2023-05-20 06:30:53
Next week will forty years since the painter Cayetano Arquer Buïgas inaugurated the first exhibition of the gallery El Claustre in Girona. Era on 26 May 1983 and they pushed him Nuri Yglesias and her husband, Miquel Mascort“with more excitement than business prospects”, he admits his son and current director of El Claustre, Marià Mascort. That first gallery, located at the bottom of Carrer Nou 9 where it was found part of the cloister of the old convent of Sant Franceschas ended up becoming a benchmark in the sector and one of the few galleries that are still open in the city.
It does so, of course, in another space, right in front of the original, with two floors dedicated to exhibitions and a third with an art fund of about 1,400 works, plus another gallery a Fig trees from 1999with an independent and own activity “because every city is different and so is the public and the way to deal with it”.
And the key to success, says Marià Mascort, is “knowing how to adapt to the context, both to the place where you work and to the tastes and the way of doing things” and being clear that you work “having a gallery policy, of service to the city and the public, offering them all the facilities”.
“When my parents started, I don’t think they thought that we would still be there forty years, but they knew how to find the balance between the activity of the gallery and the negoci, because one without the other cannot function. This is one of the reasons why they have closed many galleries, because they have put a lot to one side and that’s enough”, says the manager of El Claustre, who in these years he has seen how around forty art galleries opened and lowered their shutters in Girona. “Unfortunately, because we would prefer there to be more of a gallery atmosphere”, he adds.
In recent years, around forty art galleries have opened and lowered their shutters in Girona
“One of the reasons that keep us going is that everyone who enters the Cloister can find what they are looking for. Our job is to make a series of works of art available to people, then it is the public who chooses them”, continues the gallerist, who has seen how customer tastes were changing and that now the city is “more receptive to issues that were unthinkable a few years ago”.
In this sense, he gives the example of the Girona painter Joan-Josep Tharrats: “when he was still alive, we dedicated an exhibition to him, but his painting was so advanced that he only sold one painting. Shortly after he died, we held a tribute show with the same works and almost everything was sold.’
Most importantly, quality
«Trends come and go, the important thing is to have quality and that’s hard to find», acknowledges Mascort, who each year receives proposals from between fifty and sixty artists. “In the end we only have one or two left, because the most important thing, above all, out of respect for the artist and the customer, is quality”, says the head of El Claustre, who he plans exhibitions two or three years in advance, “because it’s not about having 25 paintings by a painter, but rather having his 25 best paintings”.
“Whether El Claustre helped them start their careers or whether they already had a very established career, we are very proud of all our artists and end up having an intense personal relationship with them,” he continues.
In these four decades, El Claustre has seen how artistic careers were forged, but also collections, both of painting -predominant in the gallery- and of sculpture: “painting customers can occasionally buy sculpture, but, on the other hand , the one in sculpture, is very faithful to him, even though he is not a mathematician, becauseè in the end it is the work of art that chooses you, many people come with an idea and when they are here, they fall in love with something completely different. Sometimes it works for a heartbeat.”
The bulk of its customers are from Girona and Barcelona with a second residence, although they also have English, French or Swiss. In the last five years, he explains, has broken in with force «many American customers, who comes by, on a bicycle, and ends up falling in love with Girona». “Americans like to buy art and it’s very expensive in their country, here they find a lot of quality at prices they can’t even dream of”, says Mascort, who explains that they usually opt for contemporary art, but also “for landscapes they’ve seen , like Girona or Cadaqués”.
More than 2,000 members
«We take great care of our customers, because they need to feel that buying art is a pleasure», continues Marià Mascort. In this sense, they work for “breaking the myth that buying art is for cultural and economic elites».
It does this with systems such as financing the purchase of works of art or fixed fees. Currently, the gallery has more than 2,000 members who pay a monthly amount to make a piggy bank when there is a piece that interests them: “it’s a system that works, because people can have the art they like at home, without the price being an impediment”.
After the pandemic, an important part of this relationship with the customer takes place online, but the internet, Mascort assures, is for El Claustre “a contact channel, not a sales channel”: “we don’t sell online because you have to see and feel the art”.
After years without participating in fairs or doing so indirectly, contributing works to galleries outside, the Girona gallery is now resuming its final activity. The first was the Los Angeles art fair, in February, which they took as “an opportunity to publicize the gallery and above all the artists here”.
The celebrations, in September
Although the gallery’s birthday is this month, it will not be until September that El Claustre celebrates the anniversarye. It will be with the start of the new season, with a dinner in which he will present the commemorative book of the last five years, a special book because it includes the death of Nuri Yglesias, founder and soul of the gallery, in the summer of 2020.
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