THE GALLERIST MARIE-ROBIN
Crédit : Tavan Esmaili
The gallerist Marie-Robin, in symbiosis with Architecture, Geometry, and Color: Marie-Robin, the passion for discovery.
Coming from a family of winemakers from the Corbières, nothing suggested that Marie-Robin would pursue a career in art.
However, after winning a drawing contest in Monaco at just 12 years old, her parents agreed that she could pursue a baccalaureate in "A7 Plastic Arts" and Industrial Design.
With her diploma in hand, she enrolled in a pottery workshop in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, a village located a few kilometers from Nice. It was there that she had an encounter that would change her life: meeting César and Arman.
It was there that she discovered the profession of a gallerist…
A decisive step for the rest of her career, as César the sculptor, noticing her passion for art, encouraged her to attend the Met de Penninghen workshop in Paris (ESAG).
Not far from this workshop, she would regularly visit the Denise René Gallery on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Like this gallery, "which had the ability to resist the effects of trends, financial flows, or the media buzz that accompany them," Marie-Robin traces her path as a gallerist...
But before that, Marie-Robin went to Milan to enrich her artistic knowledge. There, she discovered the treasures of classical art, the vitality of contemporary art galleries, and met the Memphis group, an Italian design and architecture movement that was highly influential in the 1980s.
Upon her return in 1984, Marie-Robin opened her first art and design publishing gallery in Paris, across from the Beaubourg Center. Saddened by the disappearance, one by one, of her businesses—suppliers of French craft trades!
She set up her gallery on Rue de Montmorency, at the heart of the creative Marais, and decided to focus on contemporary art, particularly minimalist art, concrete art, kinetic art, constructed and geometric abstraction, as well as movements related to architecture or science. She notably presented Esther Hess, an artist now recognized for her work, who follows in the tradition of artists and theorists advocating for the erasure of boundaries between applied arts and fine arts, as well as Francine Holley, a pioneer of abstract art in the 1950s.
"I chose an atypical location to present the works both in a traditional gallery space facing the street, and in a more intimate passageway resembling an apartment, extending into a Parisian garden with a greenhouse. This allows me to show how to live with the works and bring them into resonance with everyday life," she explains.
Marie-Robin supports emerging but promising artists, or those who are not yet represented in France, even though some are already recognized in the United States, London, Germany, Eastern Europe, or Scandinavia.