Since spring 2024, the gallery has occupied 190 m² on avenue Reine Victoria, directly opposite the Hôtel du Palais. A portrait of a place — and of a gallery owner — with no taste for discretion.

You can’t miss it. Its black-and-white storefront on avenue Reine Victoria stands out against the hushed, upscale streets around the Palais. Since spring 2024, PrestaArt Gallery has filled a bright 190 m² space there, where paintings, photographs and sculptures sit side by side. It is the gallery’s third address, after Uzès and Nîmes — and the most visible.

But to understand the place, you have to trace a path that was anything but predetermined. Hervé Solignat was never meant to sell art: for twenty-five years he worked as a medical-equipment salesman, without the slightest artistic training. The turning point came in 2011, when he founded an art foundry, Lux’Art Fonderie, in Montluçon, with a childhood friend. To find clients, he worked the contemporary art fairs, suitcase in hand, offering his casting services to artists. It was one of them who, one day, planted the idea that would change everything: why not help me sell instead? In 2014, Solignat created PrestaArt and became an artists’ agent, making the rounds of galleries to place their work.

The shift from travelling representative to established gallery owner came in 2017. He tracked down a short-lease space in Uzès, near the ducal palace, and opened his first gallery there — on April 1st, and it was no joke: 130 m², a patio, several rooms. Despite Covid, PrestaArt quickly established itself as a reference, first locally and then nationally. In 2022, Solignat expanded to Nîmes, partnering with the artist Melvyn Barros in a painter’s former studio on rue Émile-Jamais. Two years later, he set his sights on the Atlantic and Biarritz.

He owns his aesthetic without hesitation: he wants “colour, life, novelty.” The gallery represents around thirty artists united by that same energy rather than by any school. Its flagship figure is the photographer Philippe Shangti, known for his slick, provocative large-format work, whom Solignat champions at fairs from Colmar to Basel, from Paris to Miami. Alongside him: the aluminium and stainless-steel race cars of Antoine Dufilho, the monumental figures of Idan Zareski — whose giant sculptures could be seen at the Château de Brindos in Anglet — the wire-mesh portraits of Jean-Michel Collell, the pop compositions of Melvyn Barros, and highly sought-after names such as Richard Orlinski.

For PrestaArt does not confine itself to its own walls. The gallery works the contemporary art fairs in France and abroad, installs monumental pieces in prestigious settings — hotels, luxury palaces, parks, even the edges of a French Grand Prix — and offers artwork rental for private events. A gallery-cum-business, driven by the gift of the gab of a former salesman who has lost none of his knack for connecting with people.

This is where a local eye can add nuance. The art PrestaArt champions is frankly commercial, spectacular, designed to appeal as much at an international fair as in a spacious living room with a view. One might prefer rougher work, or art more deeply rooted in the region. Still, between Les Halles and the Grande Plage, the gallery gives Biarritz an unapologetic contemporary art address — lively, event-driven — and a gallery owner who, from Montluçon to avenue Reine Victoria, has never operated behind a mask.

PrestaArt Gallery — 1 avenue Reine Victoria, Biarritz. Open Wednesday to Saturday (10 a.m.–7 p.m.) and Sunday (10 a.m.–6 p.m.). prestaart.com