Rago Auctions

Founded in 1960 by Marilyn Cole Fischbach, the influential Fischbach Gallery helped to launch the careers of a range of major 20th century artists, including Alex Katz and Eva Hesse, and was known for pioneering the work of young minimalist artists in the 1960s. When Aladar Marberger was named gallery director in the 1970s, he successfully worked to shift the gallery’s focus from the contemporary avant-garde to painterly realism; his personal collection reflects this range of styles, with works from Ronald Bladen, Alex Katz, Raymond Parker, Georg Pfahler, Doug Ohlson, and Robert Swain alongside Wynn Chamberlain, Neil Welliver, and Nancy Hagin, among others. Marberger worked closely with the gallery’s artists, tirelessly supporting them in and outside of the gallery walls: one notable example is his facilitation of Gene Davis’s 1972 public work known as Franklin’s Footpath. The massive outdoor painting of the artist’s signature stripes on the ground lead up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and, at 414 feet in length, it was the world’s largest painting at the time.