Paul Fransen was born in Makassar (Indonesia) in 1950 and moved to The Netherlands when he was eight years old.
After secondary school he worked in a bank as a controller. He then switched to the IT sector and from there organization work, specializing in “EffectiveOrganizations”. Initially employed by the bank, but later as an independant consultant.
Partly due to his wife (who had studied at the Art Academy) he became more and more interested in Visual Arts. Visiting numerous art galleries and museums led to the question: Why don’t more people enjoyall these fine things?
In those days Visual Arts was almost limited to the happy few. This was a shame in Paul Fransen’s eyes, because a lot of art is quite affordable for a larger number of people.
This vision led to the start of an Art Gallery, where you can also rent paintings. All this in additionto his work as a consultant. The idea was to be easily accessible, offering a wide variety in art with a good price/ratio. That meant not only accessible art, but also art with a more experimental character. This formula proved to be successful and soon a larger Art Gallery was opened. In the beginning of 2015 Thyade Art moved to the Hoogstraat in the centre of Rotterdam, with a floor-space of 550 m2.
The key principles are:
• Create a win-win-win situation for artist-customer-gallery.
• Be versatile: sales/loan/rent/lease of art/framing/ art gifts/courses/workshops/consultancy etc.
• Be accessible (the new Art Gallery also has an Art Tearoom) and give plenty of information about the various artists and their work.
In 1999 Paul’s wife Han sold her ad-agency and took charge of the daily management of the Art Gallery. This had become a necessity, because of the strong growth of the Art Gallery. Paul Fransen has been working full time in the Art Gallery since 2008.
In addition to his work and the Art Gallery Paul has always taken time to work as a volunteer. He has served in countless organizational management functions, from IT-related activities to Entrepeneurs Associations and Arts and Culture.
Besides that, he has organized, in conjunction with others, various events in the field of Art and Culture, like Art Trail, Art and Culture Markets, Culture Meetings etc. Also new associations were founded , such as Art Circles and Historical Societies.