Anthony Spinello is Looking for the Next Basquiat
Miami is now one of the stations of the cross for the art world’s jetset. But when Anthony Spinello opened his namesake gallery in 2005 out of his walk-up apartment, the Miami area was, charitably, a cultural backwater. Art Basel Miami Beach was just three years into becoming a major fair.
“What is now Midtown Miami was a container yard, and North Miami Avenue didn’t even have sidewalks,” he says.
Two decades later Spinello is a fixture in one of the most lucrative nodes in the global art market and, at 42, one of the youngest dealers in town. In December he dedicated his booth in Basel to the terra-cotta sculptures of the Argentine-American Nina Surel and debuted the Cuban painter Marlon Portales. They’re just two of the artists who will feature prominently in a show he’s planning by year’s end to mark the gallery’s 20th anniversary—a milestone he thought he’d never reach.
“Navigating the art world is a bit of a roller coaster and an art form in itself,” he says. “I’ve evolved through many failures and maxed out credit cards. You need to be resilient.”
Spinello had recently graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York when he visited South Florida in 2002. “Miami lacked the anxiety that gripped Manhattan post-9/11,” he says.
He moved to Wynwood, a formerly blighted neighborhood that was being redeveloped as an arts district brimming with galleries, one of which he was hired to run. Within a year he had opened his own space. There were respected dealers nearby, including Fredric Snitzer, who remains “the gold standard,” but Spinello stood out for his youth—he was 23—and his gonzo installations (one show featured a functioning Kenmore washing machine).
Snitzer and Annina Nosei (best known for being the first to represent Jean-Michel Basquiat) gave him crucial early counsel: “Collect works from the artists I represent. Annina once shared that one of her biggest regrets was not holding on to more Basquiats for herself.”
That’s advice he would pass on today. Plus something else he learned the hard way: “I knew early on that making a name for myself would be a marathon, not a sprint.”
Lead image: Anthony Spinello at his namesake gallery before a painting by Marlon Portales.
This story appears in the February 2025 issue of Town & Country, with the headline “Miami's Collector Conjurer.” SUBSCRIBE NOW
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