About us

Frank Taal Galerie opened its doors on Van Speykstraat in Rotterdam on October 16, 2010. The driving forces behind the gallery are Frank Taal and Hans Franke.

The Story

Frank Taal first studied Sociology at Erasmus University, where he met Hans Franke during a boxing training at Woudestein. He graduated as a Social and Organizational Psychologist in Leiden, but continued to live in Rotterdam. In 2001 he started his first "gallery": The Aanschouw. A display case of the old journalist café De Schouw on Witte de Withstraat, where the front page of the newspaper used to be hung. It became an art show with an opening of an exhibition every week, in which an artist shows work for a week, and can be seen 24/7. He made 547 exhibitions there. De Aanschouw has become a household name and there is still a "change" every week with work by a new artist. In 2010 he started with Leo de Bie Frank Taal Galerie. On January 1, 2019, Hans Franke became his new partner in the gallery from an old friendship.

Hans Franke

Hans Franke lived and studied for a long time in Rotterdam, where he mainly qualified as a taxi driver, and graduated from Erasmus University in Law and Business Administration. In 1998 he made a short trip, for around nine years, to Amsterdam, where he lived and worked as a corporate finance lawyer and representative. After those years, he devoted himself part-time and later full-time to the development of new financial products, business plans and partnerships. He has been particularly committed to a sustainable world and the financing of projects in the field of forestry, solar energy and senior housing. The last projects were privatized in 2015 and 2016 under the name Thuisborg Finance (Thuisborg) and Stichting Onderzoek Marktinformatie (SOMI). In order to make the world a little nicer together with Frank and in search of synergy between their different worlds, he became a partner in the Frank Taal Gallery in 2019.