Galeria Maxó — Attraction in Barcelona

My name is Elliana Esquivel, on social media, known as the artist Elesq responsible for the drawing "The Chaos and the Calm" (feel free to google it, it will be easy to find). After receiving numerous photos, videos, and links from my followers of what seemed to be my very personal journal drawing "The Chaos and the Calm" redrawn about three dozen times and hanging on a wall in some shop in Barcelona I had never heard of, I realized it was obvious that someone was using my art to make thousands. After ducking my calls for days, I was finally able to contact shop owner and "artist" / Maxo himself. Maxo (who had the audacity to sell shrewd copies of my drawing for nearly $300 USD a piece while mine run at around $20 max) quite rudely informed me that he had no idea the drawing wasn't his (that was literally word-for-word his excuse) and claimed he would remove the drawings as quickly as possible. To make a long story short, he didn't. In fact, he continued selling them and blocked me on every social media platform. I then encouraged my supporters to review his shop on Google and notify the public that this man is a con artist. After my followers had posted nearly 200 reviews warning people, an hour later and every single 1 star review suddenly vanished. Maxo was deleting any review that rated him below 4 stars. It was then that I was informed by two students living in Barcelona, that Maxo had actually threatened them in the past. When the students asked him to sit down for an interview for their school, he said he was a very busy, successful man and demanded that they write at least 15 fake 5 star reviews for his Google, Facebook, etc for this interview to be worth his time. When they denied this strange request (feeling fishy about the whole situation) Maxo sent them an unhealthy amount of nasty text messages and voicemails. He even contacted the head of their art school and attempted to slander them, claiming that the two students would never amount to anything and that they were completely talentless. The student who spoke to me about the situation described herself as feeling "incredibly scared and threatened" by not only the amount of harassing messages he sent her, but also the way in which he visited her school.

To this day, Maxo has been stealing my art for nearly 2 years straight. He has threatened teenage girls. And if you think for a moment that he hasn't stolen artwork from dozens of other artists like myself, I strongly urge you to reconsider.

Maxo is...

Galería Maxó was one of the first places that I stumbled across when I moved to Barcelona about 8 months ago. It immediately drew me in with the fun and playful decor and art work in the gallery and after wondering around I began to feel incredibly excited that I had moved to a city that could produce such places - I felt like a child again that wanted to explore the crazy, colourful work and atmosphere of the gallery. I especially wanted to sneak into the workshop up the back, which is a real treasure as all of the work is created up there and you can spy on the people making it from within the gallery.

Since then I have gotten to know Maxó and he himself encapsulates the positive and free nature of the gallery. Both Maxó and the gallery represent the creative spirit of Barcelona in a way that is not always seen on the bigger, more populated streets - the gallery is a discovery every one should make as they wonder, lost in the narrow...

For someone who is searching for some affordable local art it is a must to pay a visit to this beautiful petit art gallery! I stopped by a year ago and unfortunatly didn’t have the time to go in so I’m very happy that I found it again during my recent visit in Barcelona. The pieces are all sold in original, with a detailed instruction on how to frame the artwork correctly. I bought a piece of the Barcelona city life in watercolour plus two wooden frames with 3D-pictures of both the famous Park Güell and some street art in the city. The total cost summed up to 72€. I had a hard time leaving the gallery and deciding for which ones I would buy, several pieces made me interested plus I met with the artist who...