On Thursday 7th May the pavement outside new art venue Gallery Pieters thronged with an international crowd of art aficianados who had come to see the first exhibition of what promises to be a stylish addition to southern Spain’s growing reputation as a centre of culture. Gallery Pieters may not be a pop-up Pompidou, but it is exhibiting artists that the Pompidou Málaga would be very happy to show.
You’ll find Gallery Pieters in the Cristamar Centre, only a few steps from the east end of El Corte Inglés. The opening show – “Jim Dine – Unique Pieces’ features work by the artist Jim Dine, a leading artist of the American pop art movement. Dine is a contemporary of pop art’s other groundbreaking artists, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, and in the early 1960s Dine became famous for his oil paintings, prints and sculptures based on items from everyday life.
It is said that one Jim Dine piece called “Hair” was the inspiration for the 70s musical of the same name. His most recent work uses imagery borrowed from ancient Greek, Egyptian and African objects and he is famed for his Pinocchio sculptures and his interpretation of the Venus de Milo.
Gallery Pieters has three of Dine’s “Venus de Milo” sculptures in this exhibition. There are seven pieces of Dine’s work in this show and it is called “Unique Pieces” because it is the first time they’ve been exhibited in Spain. All the pieces are available for sale and prices start at 80,000€ and go up to 250,000€. In total, the works are valued in excess of one million euros.
The work on show dates from 1984 and in terms of a thematic content, Dine draws heavily on Abstract Expressionism – a movement associated with art world big names Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, plus collage and assemblage techniques associated with Dada movement.
Gallery Pieters has three successful galleries in Belgium: two in Knokkeheist and one in Ghent. It now hopes to encourage art fans in the Marbella area to visit the gallery and be introduced to original works by world-class artists. Right now, it wants people to know that Gallery Pieters is in Puerto Banús and that its doors are open to everyone with an interest in contemporary and modern art and sculpture.