Galerie MiniMasterpiece—created in spring 2012 by Esther de Beaucé—is the first Parisian gallery exclusively dedicated to the production and sale of jewelry by visual artists and contemporary designers. An artist’s piece of jewelry, like a sculpture, is a work of art. Born of the same creative process, it possesses the same power, poetry, provocation, and sometimes humor. Only their final destination distinguishes them: the collector’s wall or their body.
However, jewelry remains a peripheral activity for designers and visual artists, even if it incorporates all the codes specific to their approach. This is the great challenge for the artists commissioned by the gallery and the ambition of artist jewelry in general: to think on a new scale and for the body, without losing any of their more monumental artistic DNA.
The gallery’s ambition is to commission renowned artists and designers to create new and exclusive jewelry collaborations. To date, the following artists and designers (selection) have collaborated directly with the gallery:
Joana Vasconcelos • Lee Ufan • Julio Le Parc • Jean-Luc Moulène • Wang Keping • François Morellet • Katinka Bock • Barthélémy Toguo • Françoise Pétrovitch • Maïlys Seydoux-Dumas • Yann Delacour • Elodie Seguin • Jean Grisoni • Carlos Cruz-Diez • Philippe Ramette • Phillip King • Pablo Reinoso • Sophia Vari • Andres Serrano • Faust Cardinali • Jacqueline de Jong • Christian Ghion • Pierre Charpin • Constance Guisset • Pierre Gona-lons • Mathilde Bretillot • Nestor Perkal • David Dubois • François Azambourg • A+A Cooren • Fré-déric Ruyant • Walid Akkad • Frédérique Mattei • Cédric Ragot • Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost.
The gallery organizes four to five solo exhibitions at the gallery each year. It also participates in several art and design fairs, including Design Miami Paris.
About Esther de Beaucé
Born in Paris in 1976, Esther grew up in an international environment with a strong focus on art and culture. Esther graduated in anthropology from Brown University, in Rhode Island, US, and in visual anthropology from EHESS, in Paris. She became an assistant director and producer on some 15 films and documentary series, notably on design, in co-production with Arte and the Centre Pompidou. In 2005, she opened the Schirman & de Beaucé Gallery, in Paris, with Caroline Schirman. The gallery promoted young French and international artists until 2012, when a new adventure began.
Esther decided to continue working with visual artists, but this time in a format that was new to her: artist jewelry. She was very familiar with the existence and history of these miniature works as her mother, Diane Venet, had been collecting them for some 30 years. Her wish is to take up the torch—long abandoned in France—of publishing contemporary artists’ jewelry. She launched her venture in the spring of 2012 by creating the MiniMasterpiece Gallery. Thirteen years later, the gallery—still nestled at the end of a courtyard in Saint-Germain-des-Prés—has expanded.
Esther collaborates with around 50 visual artists, designers, and architects. All of them are non-jewelry specialists whom she encourages to make a radical change of scale. She has organized around 40 exhibitions and participated in 15 fairs in France, Europe, and the United States. New prestigious collaborations are revealed each year, and Esther continues her work with collectors to raise awareness of this specialty, which is both jewelry and art.
Address
16 rue des Saints Pères
75007 Paris, France
The gallery is located inside the courtyard of the building.
