The Smallest Art Gallery in Paris

Located in number 142 rue Montmartre –an address dripping with history, where Emil Zola printed his manifest “J’accuse”– lives the 1SQM art gallery, one of the smallest in the world and certainly the smallest in Paris. The building once housed a publishing press for decades, and was later the headquarters of left-wing publications La France, L’Humanité and L’Aurora.

It is now the part private club, part cultural hub Silencio, a place for people to share their interests in fashion, cinema, music, or design. Silencio opened 3 years ago and was designed by American-in-Paris, surrealist filmmaker and multifaceted artist David Lynch. The interior follows his unsettling aesthetic and creative vision down to the smallest details in the bespoke furniture, texture and lighting.

Silencio has successfully attracted 1000 private members and a wide range of people from the arts and from the top shelves of Parisian life. After midnnight the private club is open to non-members. The 1SQM GALLERY exhibition space hosts 4 artists per year, with an emphasis on creative freedom, rotating a show every 6 to 8 weeks, and is forming new partnerships with art institutions as well as hors les murs and mini-Silencio events.

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