Larry Gagosian graduated from UCLA in 1969 with a degree in English Literature. In 1980, he opened a gallery in Los Angeles, specializing in modern and contemporary art. Five years later he expanded his activities to New York, opening a gallery in Chelsea with an exhibition of key works from the renowned Pop art collection of Emily and Burton Tremaine. Until 1996, he owned a SoHo gallery with the legendary dealer Leo Castelli, where they mounted a complete survey of Roy Lichtenstein’s painted bronze sculptures, as well as exhibitions by Ellsworth Kelly and Bruce Nauman, among others.

Attuned to the dynamics of today’s world, Gagosian Gallery has evolved into a global network, currently maintaining twelve distinct exhibition spaces in eight cities. Within the United States, the Madison Avenue location opened in New York in 1989 and has expanded to occupy three floors of the building. Gagosian Los Angeles doubled its footprint in 2010 with a spectacular gallery designed by Richard Meier, who was also responsible for the first gallery at the adjoining site, which opened in 1995. The versatile gallery complex on West 24th Street in New York, which opened in 1999, is complemented by a second large gallery on West 21st Street, both designed by Richard Gluckman. In 2013, a new ground floor gallery will open at 976 Madison Avenue.

In 2004, Larry Gagosian expanded his operations internationally, to London, with a magnificent light-filled gallery on Britannia Street, Kings Cross, designed by Caruso St. John. This was followed by a vitrine-style space on Davies Street, Mayfair. Gagosian Rome, an imposing nineteenth-century building in the historic city center, opened in 2007, followed by Gagosian Athens in August of 2009. In late 2010, Gagosian Paris and Gagosian Geneva opened, followed by Gagosian Hong Kong in January of 2011. A second Paris gallery, a vast industrial space situated at Le Bourget airport, opened in October of 2012, and a third London gallery is scheduled to open in Mayfair in 2014.

Over the last three decades, Gagosian Gallery has presented an unparalleled program of exhibitions by legendary figures such as Richard Artschwager, Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Mike Kelley, Roy Lichtenstein, Kazimir Malevich, Piero Manzoni, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Egon Schiele, David Smith, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Franz West. Such programming attracts remarkable crowds: "Picasso: Mosqueteros" (Gagosian New York, 2009) drew more than 100,000 visitors, while "Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (1945–1962)" (Gagosian London, 2010) received more than 60,000 visitors. Major exhibitions in New York in 2012 included a retrospective of the work of Lucio Fontana, and the monumental photographic murals and related photographs of Richard Avedon. In 2013 a major retrospective of over 50 paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat attracted over 85,000 visitors to the West 24th Street gallery.

Together with its distinguished historical program, the gallery presents a roster of ambitious exhibitions by the world’s most acclaimed living artists, including Georg Baselitz, Cecily Brown, John Currin, Walter De Maria, Mark Grotjahn, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Jasper Johns, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Sally Mann, Brice Marden, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Rudolf Stingel, Mark Tansey, Rachel Whiteread, and Christopher Wool. Such exhibitions, which have placed Larry Gagosian and Gagosian Gallery at the forefront of the contemporary art scene, are accompanied by beautifully designed, scholarly catalogues and monographs. The gallery also publishes catalogues raisonnés on several of its artists.

Larry Gagosian is a benefactor of major museums and arts organizations worldwide, and has provided instrumental support for many important institutional exhibitions and artist projects, including the magnificent Ceiling by Cy Twombly in the Salle des Bronzes in the Musée du Louvre, a permanent commission that opened to the public in 2010. Selected works from his renowned private collection were selected for the exhibition "RSTW," curated by Musée Picasso director Anne Baldassari and presented in Abu Dhabi in 2010.

In 2006, Larry Gagosian received the Peabody Award as a producer of American Masters: Andy Warhol, A Documentary Film. In recognition of his longstanding commitment to the arts, in the spring of 2010 he was awarded the Rome Prize for Visual Arts by the American Academy in Rome. In the fall of 2010, the French government awarded Larry Gagosian the Legion d’Honneur with the rank of Chevalier.  He is a member of the Board of Directors of Jazz at Lincoln Center.