One of the foremost private galleries for contemporary art in Norway, Galleri Riis was founded 1972 in Trondheim by collectors Inger and Andreas L. Riis. Their interest of collecting including works by the Cobra-group and Ecole de Paris, as well as Norwegian art from the 1960´s and 1970´s was the starting point for the gallery program.
The gallery relocated to Oslo in 1980, and in 1984, Espen Ryvarden became its director, marking a shift in the gallery´s program towards contemporary art from the Nordic countries.
The 2005 move to a larger industrial space with continued quality exhibitions, has manifested Galleri Riis’ position as a vanguard in presenting leading figures of the contemporary art world to the Oslo public, and receives a great deal of interest from collectors, dealers, museums and the press from the whole of Scandinavia. The current exhibition program reflects a manifold group of artists, vis-a-vis media, techniques and expression, with a selective spotlight on international artists and contemporary classics.