NEW YORK, NY.- Just two years after four prominent dealers announced with great fanfare a merger of their Upper East Side operations, the new gallery has come apart, with one prominent member deciding to go back to running her own operation.

On Friday, the group announced that Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn “will leave the existing partnership to reopen Salon 94, returning her focus to exhibitions at 3 East 89th Street, and to her art advisory practice.”

Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy and Amalia Dayan will continue under the banner of Lévy Gorvy Dayan at 19 E. 64th St., presenting exhibitions and advising clients as the newly formed Art Family Office.

By putting out the news on a summer Friday — and delaying its announcement for months — the gallery clearly hoped to minimize the impact. On Thursday, Levy said in an email to this reporter’s query: “Truly a non event. We are simply following our heart and respective passion and will continue to work together in different ways.”

But, given the financial weight and high profile of the gallery’s four members, the group could hardly have hoped the news would land quietly. Katya Kazakina of Artnet trumpeted: “Just in: Blue-chip gallery LGDR splits up after less than 2 years.”

And the breakup confirms what art market experts were predicting as soon as the merger was first announced: serious friction among four famously strong personalities and the firm’s likely implosion in only a matter of time.

Although the gallery presented some significant shows and put on a good face to the industry, there were obvious growing pains as the firm consolidated under Greenberg Rohatyn’s roof: a neo-Renaissance town house on East 89th Street that she had just opened after a major restoration and renovation by architect Rafael Viñoly, who died in May.

The adjustment was clearly biggest for Greenberg Rohatyn, who suddenly had to share her space and lose her independence after 20 years of running her own show in locations on the Bowery and out of her Upper East Side home.

“It was a natural decision that grew out of 18 months of working together,” Greenberg Rohatyn said in an telephone interview Friday. “I missed the ability to react quickly and put exhibitions on the floor without multiple people agreeing on it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.