OUR SUMMER EXHIBITIONS
SOUTHERN FRANCE

DIETER APPELT - RAMIFICATIONS

ARLES - Following Georges Rousse in 2006, the museum of Réattu, of which the collections and program are based on the cross between disciplines and dialogue with the premises, has invited German artist Dieter Appelt to work in tune with the spirit of the building and of its landscape. His work is among the most enigmatic of the second half of the XXth century. An opera singer, drawer, photographer, movie director and sculptor, Dieter Appelt, born in 1935 in the Brandebourg region, has presented for the last forty years shattering images, located between space and time, the fruit of deep thinking on beeing in the world.

RENCONTRES PHOTOGRAPHIQUES

ARLES – Following a very good year in 2006 with attendance up 50% - due in great part to the head of the billboard, Raymond Depardon -, the Rencontres photographiques wondered where they would find new inspiration for 2007. They went to look for it in Asia, precisely where it seems everything is happening lately. The program is therefore very busy in Indian encounters, chosen with the help of Devika Daulet-Singh, who heads the «in» Photo agency. Yanita Singh, Bharat Sikka, Anay Mann, Jeetin Sharma are between the ages of 30 and 40 and personnify the new wave of the sub-continent. They are supported by Raghu Rai, the correspondent of the Magnum agency (with a place of honor in another exhibition) and by a much older character, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil (1870-1954), who photographed all of his family and in particular his daughter prodigy, painter Amrita, who died suddenly in 1941. The Rencontres dedicate a specific and parallel section to the Chinese creation by the artistic community of Dashanzi, settled in a former plant in North-East Peking. Finally, from the Spaniard Alberto García-Alix, the interpreter of the "movida" in Madrid, to the polaroïd shots of blues singer by the excentric patron Pannonica de Kœnigswarter, some other twenty exhibitions complete the panorama.

CLAUDIO BRAVO

BIARRITZ - His work is both hyperrealist and metaphysical, the inheritance of the great European pictural tradition. Biarritz presents for its large Summer exhibition a retrospective of some fifty major works by Claudio Bravo, borrowed from private American collections. The exhibition is organized together with the Marlborough Gallery in New-York. It has just shown in Mexico, at the prestigious Museum of contemporary art (MARCO) in Monterrey, from January to April 2007. To approach Claudio Bravo is like diving at the same time into modernity, Spanish baroque and Italian Renaissance. His hyperrealist paintings are awing in how precise they are, and surprise us by a combination of abstraction and classic art

CASTRES / SEVILLA - A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO COLLECTIONS

CASTRES - The museum of fine arts of Sevilla and the Goya museum in Castres have, together many major great Spanish artists - Pacheco, Murillo, Velázquez, Goya, etc. These remarkable groups of works are the testimony of Spain's artistic vitality, from the Midddle Ages to the XXth century, and trace its determing influence in European art history. While the two institutions have maintained their dialogue for a long time now, through an exchange of knowledge, this is an unusual event in three phases. Following Sevilla and Salamanca, Castres is the last stop in this event, bringing together forty-two master pieces from the museum of fine arts of Sevilla and the Goya museum in Castres. Spanish bank Caja Duero is the patron of this ambitious project.

OTHON FRIESZ

CERET - A major figure in the Fauvist movement, Emile-Othon Friesz (1879-1949) has not had a retrospective since the one of 1979, organised for his birthday centenial. No monography has been published since the book by Maximilien Gauthier, which came out in 1957. Today, in collaboration with the Musée La Piscine de Roubaix and the Musée Malraux in the Havre, the Musée d’art moderne de Céret finally lets the public discover all the diversity of the friend of Malraux, Braque, Vlaminck and Derain. The exibition brings together nearly 160 works of art, borrowed from very large public and private, French and international collections: paintings, drawings, prints and ceramics, are all gathered together for the first time and reveal the wealth of the artist's long life. From impressionist landscapes, marked by Guillaumin and Pissaro, to the explosion of Fuvist color, from neo cezannisme to the return of order, his work can finally be understood in its integrity.

THE 1950s, THE FIGURATIVE ALTERNATIVE

CLERMONT-FERRAND - Though often forgotten by art critics and historians , the young figurative painting of the 1950s was of great interest to Maurice Combe, the gallery owner. Through his wive's successive donations, the Musée d’art Roger-Quilliot has enriched itself with 410 works of this pictural movement. It was therefore the ideal opportunity to give recognition to these artists, true «witnesses of their time», who made it their duty to defend a figurative alternative in face of the conquering abstraction, at the end of World War II, in a country marked by deep existential qualms. These painters who matured too early through suffering and deprivation during the dark years suggest a vision of the world in which Man, and not the Idea, have a central role. In 65 paintings, thanks to loans from museums or private funds, they are presented in their variety.

DOMINIQUE DELPOUX : PORTRAITS OF MEN AND WOMEN IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN THE TARN REGION/i>