Founded in May 2019, Gallery Delphine Courtay is nestled in the courtyard of a sixteenth-century building in Petite France (“Little France”), a neighborhood located in the heart of Strasbourg.

Under the direction of Delphine Courtay, a former art agent, the gallery permanently represents artists from Europe and abroad: established artists whose works appear in numerous private and public collections and carry international renown, as well as emerging artists from the alternative scene. Thus, Galerie Delphine Courtay introduces the public to a variety of talents in painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking across its five to six annual exhibits, including one “outside the walls.”

Consciousness has served as the gallery’s guiding principle since its début. As a result, Galerie Delphine Courtay approaches its curation with a unique perspective, departing from worn, mainstream paths in order to propose new reflections on the world.

Starting from the belief that art is self-expression projected to the outside, the gallery engages artists whose exploration of self is fundamental to their creative process. As such, the gallery’s curatorial lens emphasizes art that is invested with the qualities of introspection, and it assigns great importance to the messages conveyed by artists through their choice of images and materials.

If the sacred nature of the artist resides in their capacity to transcend the human in approaching the sublime, then the gallerist’s ontological imperative is clear: to show works that illuminate, that elevate the soul and reveal the splendor of the spectator’s own interiority—works that serve as mirrors to reflect the noblest parts of ourselves.

An authentic artistic experience thus occurs when an artwork touches the spectator’s heart, surpassing its material or intellectual surface and aspiring to more than mere provocation or emotional manipulation. It’s this spirit of the work, which calls forth the most profound, radiant aspects of our being, that elevates one work of art over another; it’s this spirit that is precious, that aids our souls in their perpetual search for meaning, that bonds us to an artwork for years and generations to come.

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Thanks to Charlotte Luke for the translation.