L’Atelier des combles

A renowned artist who lacks space to work in, an enlightened curator who has too much space for his small collection: the ideal encounter took place with the intervention of Michel Smajewski, an Auschwitz survivor. The history of art is sometimes written by strokes of chance more than that of a pen … On the one hand then, Picasso, on the Côte d’Azur in the Summer of 1946, with his new flame, Françoise Gilot; on the other, Romuald Dor de la Souchère, the director of the Antibes museum who has an unused attic. He handed the keys to Picasso for various months, and the latter in turn used the space to create Nature morte au compotier de raisin, à la guitare (Dish of grapes, guitar and two apples on a plate) then Ulysse et les sirènes (Ulysses and the mermaids). Michel Smajewski, called Sima, followed the various phases with an old patched up photographic chamber (the shutter was made with a piece of floating bamboo). This gives us a very original «photo love story»: Picasso in nude torso, in shorts or in cotton pants, wearing an old sweater with a hole in it or in his stripped T-shirt, with sandals, sitting, standing, with Sabartés or Eluard, posing with a brush, with ceramic works, with an owl in his hand, his look slightly hallucinated…

• L’Atelier des combles, photographs by Michel Sima, text by Anne de Staël, Hazan, 2009, 192 p., 30 €, ISBN : 978-2-7541-0338-1