Eric Brugier,
An aesthete's career
After a long and successful career as a gallery owner, Éric Brugier is now concentrating on his activities as a collection manager, expert and organiser of top-of-the-range, made-to-measure cultural events.
The aim, unchanged for over 25 years, remains the same: to instigate unforgettable encounters with art.
Éric Brugier has always had a passion for art and aesthetics.
He began collecting sculptures, furniture and paintings at a very early age, and very quickly learned the intricacies of galleries and auction houses, the networks of buyers and sellers, and the vagaries of the art market.
It manages, enriches and restructures collections and unearths exceptional pieces.
His favourite area is lyrical abstraction, the abstract expressionism of the 1950s-1970s. Yves Klein, Georges Mathieu, Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Joseph Beuys, as well as César, Araki, Ladislas Kijno, Jacques Villeglé and Larry Clark: Éric Brugier's acquisitions are as qualitative as they are eclectic, and above all meet his own aesthetic criteria.
He loves Penck and Hermann Nitsch because they move him.
His meeting with Lorand Hegyi, a Hungarian art historian who has built up one of the richest and most complex institutional collections of contemporary art in Europe, was to prove seminal. They became friends, and their scholarly exchanges extended far beyond the realm of art.
Éric Brugier also frequents Jérôme Neutre, a pillar of the Paris museum scene (RMN-GP, Musée du Luxembourg), curator and expert, with whom he shares a marked interest in contemporary photography.
An avant-garde artist, Éric Brugier has been discovering the potential of urban art since the 1990s, when he came into contact with the Parisian underground art scene.
He meets Ben, Miss.Tic, acquires the works of up-and-coming talents and promotes them to his network of collectors. And when, in 2003, his career took a turning point with the creation of Galerie Brugier Rigail (co-founded with Laurent Rigail), true to his principles, he placed in the spotlight the artists of yesterday, today and tomorrow whose talent he believed in. The Paris art scene remembers the rise of Invader, JonOne and Nick Walker.
Éric Brugier's career is also a story of intersecting destinies and lasting friendships. He has been friends with JonOne since his arrival in Paris, with David Kunzli for over three decades, with Miss.Tic right up to her final days, and with Laurent Rigail, director and founder of the Parcelle473 museum in Montpellier, a friendship that goes hand in hand with a long professional partnership. Éric Brugier transmits the emotion he puts into what he does to his collectors, infecting some of them with the «virus», such as K. Maro, who has become a partner and friend, and who is now also happily working as a gallery owner in Montreal.
A passionate curator, Éric Brugier organises a wide range of exhibitions - in situ, in the heart of Paris, and off site - supporting his artists by presenting their work to the general public. Éric Brugier is also an art publisher, another means of disseminating the work of «his» talents.
Backed by his network and his instinct, Éric Brugier pushes his artists to the top. A work by JonOne now hangs at the entrance to the French National Assembly, and Fabien Verschaere is on the move from cultural institutions (the Pompidou Centre, among others) to world events (the Paris 2024 Olympic Games).
A bit of a philanthropist too, Éric Brugier puts his expertise and knowledge to good use. He helps to organise exhibitions for young audiences at the Musée en herbe in Paris (L'Atlas in 2019) and at the Musée des Dominicaines in Pont-L'Évêque.
It supports charitable initiatives, such as the sale of street art for the Nuit de Sainte-Catherine in Lille in 2022, in aid of an association supporting children in hospital, or an endowment fund for children staying at the Necker hospital.
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