After seven years in Zurich, Galerie Philipp Zollinger will cease operations, its founder announced today on Instagram.
“I have always believed in hoping for the best while preparing for the unexpected,” Zollinger said in a statement. “A few months ago, I wrote to you about resilience and flexibility. At the start of this year, I was prepared to once again invest the time, energy, and conviction required to push the gallery forward. I wanted to believe in a recovering market and a path toward growth.”
However, Zollinger continued, “it has become increasingly clear that the global landscape offers little more than continued instability,” adding that the “conditions necessary” to sustain and grow the gallery “are no longer present.”
The gallery’s compact roster leaned toward Swiss and Scandinavian artists working in three-dimensional media, while also including artists from Southeast Asia and the United States. Its most recent exhibition, presented at Galerie Mueller in Basel, Switzerland, and closed on April 18, is a dual presentation of Renée Levi, a Swiss painter associated with Basel’s abstract tradition, and Theo Eble, a painter, graphic designer, and co-founder of the anti-fascist Swiss art collective Gruppe 33. (The same day he announced the closure, the Hayward Gallery in London and Audemars Piguet Contemporary announced that it had commissioned Levi to create a large-scale work for the Hayward’s facade, opening this fall.)
No future programming is listed on the gallery’s website, and the statement did not indicate how soon the operation will shutter. His gallery is the latest in a wave of closures that have seen galleries around the world impacted.
Galerie Philipp Zollinger closed its physical space on Rämistrasse in fall 2025, citing an “unstable” art market. In a statement at the time, the dealer pointed to shifting collecting trends—“Art is still being acquired, but on a smaller scale and less frequently”—alongside the mounting financial pressures of participating in art fairs as factors that forced the closure. The gallery operated nomadically before moving to a space among a cluster of galleries between the Zurich Opera House and the Kunsthaus Zürich.
Commenting on today’s permanent closure announcement, a host of Zurich peers shared their condolences with Zollinger and wished him well in his future ventures. “Thank you for the wonderful time and for being such a great neighbor,” wrote Galerie Schudi, while Galerie Gregor Staiger congratulated Zollinger “on the great run.”
For his part, Zollinger concluded: “I face this new reality with a heavy heart, but also with profound gratitude. To the artists who trusted me with their vision, and to everyone who supported the gallery, attended our exhibitions, and believed in our program: thank you. You made the dream of building this space a reality, and that is something I will always carry with me.”
