Bernard François is an important Belgian goldsmith, jewelry designer and gallery owner. He creates avant-garde colourful works using techniques from the industrial and technological worlds.

Bernard François recounts an era that left its mark on the world of jewellery forever.

Regarded as one of the most important figures in contemporary Belgian jewellery, he is simultaneously a goldsmith, visual artist and gallery owner and produces colourful, avant-garde pieces using industrial and technological processes. Having grown up around his father’s tool factory, he was instinctively drawn to a career where he could harness the material and was captivated by metal. In the mid-1960s, he was among the six artists of the Groupe Atelier Demaret, which left its mark on the emergence of modern jewellery in Belgium.

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At the NEON gallery-studio, Bernard François decided to present the work of artists who ventured off the beaten track of design, rejecting the idea of confining jewellery inside a box. This centre for the revival of modern jewellery, which provided an exciting playground for experimentation, offered creative artists an ideal opportunity to expand their horizons internationally and to confront their work with new materials. Over several decades, the NEON gallery functioned as a laboratory for Belgian and international creation, where all types of art forms – sculpture, drawing, silk-screening, etc. – were given a unique place where their influence is still felt today.

From 1978 until 2008, Bernard François at Neon Gallery exhibited more than 250 artists.

A major retrospective multidisciplinary exhibition, Bernard François. Autour du bijou, was held by the Goldsmiths’ Museum of the Château de Seneffe from 09.10.2018 to 31.03.2019.