October is the time of the year that the contemporary art scene in the city of lights shines its brightest glow. The French capital is filled with at least six large and small contemporary art fairs this week, plus countless exhibition openings. The truth is that Paris’ strong collector base owes to its long history as a nurturing place of generations of art collectors. LARRY’S LIST has come up with a list of Paris-based art collectors, from the mega to the lower-profile ones, in case you spot them at various vernissages and events this week.
François Pinault
@boursedecommerce; @palazzo_grassi
Founder of the luxury goods holding company Kering and with a net worth of $29 billion, François Pinault owns the majority stake in the Christie’s auction house and one of the world’s largest contemporary art collections — with all the A-listers one might think of. He founded two art spaces to showcase his collection in Venice: the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana. His dream to open a museum in Paris was finally realized when the $170 million Bourse de Commerce designed by renowned architect Tadao Ando opened in 2021.
Hélène and Bernard Arnault
@fondationlv
The couple behind the conglomerate LVMH owns the third largest fortune worldwide. Bernard Arnaut often collaborate with artists, such as Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami, to design new products for his high-end brands. The couple’s art collection is filled with postwar and contemporary heavyweights, from Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst. They are also behind the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which inaugurated a $135 million Frank Gehry-designed museum in Paris.
Edouard Carmignac
@fondationcarmignac
Carmignac’s collecting journey started with a lithograph by Max Ernst, followed by Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Keith Haring. The French investment banker founded the Fondation Carmignac in 2000 to collect contemporary art and support artists through prizes and grants, including an annual award for photojournalism established in 2009. The foundation’s collection is rich in American and German postwar art, from Basquiat to Gerhard Richter. In 2018, the Fondation Carmignac launched a space on the Mediterranean island of Porquerolles.
Florence and Daniel Guerlain
@guerlainflorence
Started collecing art since the mid-1980s, drawing has been the couple’s primary focus. They used to run the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation during 1996–2004. Then, they founded the Daniel and Florence Guerlain Contemporary Drawing Prize in 2007 and donated 1,200 pieces from their collection the Centre Pompidou in 2013.
Antoine de Galbert
@antoinedegalbert
He is a contemporary art collector known for establishing the Fondation Antoine de Galbert and the exhibition space La Maison Rouge. Though the latter closed its doors in 2018, the foundation continues supporting art creation. Legally and financially distinct from the foundation, Antoine de Galbert’s personal collection, with hundreds of artists, plays an active role in the public sphere. Over the past 15 years, some 3,000 works have been loaned (half to La maison rouge) for exhibitions in France and internationally.
Dominique and Sylvian Levy
@dslcollection
The Levys have been collecting contemporary art together for four decades. After collecting contemporary Western art and design for twenty year, they decided to shift to focus on Chinese contemporary art in 2005. That marked the beginning of the DSL Collection, one of the rare Chinese contemporary art collections in France with 200 leading Chinese avant-garde artists. The couple have been very visionary showcasing and sharing their collection with the public through embracing technology, from virtual reality, 3D printing to gaming and blockchain.
Guillaume Houzé
@guillaume.houze
Great-grandson of the founder of the flagship Lafayette store, Guillaume Houzé grew up in an atmosphere where art always played a major role. Houzé and his grandmother Ginette Moulin began presenting contemporary art in the Galerie des Galeries in 2005; they have built up a collection of more than 200 works that is open for artists to use on other projects. He is now the President of Lafayette Anticipations, Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, which opened its first permanent space in 2018 in the Marais district of Paris. Houzé’s own collection includes work by Tatiana Trouvé, Ugo Rondinone and Walead Beshty.
Sandra Hegedüs
@sandramulliezhegedus
Born in São Paulo, Brazil and living as a Parisian, Sandra Hegedüs began her contemporary art collection in 2005, with strong presence of emerging artists. Her desire to support artistic creation led her to create the non-profit SAM Art Projects in 2009 with the aim of promoting the work of non-Western artists in France as well as that of French artists abroad, through an annual prize and a residency programme. SAM Art Projects is now one of the main art patrons of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where they co-produce exhibitions each year.
(Read our previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/sam-art-projects-how-to-support-tomorrows-talents-and-their-boundary-pushing-projects/)
Clémence and Didier Krzentowski
Almost every corner of their Parisian home on the bank of the river Seine is occupied by artworks, including works by Danh Vō, Philippe Parreno, and Ugo Rondinone, among others. These artworks are juxtaposed by carefully selected, if not one-of-a-kind, design objects or furniture by the Bouroullec Brothers, Konstantin Grcic, Gino Sarfatti, to name a few.Clémence and Didier Krzentowski are the husband-and-wife founders of design space Galerie Kreo in the City of Light.
(Read previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/why-meteorites-are-the-best-minimalist-artworks/)
Evelyne and Jacques Deret
@evelynederet; @artcollectorparis
Evelyne and Jacques Deret are both collectors and founders of the Art [ ] Collector project, which was created in 2011 to support young French artists and to promote the French art scene, through an exhibition and a catalog offered to two winning artists each year. Coming from different backgrounds and with divergent interests in art, Evelyne and Jacques Deret have two different collections at one home.
(Read previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/when-karine-marenne-dressed-as-art-maid-performing-in-our-living-room/)
Paul-Emmanuel Reiffers
@paulemmanuelreiffers
Founder of Mazarine group and Numéro magazine, Paul-Emmanuel Reiffers started collecting art at age 25 or 26. Having acquired works by Pierre Soulages, Daniel Buren, Christopher Wool, Rudolf Stingel and others, his collection is currently focused on American and African artists. In 2021, he created Reiffers Art Initiatives, a foundation and exhibition space of more than 600 m2 in the heart of Paris, that supports France’s young generation, promotes cultural diversity.
Nicolas Laugero-Lasserre
@nicolaslaugerolasserre
As a collector of street art, Nicolas Laugero-Lasserre motto is to share as much as possible with the public as he thinks the very DNA of street art is sharing. He believes in the good influence of an art filled environment on people and does everything he can to share the access to art and culture to others. Therefore, he founded the first floating art museum in Europe and the first floating urban art museum in the world, Fluctuart, which opened in 2019.
(Read previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/the-very-dna-of-street-art-is-sharing/)
Gervanne and Matthias Leridon
@collection.leridon
Gervanne Leridon discovered Africa when she was just a child while Matthias Leridon has been a convinced Afro-optimist since the age of 14. Gervanne and Matthias Leridon have been collecting contemporary African art together for 15 years. The Leridon Collection has gathered more than 5000 artworks, bringing together artworks by more than 300 contemporary artists from 34 African countries. At the core of their art collection is their strong belief in and commitment to these artists’ potentials. They have been supporting various exhibitions and projects of artists they collect.
Barbara and Daniel Newman
@newm.artcollection
With backgrounds in engineering and finance, this cross-Atlantic collector couple, Barbara and Daniel Newman, are enjoying the best of both (art)worlds splitting their time between Paris and New York. During the past 15 years, their art collection has been growing: starting from surrealism and photography, to unheralded female abstract expressionist artists, and now focused on both established and emerging artists of our time. Barbara and Daniel have opened their Parisian apartment to visits during art fair periods and have a ambition to develop art and cultural projects in Paris.
(Read previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/home-is-where-the-art-is/)
Marc Ambrus and Emmanuel Tarpin
@marcambrus & @emmanuel_tarpin
Marc Ambrus, digital technology entrepreneur, and jewelry designer Emmanuel Tarpin, live between Paris and New York while building up their ever-evolving art collection in both homes, which include artworks by Robert Rauschenberg, Josef Albers, Christopher Wool, Bridget Riley, Urs Fischer, Albert Oehlen, among others. The French couple have created two homes of different styles in Paris and New York; when they would consider selling an artwork while what works they would never part with; as well as the art-world pet peeve in their views.
(Read previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/we-are-inspired-by-artists-who-always-reinvent-themselves/)
Raphaël Isvy
@raph_is
The 32-year-old collector is representative of the social-media-savvy next-generation art collectors. Owning more than 100 original artworks, Raphaël Isvy actively shares his latest art acquisitions and stylish home interiors on his Instagram profile. His favorite artists are some of the rising stars in the art world: Robin Francesca Williams, Alejandro Cardenas, Huma Bhabha, Peter Saul, Aaron Garber Maikovska, Joyce Pensato, Otis Kwame, Josh Sperling, Oli Epp, Robert Nava, Anna Park, Anna Weyant, and Vojtech Kovarik.
Patrick Lerouge
@patrickthered
Amidst the active street art scene in Paris is Patrick Lerouge, a collector whose passion is focused mainly on one American street artist, Futura (with a major show coming up in Singapore), with a home filled with sprayed colours, while part of his collection has traveled to various museums. He was a witness of the street art movement in France.
(Read previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/from-street-to-museum-holding-the-time-in-futura/)
François Blanc
@francoisblancparis
François Blanc has over three decades of experience in global communication and public relations. He founded Communic’art, a global communication agency in art and culture in 2004. His comprehensive knowledge of the art world has been developed since his adolescence when his father was the Chef de Cabinet (Head of Cabinet) of André Malraux, the Minister of Culture of France at that time. Since 1998, he has built up a collection of modern and contemporary art and design, especially photography, which is displayed in his office and home.
(Read previous interview: https://www.larryslist.com/artmarket/the-talks/a-painting-without-a-wall-is-like-a-book-thats-never-been-opened/)
By Ricko Leung
