This interview is excerpted from my book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel, 2024), described the New York Times as “a celebration of the culture, history and oddball treasures of the market”.
Puces Portrait: Hugo Greiner
A second-generation dealer raised between the world of Montparnasse galleries and the Puces, Hugo Greiner brings a musician’s instinct for rhythm to his eclectic vision of 20th-century art and design.
A second-generation Puces dealer, Hugo grew up with the trade in his blood. His mother, Hélène Greiner, opened her gallery on Boulevard Raspail in 1990 – the year Hugo was born. Positioned between the historic artists’ quarter of Montparnasse and the gallery world of Saint-Germain, she spent 30 years there championing and rediscovering a largely overlooked strand of twentieth-century sculpture. Her influence continues to shape Hugo’s practice today, particularly his passion for Modern sculpture and his instinct for artists who sit outside the canon. His own eye, however, is deliberately difficult to pin down. In 2026, he moved from Serpette to the Marché Dauphine, bringing this expansive sensibility with him. His selection moves between Surrealism, abstraction, Modern sculpture, American and European furniture, glass and lighting, resisting the idea that a dealer needs to belong to a single school or period. Eclectic by conviction rather than by accident, he is interested in the connections between things – and in following his own eye in an age increasingly mediated by algorithms and received opinion. Music is central to his sensibility too, informing his instinct for rhythm, juxtaposition and unexpected connections. For Hugo, old and new are less opposites than echoes, each continually reshaping the other.
