Francesc Mestre

In 2011, the Francesc Mestre gallery celebrated its tenth anniversary with a commemorative exhibition titled:”Ten years and some days” which collected at least one masterpiece from each artist that had been shown individually throughout that decade. To mark the occasion of this anniversary, the prestigious art historian, Francesc Fontbona, published in the magazine El Temps, the article entitled “It’s time to talk about Francesc Mestre” where he described the trajectory of the gallery and its gallerist in the following words:

“(…) Francesc Mestre, the gallery director, has a long trajectory linked to contemporary art, through galleries that in the 60s and 70s had a strong influence on the awakening of a new artistic sensitivity in our country, such as Adrià or René Metras. Then, however, his name was only in the minds of those inside these art spaces, or in the world of Barcelona’s galleries. This career has made him a great connoisseur, not only in Catalan art of the twentieth century and in the aesthetic appearance, but also of its sociological implications, and naturally of circumstances, not always innocent, that govern the imposition and diffusion of tastes and names. Mestre treasures some very direct experiences of events and attitudes that would help us to know and interpret the evolution of our art world from postwar to current times, so if one day he decided to write his book, the one which still has not yet been planned, he would offer us a magnificent document. Not an anecdote, but – as Eugeni d’Ors would say, a qualified one.

Since opening his own gallery it has been oriented in this sense to more specialised works in small formats, but with a much wider stylistic and chronological scope, and this task quickly proved itself to be remarkable, entering the world of art, which to many until then, they had not dared to take the step of acquiring pieces, most probably finding them economically unaffordable or, even, because they didn’t feel able to pass the barrier between the status of a simple visitor to an active client.

Francesc Fontbona