Gary Koeppel, MFA, ASA

Gary M. Koeppel is the world's foremost authority on the art and art values of the late artist, Henry Miller. Koeppel holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Portland State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the State University of Iowa. Although a university professor for seven years, he became involved in the art world in 1968 and has been involved in art sales, marketing and valuations during the past thirty years. He is a candidate member of the American Society of Appraisers.

Koeppel currently owns and operates galleries located in Big Sur and Pebble Beach, California, and in Hana, Maui. He owns Coast Publishing and has produced the Henry Miller Centennial Collection of Limited Edition Prints. As the Miller estate-licensing agent, he has licensed Miller's art to the Henry Miller Art Museums in Omachi, Japan and in Big Sur, California. He has organized and produced major Henry Miller art exhibitions throughout the world.

In 1971 Koeppel became Henry Miller's personal art dealer and gallery representative until the artist's death in 1980. He later became the estate's authorized art dealer, publisher and worldwide licensing agent for all of Miller's art and art-related products.

Beginning in 1971 Koeppel became the exclusive United States and Western European distributor of a collection of stone-plate (litho/graphies) prints published by Sadajiro Kubo of Tokyo. Kubo was a well known art critic, collector and publisher as well as president of the Japan Henry Miller Society. Upon his death in October 1996, the torch passed from Kubo to Koeppel as the world's leading authority in the paintings of Henry Miller.

Koeppel has represented more Henry Miller paintings than any other individual, business or organization. To one Japanese collector alone he placed over 80 original paintings from 1975 to 1990. He represented several collectors in finding 25 original paintings to the Henry Miller Museum of Art in Omachi, Japan for their April 1996 grand opening.

He has organized numerous, major national and international Henry Miller art exhibitions in California, Hawaii, Israel, Germany and Tokyo. Future international exhibitions are being planned for Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles.

As the official estate fine art print publisher, he has produced the Centennial Collection of Limited Edition Prints which consists of 25 images in small, collector's editions of only 200 prints in each; these posthumously-released prints are the last to bear the original signature of Henry Miller. This printing was begun in 1990 and completed in 1995.

As the authorized estate licensor, Koeppel has licensed art-related products to the Tokyo Daimaru Museum, the Able Company and the Henry Art Miller Museums in Omachi and Big Sur.

For the 1997 exhibition at the Daimaru Museum in the Ginza district of Tokyo, Koeppel curated, cataloged and appraised the 120 paintings that were loaned by forty collectors throughout the United States. This was the largest collection of original Miller paintings ever organized. In one week thirty-five thousand attendees visited the exhibit.

In 1990 Koeppel published "Henry Miller, The Paintings: A Centennial Retrospective". In 1997 he wrote and edited an English version of the Japanese exhibition catalog, "To Paint is to Love Again". In 2002 he printed the revised Henry Miller Print Catalog. In 2004 Coast Publishing intends to re-publish "The Paintings of Henry Miller", which will be the first of four planned art publications.