DO PICHO Celebrates

Today, on September 11th, 2024, we are launching Do Picho’s website and Instagram and Facebook presence, and hold the first event at the artist residence, a talk by resident artist Jean Brundrit from Cape Town, South Africa. Today is also the first anniversary of my father’s death, so it is a day full of emotions. My father would have wanted it to be a day of celebration, so celebrate we will.

• My father’s life, first and foremost, the life of a businessman who was totally committed to his work and his family, and who found his moments of greatest pleasure and calm and serenity in his atelier, after he retired, painting. 
• The opening of Do Picho in my new hometown, Palas de Rei, Galicia, in a building right next to my new home. It represents the realization of my dream to combine my two biggest passions, for human rights and for the arts, into a project that I hope will make a difference for the community of artists that we’ll create, for the environment in central Galicia, threatened by a project to build a mega pulp factory that would benefit few while endangering the future of the region and its people, and for human rights, particularly of LGBTIQ+ people.

I have had the immense privilege to get to know and become friends with artists everywhere I have lived, in Montreal first and then in New York, Geneva, Munich, and Galicia. These are artists and human rights and environmental activists, who, through their work are making a contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and the environment that is often so overlooked. 

Opening Do Picho is a commitment to create a community of artists for human rights and the environment, to support young (and older) artists who need a safe space and some support for their work; to foster the wonderful Do Picho team that has started to work together in pursuit of Do Picho’s aims; and to Palas de Rei, the province of Lugo and Galicia, the new home I found by chance and have fallen in love with. It is a commitment to caring, support, and listening.

I look forward to welcoming you here, artists and old and new friends, and to embarking with you in this adventure.

Ralf Jürgens
Founder and Chair of the Board, Do Picho