Templon Galery's image showing 6 painting in a bright white room

Art and culture

Your insider guide to Paris’s art scene

March 21, 2023

As a firm Francophile and general manager at Le Meurice, Franka Holtmann enjoys seeing the capital’s latest art exhibitions. Here, she shares her favourite galleries in Paris.

Loevenbruck

Intrigued, in awe and at peace are the array of emotions you may experience while gallery hopping on Rue de Seine, a 20-minute stroll from Le Meurice. Hidden on a leafy side street, a large sculpture of a foot marks the entrance to Loevenbruck. Originally launched with French painters such as Michel Parmentier, this contemporary gallery now champions international creatives such as the Austrian transgender filmmaker Ashley Hans Scheirl, whose aim is to challenge how we think about identity.

6 rue Jacques Callot, 75006 Paris

Image of the Loevenbruck galery's outside

Galerie Allen

In similar style to its better-known neighbour, Centre Pompidou, Galerie Allen specialises in contemporary art. Director Joseph Allen Shea says, “The gallery chooses to defend an artist’s oeuvre – their entire body of work – rather than single works, and represents a cross-generational and regionally varied list of confirmed and emerging artists.” These include Chinese-born Trevor Yeung, who often uses plants to create mixed media works. Inspired by his failures and inner conflicts, they have a disconcerting way of making you reconsider your own.

6 passage Sainte-Avoye, 75003 Paris (access from 8 rue Rambuteau)

Templon Paris

A 21-year-old Daniel Templon made waves when he founded this gallery in 1966, introducing Yayoi Kusama and American artists Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to the French public. He’s since set up satellite galleries in Brussels and New York. Each space champions unknown and established artists, with several having Venice Biennale acclaim. Many of the works in the Paris outpost embody a sense of movement – flashes of colour, energetic brushstrokes and passionate three-dimensional paintings that draw you in, leaving you thinking about the piece long after you’ve left.

30 rue Beaubourg, 75003 Paris

Perrotin

Like Daniel Templon, Emmanuel Perrotin was another early starter, establishing his first gallery at 21. Pieces on display might include conceptual artist Tavares Strachan’s monumental works, embodying themes of invisibility, displacement and loss. Inspired by expeditions to space and other desolate, extreme environments, these may encourage you to question what you can see – and more importantly, what’s not visible.

76 rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris and neighbouring 10 impasse Saint Claude, 75003 Paris

Galerie Nathalie Obadia

Its outside is the hue of a cloudy winter’s sky – but step inside either location of Galerie Nathalie Obadia to reveal a treasure trove of vibrant, colourful art. Blank, expansive walls provide the perfect canvas for Collin Sekajugo’s expressive collages and Valérie Belin’s ethereal, avant-garde images. Bathed in natural light by enormous skylights, the space on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré is as astonishing as the works. Associate director Eva Ben Dhiab says, “Visitors are surprised by our gallery’s size and lightness, especially our gallery on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré as it’s one of the neighbourhood’s biggest.”

91 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris

3 rue du Cloître Saint-Merri, 75004 Paris

Image of Wang's exhibition showing seven scultpure in a bright white room

If you’ve enjoyed reading about the city’s galleries, you may enjoy discovering some of Paris’s finest artisans.

Header image courtesy of Philippe Cognee and Galerie Templon

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