A founding gallery at the Bergamot Station Arts Center, Craig Krull Gallery is recognized for California painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography, focusing on local movements and lineages including Light and Space, Chicanx Art, and California Clay. The gallery presents sixteen to twenty exhibitions per year, with educational programs, artist talks, and performances.

Our history

Craig Krull opened Turner/Krull Gallery on Melrose Avenue in 1991, focusing on the exceptional yet underrepresented Los Angeles photography community, including Anthony Hernandez, Robbert Flick, John Divola, JoAnn Callis, Edmund Teske, and Julius Shulman. Krull also brought back to LA major photographers such as Robert Adams, Frederick Sommer, and William Eggleston.  The ‘90s saw explosive growth in the photography market, a revitalized interest in the medium and its history, and tremendous cross-fertilization of photography with other visual art forms. Krull curated exhibitions on the history of Photomontage, Neue Sachlichkeit Photography, and the landmark “Action/Performance and the Photograph,” which examined the relationship of still photography and Performance Art. 

In 1994, the re-named Craig Krull Gallery became a founding member of the newly established Bergamot Station Art Center in Santa Monica, joining legendary LA gallerists Rosamund Felsen, Patricia Faure, Burnett Miller, and others. The gallery was no longer exclusively photo-based, but maintained its dedication to LA artists, exhibiting the quintessential California Light and Space artist Peter Alexander, the renowned portrait artist Don Bachardy, the photographer/painter/actor Dennis Hopper, the powerfully raw, savage and often confrontational work of Llyn Foulkes, and the witty assemblages of Alexis Smith. Krull’s interest in LA art history, linked with his own history of exhibiting photography, was combined in his curated exhibition “Photographing the L.A. Art Scene: 1955-1975,” which included pictures of this seminal period by Jerry McMillan, Julian Wasser, and the key LA Beat Generation photographer, Charles Brittin, whom Krull re-introduced in a major retrospective co-curated with Walter Hopps. 

A native of Los Angeles, Krull was raised with an awareness and passion for Chicano art and culture and has represented some of the leading figures in this movement, such as Carlos Almaraz, Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, Gronk, and Dora De Larios—a ceramist of fanciful, anthropomorphic animals, mythic warriors, and Latina goddesses.

The gallery also exhibits a number of LA artists working in textiles, clay, and other organic materials. Nine of these artists, including Blue McRight, Brittany Mojo and Lavialle Campbell, were featured in the group exhibition, of rope and chain her bones are made, marking a new direction for the gallery into ceramics and other work evidencing the hand of the artist.

Craig Krull Gallery will continue to provide a thoughtfully curated, educational platform for the art of our time, in the culturally diverse community of Southern California, one of the leading and exponentially expanding art scenes in the world.