Richard Demarco Gallery

Richard Demarco, born in Edinburgh of Scottish Italian parentage is both an artist and a promotional entrepreneur. He was a co-founder of the Edinburgh based Traverse Theatre in 1963 and in 1966 founded his eponymous gallery in the city of his birth. During the world famous Edinburgh Festival his gallery doubled as a performance venue but sadly closed in 1992.

For many years, the Gallery promoted cultural links with Eastern Europe, organising exhibitions of contemporary Polish, Romanian and Yugoslavian art and in doing so also established outgoing connections for Scottish artists across Europe. Demarco showed the works of Paul Neagu, Joseph Beuys and Tadeusz Kantor all of international fame. For many years, following the withdrawal of funding by the Scottish Arts Council in 1980, the Demarco Gallery led a financially straitened existence. Since the early 1990's, Richard Demarco's activity has continued under the auspices of the Demarco European Art Foundation. Richard Demarco has attended every single Edinburgh Festival since its inception in 1947 and is probably the only person to have done so. Previously appointed OBE, he was raised to a CBE in the New Year Honours List of December 2006. In November 2008, a substantial selection from Demarco's archives, covering the period 1963-1980, was made available on-line by the University of Dundee. Artists who have shown at the Demarco Gallery include Elena Gaputyte, Margot Sandeman, Will MacLean, Earl Haigh, Maggi Hambling, Paul Feiler, William Crozier, George Mackie and Eric Malthouse.