Maeght founded under the sign of friendship

About the 60th anniversary and the extension of the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and the exhibition “Amitiés, Bonnard-Matisse” which is being held there until October 6, 2024.

It was not to speculate on the art market that they began selling works of art, but sincerely to help their artist friends become (re)known. Because Pierre Bonnard was the first of these friends, Aimé and Marguerite Maeght became the immense patrons and art dealers that we know. Because the most illustrious artists of their time gradually formed their friendly tribe, the couple chose to create the Maeght Foundation on the site where they had initially planned to build their own house. At that time, it was necessary to survive the death of a child, and friends were there. When their son Bernard succumbed to leukemia in 1953, George Braque advised Aimé and Marguerite to “undertake something beyond themselves”. A trip to the United States gave them the key: in the style of a Barnes, a Philips or a Guggenheim, they would create the first privately owned French museum of modern art. The subsequent discovery of their friend Miro’s studio in Palma de Mallorca gave them the plan: their project would be designed by the same architect, the Catalan Josep Lluis Sert. And the Maeght Foundation would be inaugurated with (very) great fanfare on July 28, 1964 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence by André Malraux, whose lyrical flights remain as legendary as the Yves Montand-Ella Fitzgerald duo… The Maeght Foundation would never let its friends down.

What could be more natural than to inaugurate the judicious extension of its 60th anniversary with an exhibition entitled “Amitiés, Bonnard-Matisse”? Judicious in more ways than one. Not only was it becoming imperative to actually find more space to exhibit the friends of friends who are friends… but in addition the architect Silvio d’Ascia had the brilliant idea of ​​not spoiling anything of the modernist architectural gem designed in his time by Josep Lluis Sert… by not adjoining any construction. He chose to dig the additional 500 m2 under the Giacometti courtyard and the Miro courtyard! Two immense rooms are thus connected in the basement by a gallery, lit by large bay windows opening onto the pine forest, leaving the emblematic works of the collection all the space to unfold in majesty without touching the visual integrity of the famous building with the white cornets. Hats off.

By dedicating a very beautiful article in Beaux Arts Magazine to the 60th anniversary of the legendary institution of modern and contemporary art, I won't hide from you that Emmanuelle Lequeux has rekindled my desire to go and park my caravan in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The opportunity will also be a dream come true when I am in Digne-les-Bains to visit the house of Alexandra David-Neel, this exploratory artist whose novelistic work I have just rediscovered thanks to the Editions du Tripode, and whom I therefore recommend to you in passing. After all, all I will have to do is go down a little further to listen to modern art singing with the cicadas in Saint-Paul-de-Vence... And you, are you tempted? I'll tell you a little more then.

The time when Aimé Maeght sold paintings with all his heart in his art gallery in Cannes in 1941, or in the one in Paris in 1945, is long gone, after having dreamed of becoming a painter himself, in vain, having retained no bitterness, having worked in a Cannes printing shop and then having created a decoration store with Marguerite. He was passionate about publishing. This is how he had produced a lithograph for Pierre Bonnard before the two men became friends, and Matisse, Kees Van Dongen, etc. joined them in this region beloved of the artists of the Roaring Twenties. The decoration store called Arte very quickly became an art gallery, and the Maeghts organized their first exhibition there: “Artists-artisans”, with no more and no less than works by Le Corbusier, Matisse, Rouault, etc. Aimé Maeght wanted to democratize art. He invites all his friends to practice engraving so that he can publish them. He combines painters and poets on paper. And it is his son Adrien who prints them at Arte. Their art gallery will follow the spirit of the times until the beginning of the 1960s, with the brothers Bram and Geer van Velde, Pierre Tal Coat or Antoni Tapies. On the other hand, the New Realists and pop art will not be to their taste. Everyone has their limits. And the friends to support are already many.

So, of course, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since this beautiful story of friendship(s), with quite a few turmoil at times. Nevertheless, without the activity of art dealers, Aimé and Marguerite would never have been able to raise the funds needed to build a Maeght Foundation that has become a reference in the field. It was in fact the sale of two paintings by Braque, a Matisse, a Léger and a Bonnard that allowed them to raise the twenty million francs of the time needed to finance the project of their life: a place designed for and with artists. We must imagine the painters and sculptors contemporaries of the architect collaborating at the time, "by imagining works that would integrate into the building and the landscape, between cork oaks, thyme and rosemary: thus were born the Giacometti courtyard and the Miro labyrinth, an entire course of sculptures in the gardens" Emmanuelle Lequeux tells us. “Chagall and Tal Coat made mosaics on the walls, Braque a pond and a stained glass window, Pol Bury a fountain.” They are all there! And the Maeghts obviously do not hesitate for a second to bequeath the funds of their own collection of works of art, including the paintings and sculptures of the “big five” who shaped their destiny: Braque, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Chagall and Miro. In any case, Aimé Maeght is convinced: “With the probable socialization of our society in the future, the position of the art dealer has become anachronistic. The social advantages that artists will benefit from will in some way reintegrate them into society. On the other hand, the notion of the collector who hides his paintings is an outdated notion. Nowadays, we are more depositories than owners. Look at the United States. I hope that this center will bring an experimental, avant-garde, creative element to contemporary art. Finally, I am happy to show my paintings.” »

Pierre Maeght is a formidable visionary. Even if I believe that the profits of the very lucrative contemporary art market unfortunately outweigh the social benefits granted to artists... What is certain is that collectors and patrons are no longer content to buy works of art for their interior, or even to speculate on the art market: there are now legions of them who want to show them by creating foundations, or even by bequeathing such beautiful collections of modern and contemporary art to their favorite city that the latter creates a museum, like the Lévy in Troyes, which I will tell you about again one day. So much the better for contemporary artists who make themselves known there and possibly spotted by new art galleries. So much the better for onlookers like me.

Article written by Valibri en Roulotte

Illustration:

Left: Henri Matisse, Dance Movement, 1945. Indian ink and color on paper, 28 x 21.3 cm. Private collection, courtesy Dina Vierny, Paris Photo Jean-Louis Losi © Succession H. Matisse

Right: Pierre Bonnard, Nude from the Back at the Toilet, Winter 1934. Oil and pencil on wood panel, 107.3 x 74 cm x 30 cm. Collection Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’art moderne – Centre de création Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Jean-Claude Planchet