Galerie Catherine Putman specialises in works on paper by contemporary artists: drawings, photographs and prints.

Established at the edge of the Marais, not far from the Centre Pompidou, the gallery is on the first floor, making it an intimate area suited to displaying works on paper.

Managed for more than ten years by Éléonore Chatin, the gallery regularly shows works by  the artists with whom it has worked for a long time: Geneviève Asse, Pierre Buraglio, Georg Baselitz, Jean Messagier, Georges Noël, Sophie Ristelhueber, Georges Rousse, Agathe May and Bernard Moninot. It has also started new collaboration with Keita Mori, Carmen Perrin, Frédéric Poincelet, Frédéric Malette and Eloïse Van der Heyden.

The gallery also continues the art publishing activity started by Jacques and Catherine Putman in the 1970s. The exhibitions are generally monographic, featuring both single works and multiples. More than 70 exhibitions of works by artists from France and elsewhere have been held since the gallery opened in 2005.

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The character of the gallery is the result of its history.

In 1974, after handling the operation 'Suites Prisunic'*, Jacques Putman (1926-1994) set up a contemporary art publishing house. He was joined by his wife Catherine Putman (1949-2009) and they published works by Pierre Alechinsky, Max Ernst and Bram van Velde, and then from the 1990s Geneviève Asse, Georg Baselitz, Pierre Buraglio, Tony Cragg, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Gérard Traquandi, Claude Viallat and others.

For a long time, lovers of contemporary prints or dealers who wished to acquire items published by the Putmans had to go to their apartment in Rue des Grands Augustins. Then in the 1990s the works could be found at the various fairs in which Catherine Putman participated (FIAC, Art Basel, ARCO). After the death of Jacques Putman, she continued their activities at her home in Rue de Talleyrand before finally opening at 40 rue Quincampoix a gallery dedicated exclusively to works on paper, broadening  her work to include contemporary drawing and photography.

After her death in 2009, her colleague Éléonore Chatin took over and handled the works that she knows so well, with artists including Max Ernst, Henri Michaux, Jean Tinguely, Tony Cragg and Antonio Saura. She publishes new works, in particular thanks to the artists who form the core of the gallery, thus continuing the broadening to contemporary drawing started by Catherine Putman and placing her own stamp through fresh collaboration and in turn establishing a faithful relationship with the artists.

* Jacques Putman viewed prints and engraving as a way of making contemporary art democratic. Thus in the 1970s he offered the retail chain Prisunic to publish and sell—at 100 francs each—original lithographs by contemporary artists such as  Pierre Alechinsky, Arman, Christo, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Jean Messagier, Pierre Tal Coat, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle.