a posed portrait or a hastily grabbed snapshot, reveals something new, something private about some of the best-known names in postwar art and the milieu in which they lived. They capture key moments – such as Hockney’s early days in California – and the close friendships within Kasmin’s circle. Seen together, they bear witness to an exciting time when young, dynamic artists were finding a new language and shaping a new world.

Accompanying the photographs are texts by the British art historian and curator Chris Stephens, writing about Kasmin’s circle in the 1960s and 1970s, and his long-time friend American curator and writer Judith Goldman, who offers a more personal account of Kasmin and his life.

Dr Chris Stephens has been Director of the Holburne Museum in Bath since 2017. Prior to that he worked at Tate for more than twenty years, as Head of Displays, Tate Britain, for much of that time, and also as Head of Modern British Art.

Judith Goldman is an award-winning writer, curator, and publisher in New York City. A former editor of ARTnews, she was also the curator of prints at the Whitney Museum of Art from 1977 to 1991. She has established the Blue Heron Press and Deuce II Editions to publish artists’ books and editions.