December 5th, 2019
Private visit of the Germaine Richier exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Antibes
Germaine Richier, la Magicienne
On the occasion of the sixty years of the death of Germaine Richier (1902-1959) and her last personal exhibition organized in the summer of 1959 at the Musée d’Antibes – Château Grimaldi, the Picasso Museum is proud to show « Germaine Richier, the Magicienne ».
Since the retrospective Germaine Richier held at the Maeght Foundation in 1996, no other French institution in France has dedicated an exhibition to this great sculptor. The exhibition intends to give a new reading of her creation and to highlight her engravings and drawings – less known aspect of the work of the artist – in her relationship with sculpture.
“We are from the same family”, Picasso reportedly told Germaine Richier at one of the Salons de Mai in Paris, where the sculptress’s work was shown for the first time in 1947.
The two artists met again in Antibes, at the museum which did not yet bear his name yet, but in which Picasso’s work in Antibes had been shown to the public since 1947. Richier responded enthusiastically when she was offered to exhibit her sculptures in the summer of 1959 – one of the factors undoubtedly was that the Arles-born artist was happy to be welcomed by the Malaga-born painter.
This tribute to Germaine Richier brings together two museums that are promontories overlooking the sea, north and south of Europe. In the context of a series of exhibitions dedicated to some great figures of the twentieth century, it was only normal that the Beelden aan Zee Museum, dedicated to sculpture, should be interested to a figure that has been featured continuously for sixty years on the terrace of the Museum of Antibes, with, in the remote background, the Maritime Alps, facing the changing blue of the Mediterranean. One could not imagine a nicer setting for this work, about which the author wrote in 1950: “I like being active more than daydreaming; basically, I am happy that the mountains don’t have to look at me with a worried eye.”
(extract of the foreword by Jean-Louis Andral, director of the Picasso Museum, Antibes)
Reservation & information
Visite privée en français. Prix et programme détaillé sur demande. Le nombre des places étant limité, merci de nous contacter par email cotedazur@la-visite.eu