VAN GOGH Art Gallery — Attraction in Madrid

I fell for this gallery’s “collaboration” scam back in 2020 when I had just started my artist career. Naive emerging artists are exactly the type of people who get emails from this art gallery. I was naive enough to think that it was an amazing opportunity, and paid the horrendous 1000€ fee. I soon found out that the gallery was not interested in representing me or in my art, only in my money.

I have sent numerous emails during these past two years, asking for a contract and a receipt for the fee, but I have still NOT RECEIVED THEM. I received no communication about the group exhibition that I was promised, as far as I know one did not take place. I don’t even know if my paintings were at the Brussels art fair. There was certainly no attempt by the gallery to market them on social media.

Now I’m currently trying to get my paintings back, but the gallery did not release them to the courier that I had organised. I was given exact days and times when the paintings can be picked up, and was urged to arrange it as soon as possible. I followed these instructions carefully - I have the emails to prove it. I let the gallery know the pickup time, and sent them the return label. They then suddenly informed me that the pickup of paintings is only possible after the 1st of July. I had no way of changing the pickup date, as I am the recipient. As the sender they could have easily done it, but they refused to. They didn’t even have the decency to forward me the email so that I could have tried to rearrange the pickup. Now the money is lost. As it is their mistake I expect them to either organize a new delivery, or reimburse me for the one that I already organised, so that I do not have to take legal action.

I urge all artists that receive emails from this gallery (and others like it) to ignore them. I know several artists who have also lost money to the gallery, and they feel exactly...

If you want just to take a part in the art fair this gallery is good for it, but be honest, the gallery is making money from participation artist fee, and the art fair is not a best place to sell art only to up your visibility. Doesn't matter your art level if you pay a money you will exhibit your art, this is not good, I'm pity that I didn't know it earlier. But I'm thankful for the gallery for this experience and I don't plan to cooperate with them in the future. The most terrible point in our cooperation: The gallery didn't respond to me for some months after art fair, after my bad feedback in Google they was response to me and we arranged about sending my artworks back but I'm based in Ukraine and the war started already. So, the delivery company didn't work and I had to wait again when it will start work. The war is the most horrible thing what can happen, and what I heard? After month the gallery sent me a message that they didn't have place to keep my artworks ... if they would respond to my emails in time I would received my artworks in time, and this is during the war...oh I'm really happy that you don't know what the hell is war. This point changed my opinion about the gallery in worst side. Fortunately the gallery recommended one delivery company and they bailed me out to sent me my artworks. Two of four artworks was damaged. One of the artwork is so fragile and it's not a gallery blame but the second one had a dent and breakthrough in the canvas.

In conclusion, I am glad to have such an experience, but I will not say that I would like to repeat it, at least in the near future with...

My partner was contacted by this gallery early in her career, and after som mailing they started to collaborate about selling her art. We sent 3 artworks to them, and although we didn’t sell anything despite the fact that the art was on 3 different exhibitions, that is not the issue here. But I will like to point out that in the first exhibition they placed a desk in front of her art, and the spot she got was not a good one. Anyway, if this was all the “bad” things that happened, we would give them 4 stars. The trouble started when the art was going to be sent back. In our country (Norway), it’s possible to send and return art to exhibition without having to pay tax either way. That worked fine when we sent it, but when the gallery returned it, either they didn’t understand our mails, or didn’t do their job, so we ended up having to pay tax on our own art! When we tried to contact the gallery about this, and fix the problem, they didn’t respond and still haven’t to this day. That’s not what we expected from a professional gallery! So naturally we are very disappointed, and we can not recommend collaborating with this...