London painter Denzil Forrester has signed with Thaddaeus Ropac, ending uncertainty after his former gallery, Stephen Friedman, went into administration earlier this year. The 70-year-old Grenada-born artist, whose canvases channel the movement and heat of Britain's Black club scene, had worked with Friedman for eight years before the business failed. Forrester said that several dealers competed to represent him, including one other major international gallery, and that counsel from fellow painter Peter Doig ultimately guided his decision. Doig has been pivotal in Forrester's career, helping revive it a decade ago. Ropac traces his own admiration to 2019, when artist Alvaro Barrington included Forrester's 2005 painting Knights of Dub in a group exhibition he curated at the London gallery. The dealer said the canvas stayed in his mind, praising its capture of the sound and energy of the capital's clubs. He also outlined plans to introduce Forrester to European audiences — the painter has never exhibited on the continent — suggesting French viewers in particular would respond, and drew a line between the dub-inflected work and early Cubism. The new partnership opens with two recent paintings, Professor Version and Yard, both made in 2025, which the gallery will present at Frieze London priced at £175,000 each. A first solo exhibition of new work is scheduled for the Mayfair space in June 2027, timed to coincide with a presentation at The Box in Plymouth. Forrester came to London as a child in 1967 and began painting Black British life in the 1980s. Alongside the dance-floor scenes for which he is best known, his early work confronted policing and racial tension, including paintings responding to the 1981 Brixton uprising. After three decades teaching drawing and painting at Morley College in relative obscurity, wider recognition arrived around 2016 with Doig's support, followed by institutional solos at Nottingham Contemporary in 2021 and the Kemper Museum and ICA Miami in 2023. In a correction issued after publication, the original report noted that Forrester had initially misremembered Doig advising him on his earlier move to Stephen Friedman, and the account was amended.