Charles Cowles is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 art dealer

Art dealer

An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...

 and a collector of contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

. Cowles was also a curator

Curator

A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

 of Fine Art

Fine art

Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....

 at the Seattle Art Museum

Seattle Art Museum

The Seattle Art Museum is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, USA. It maintains three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill, and the Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened on...

 from 1975 until 1979.

He opened his contemporary art gallery at 420 West Broadway in SoHo

SoHo

SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...

 in lower Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 in 1979, mounting the first public exhibition there in April 1980. The Charles Cowles Gallery was finally located on 537 West 24th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues in Chelsea

Chelsea, Manhattan

Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The district's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, 30th Street to the north, the western boundary of the Ladies' Mile Historic District – which lies between the Avenue of the Americas and...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

After thirty years as a successful art dealer he closed his contemporary art gallery and retired to a more private life. In June 2009, Charles Cowles announced his retirement and closed the gallery.

Charles Cowles was the publisher of Artforum

Artforum

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...

magazine from the mid-1960s until the early-1980s. He graduated from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in the early-1960s and originally operated the magazine in 1965 from Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. By 1967, he moved Artforum

Artforum

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...

to Manhattan where it quickly became one of America's leading contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

 magazines. His family was also connected to publishing via the Cowles Media Company

Cowles Media Company

Cowles Media Company was a newspaper, magazine and information publishing company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. The company operated Cowles Business Media, Cowles Creative Publishing and Cowles Enthusiast Media units. The McClatchy Company purchased Cowles Media in 1998...

.

Selected artists and former artists

During its years of operation from April 1980 through July 2009 the Charles Cowles Gallery exhibited several artists including:
Charles Arnoldi

Charles Arnoldi

Charles Arnoldi, also known as Chuck Arnoldi and as Charles Arthur Arnoldi is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born April 10, 1946 in Dayton, Ohio....

, Dennis Ashbaugh

Dennis Ashbaugh

Dennis John Ashbaugh is an American painter and artist from New York. He is one of the first artists to employ DNA marking patterns in paintings, in his 1992 work Designer Gene. Ashbaugh's use of light and colour in his large-scale paintings of autoradiographs have drawn comparison with Mark Rothko...

, David Bates (artist)

David Bates (artist)

David Bates was an English landscape artist who painted in oils and watercolour.Bates was born in Cambridge and from 1855 worked as a porcelain painter at the Royal Worcester porcelain works in Worcester - where he came to specialise in painting flowers...

, Howard Ben Tré

Howard Ben Tré

Howard Ben Tré is an American glass artist. He works with poured glass, creating small sculptures and large scale public artworks. Glass magazine has called Ben Tré a pioneer in the technique of using hot glass casting in fine art....

, Mark Boyle

Mark Boyle

Mark Boyle was an artist born in Glasgow and known for his work in the cultural UK Underground of the 1950s around the Traverse Theatre, and exhibiting since 1985 with Joan Hills and their children Sebastian and Georgia as Boyle Family.The World Series pieces involve the meticulous re-creation of...

, Marsha Burns, Beatrice Caracciolo, Sandro Chia

Sandro Chia

Sandro Chia is an Italian painter and sculptor.A native of Florence, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with fellow countrymen Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria, and Enzo Cucchi....

, Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...

, Gene Davis

Gene Davis (painter)

Gene Davis was an American painter known especially for his paintings of vertical stripes of color, and was a member of the group of abstract painters in Washington DC during the 1960s known as the Washington Color School....

, Ronald Davis

Ronald Davis

Ronald Davis , born 1937, is an American painter whose work is associated with Geometric abstraction, Abstract Illusionism, Lyrical Abstraction, Hard-edge painting, Shaped canvas painting, Color field painting, and 3D Computer Graphics...

, Laddie Dill, Elizabeth Enders, William Eggleston

William Eggleston

William Eggleston , is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries—which, until the 1970s, often tended to privilege work by photographers making black-and-white prints.- Early years...

, Vernon Fisher, Caio Fonseca

Caio Fonseca

Caio Fonseca is an American artist.Fonseca was born in New York to a family of artists. His older brother Bruno Fonseca , was a well known contemporary artist. His father, Gonzalo Fonseca, was an Uruguayan sculptor.He was raised in New York City...

, Richard Hamilton (artist)

Richard Hamilton (artist)

Richard William Hamilton, CH was a British painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the...

, Tom Holland (artist), Patrick Ireland

Patrick Ireland

Patrick Ireland was the alter ego of Brian O'Doherty an Irish sculptor, conceptual artist, author, and installation artist. He was born in County Roscommon in 1928 and lives and works in the United States. O'Doherty began signing his work under the name Patrick Ireland in reaction to the Bloody...

, Harry Kramer (artist), Ronnie Landfield

Ronnie Landfield

Ronnie Landfield is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, , and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.Landfield is...

, Terence LaNoue, Frank Lobdell, Michael Lucero, Doug Martin (artist), Wilhelm Moser, Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....

, Manuel Neri

Manuel Neri

Manuel Neri is an American sculptor, painter, and printmaker and a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.- Biography :...

, Nathan Oliveira

Nathan Oliveira

Nathan Oliveira was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to Portuguese parents...

, Beverly Pepper

Beverly Pepper

Beverly Pepper is a pioneering sculptor known for her monumental works,site specific and land art. She remains independent from any particular art movement.- Early Life and Education :...

, Joanna Pousette-Dart, Mimmo Rotella

Mimmo Rotella

Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella, , was an Italian artist and poet best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advertising posters.Rotella was born in Catanzaro, Calabria....

, Al Souza, Toshiko Takaezu

Toshiko Takaezu

Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist.She was born to Japanese immigrant parents in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, in 1922. She studied at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and at the University of Hawaii under Claude Horan from 1948-1951...

, Peter Voulkos

Peter Voulkos

Peter Voulkos popular name of Panagiotis Voulkos, was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his Abstract Expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art....

, Martin Saar

Martin Saar

Martin Saar is an artist in New York. He is notable for making mosaic portraits of the New York celebrities and has been featured in the New York Times...

, Italo Scanga

Italo Scanga

Italo Scanga Italian-born American artist.-Biography:Born in Lago, Calabria to Giuseppe and Serafina Ziccarelli, youngest of four children: Carolina, Mafalda and Nicolino.-About his work:...

, Frank Stella

Frank Stella

Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...

, Darren Waterston

Darren Waterston

Darren Waterston is an American artist who paints in the style of Ross Bleckner and Kara Walker.-Background:Waterson was born in California in 1965, studied and received his BFA at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.- References :...

, William T. Wiley

William T. Wiley

William T. Wiley is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, performance, and pinball. At least some of Wiley's work has been referred to as Funk art....

, Xiaoze Xie

Xiaoze Xie

Xiaoze Xie is a visual artist and professor who lives in Palo Alto, California and is a professor at Stanford University.Xie was born in 1966 in Guangdong, China and received his Bachelor of Architecture from Tsinghua University in 1988, followed by a Masters of Fine Arts from Central Academy of...

, Robert Yoder