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Everything began in Stuttgart in September 1974 when Max Hetzler opened the Hetzler+Keller gallery. The eclectic young gallery was in search of its own identity and showed works by Hanne Darboven, Rebecca Horn, Mario Merz, David Rabinowitch, Klaus Rinke, Ulrich Rückriem and others. When Kasper König, then a freelance curator, brought the works of Donald Judd and Richard Long to Germany in his exhibitions, Hetzler showed them in Stuttgart in his gallery or in a non-profit space nearby.

With his „mentor“, the art dealer Hans-Jürgen Müller, their colleague Ursula Schurr, and the support of the Grässlin family, Max Hetzler organised the exhibition europa 79, with a growing awareness of their profession and a desire to highlight not only the commercial but the intellectual role of the galleries alongside the then flourishing art institutions.

Over the next few years a program was established, in 1981 finding its collective expression in an exhibition whose title again did not understate the ambition: Junge Kunst aus Westdeutschland (Young Art from West Germany). Among the artists were Werner Büttner, Günther Förg, Martin Kippenberger, Reinhard Mucha, Albert Oehlen and his brother Markus.

In 1983, the Galerie moved to Cologne. The ten years spent in Cologne were decisive and established Galerie Max Hetzler on the international scene. A little group soon formed around certain of the artists seen in Junge Kunst aus Westdeutschland (Büttner, Förg, Kippenberger, Mucha, Oehlen), to whom we should add Georg Herold, Meuser and Hubert Kiecol, among others. The Rhineland institutions followed these artists; the Museum Folkwang, Essen, notably gave home to the legendary exhibition Wahrheit ist Arbeit (Truth is Work) by Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen in 1984. In 1987, Thomas Struth exhibited his cityscape photographs at the gallery, marking the start of a strong collaboration that has lasted more than twenty-five years since.

A particular connection was established between Cologne and New York. In the eighties, Galerie Max Hetzler presented the work of four American artists of considerable importance: Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Robert Gober and Cady Noland. In 1989, Hetzler went into partnership with Luhring Augustine to open a space at Santa Monica in California. He continued to work regularly with two of the most important American contemporary artists: Christopher Wool, who had his first solo exhibition at the gallery in 1989, showing word paintings among others, and Jeff Koons – everyone in Cologne remembers his exceptional exhibitions Banality of 1988 as well as Made in Heaven in 1991.

Critics were invited to curate group exhibitions, both in Cologne and in Santa Monica; the artists who appeared in these exhibitions included Larry Clark, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Cindy Sherman, Raymond Pettibon, Franz West and subsequently Rirkrit Tiravanija and Philippe Parreno.