THREE UNMISSABLE CULTURAL MOMENTS IN COTE D’AZUR
by Virginia De Masi
COTE D’AZUR-MONACO. Do not miss the occasion to visit until Sunday 25 October 2020 the exhibition “MIRO’: LA PEINTURE AU DÉFI” ( THE PAINTING CHALLENGE”) The New National Museum of Monaco (NMNM) and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation are proud to present the exhibition organized by the Estate of Joan Miró, Joan Punyet Miró and Galerie Gmurzynska in collaboration with Successió Miró and Fundación Mapfre. The exhibition features 64 of the artist’s works. While one of the painter’s work – generously offered by his grandson Joan Punyet Miró– has been auctioned on September 24 on the occasion of the Monte Carlo Planetary Health organized by the Fondation Prince Albert II de Monaco in favor of the preservation of the ocean, the earth and mankind, the occasion was seized to present in the Principality the extraordinary talent of this “international Catalan” whose work indisputably marked the history of painting. 
The exhibition, which gathers more than fifty paintings, three sculptures and a nice ensemble of collages and drawings covers the whole span of the Catalan artist’s career. It particularly shines a light on the creation of the Ballet Jeux d’enfants, for which Joan Miró conceived both sets and costumes in 1932 for the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, as well as on more radical and lesser known works from the 1960s-70s. Miró, La Peinture au défi examines the artist’s tireless persistence in challenging the means of his pictural practice. Joan Miró was born in Barcelona-Spain in 1893, but the emotional landscapes that shaped him as a person and an artist were principally those of Mont-roig, Paris, and Majorca, and later those of New York and Japan. The small town of Mont-roig in the Baix Camp region of Catalonia was a counterpoint to the intellectual ferment of his life with the surrealist poets in 1920s Paris, and to the stimulus of discovering Abstract Expressionism in New York in the forties.
Sometime later, in the midst of World War II, Joan Miró returned from exile in France and then settled in Palma de Mallorca, which became his refuge and workplace and where his friend Josep Lluís Sert designed the studio of his dreams.Miró’s attachment to the landscape of Mont-roig first and then Majorca was crucial in his work. His connection to the land and his interest in everyday objects and in the natural environment formed the backdrop to some of his technical and formal research. Miró avoided academicism in his constant quest for a pure, global art that could not be classified under any specific movement. Self-contained in his manners and public expressions, it is through art that Joan Miró showed his rebelliousness and a strong sensitivity to the political and social events around him. These conflicting forces led him to create a unique and extremely personal language that makes him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
COTE D’AZUR-NICE. The day after tomorrow, October 17, 2020, inauguration of the exceptional exhibition SOSNO SQUATTE THE ANTIQUE of more than 70 works by Sacha Sosno on the ancient site of Cemenelum and in the Archaeological Museum of Nice / Cimiez. Mascha Sosno, wife of the artist who died in 2013, will be pleased to welcome you on Saturday October 17 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Nice Cimiez Archaeological Museum (160 avenue des Arènes – Nice). NB Admission to the Sosno Squatte 1’Antique exhibition will also be free on Sunday October 18, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The exhibition presented from October 17, 2020 to March 28, 2021 is cured by Mascha SOSNO and Bertrand ROUSSEL. This exhibition traces a large part of the career of Sacha SOSNO, renowned artist, painter, photographer, sculptor, author of the first monumental inhabited sculpture (the famous TËTE CARREE) and theorist of his own artistic path.
More than 70 works will be exhibited in situ, on the ancient site of the ancient city of Cemenelum, among the Roman remains and in the rooms of the Archaeological Museum of Nice Cimiez. Is the artist a squatter? The exhibition “Sosno squatte 1’Antique” highlights the connection between contemporary art, which symbolizes aesthetic creation and ancient art, a source of inspiration and representation of a collective memory. This large-scale exhibition presents the variations and variants of the obliteration technique, of which Sacha SOSNO was the initiator and whose principle is ”Cacher pour mieux voir” – “To hide for see better “. By taking over the entire museum and archaeological site, the exhibition is part of this desire to obliterate, to hide in order to show better. Nice exhibits Sosno to better reveal the beauty of our ancient cultural heritage! This exhibition also demonstrates the close link between Sosno and archeology and above all, the timelessness and universality of his work. Bertrand Roussel, Director of the Archaeological Museums of Nice, City of Nice, emphasizes: “Antiquity is often considered to be an old and dusty period. It therefore seems important to create a dialogue between this period and modernity. Who better than an artist to build these bridges? Sacha Sosno used a lot of ancient figures to obliterate them, therefore it seemed essential to us to propose a dialogue between the archaeological site of Cimiez and the works of Sacha Sosno. It is for this reason that we are organizing this meeting between the ancient Cemenelum and the great artist Sacha Sosno.” The Director of the museum chose the works presented and their installation locations on the exterior site and inside the museum with Mascha Sosno: the large steel sculptures find their place among the remains. . Poseidon, the Great Torsos and the Columns adjoin the ancient thermal baths, while other Square Heads and Columns reframe the perspectives, lending them their shapes and offering new visions of the ancient site of Cemenelum. Inside the museum, distributed between the two floors, other sculptures, smaller in size, are exhibited next to the museum’s antique masterpieces and thus offer a unique and comprehensive panorama of SOSNO’s work. This exhibition, presented by the Archeology Museum of the City of Nice, is therefore the exceptional opportunity to rediscover the full creative scope of the famous artist, in different forms of expression, in a pleasing confrontation across the centuries. Sosno’s emblematic artistic gesture, “L’Oblitération” – The Obliteration”: in 1967, following his training in filmography at La Sorbonne, Sosno became a war reporter and came close to death on a daily basis.
How far can the horror of reality will it be shown? How to make the citizens of the world react to the truth without shocking them? On his return to France, he answered this question with his emblematic artistic gesture, the obliteration: as said above, “Hide to better show”. Hide horror, hide death, hide part of the visible to better reveal the truth. With the first partially masked photographs, he thus obliterates our vision and pushes us to see differently, to stimulate our imagination, to become co-creators of his works. Sosno then transposes his concept of obliteration in sculpture and architecture through the prism of Antiquity. The importance of his approach and his creations earned him to be represented by Beaubourg, Marisa del Ré, Marlborough galleries. Guy Pieters. Numerous exhibitions have presented his works in the United States (in Miami, West Palm Beach, Sarasota and Tampa), at the Center Georges Pompidou, in China, in Monaco, in Nice … Sosno is also the author of the famous «Tête carrée» -“Square Head”, the first sculpture monumental inhabited area (26 meters high, Nice) and “ Le Guetteur” – “ The Watchman” (20m high, Cagnes-sur-Mer).
COTE D’AZUR MONACO. You have time until 25 October 2020 to visit the interesting Pierre Le-Tan exhibition at the NOUVEAU MUSEE NATIONAL DE MONACO – VILLA PALOMA – Pierre Le-Tan is a French painter and designer, best known as an illustrator. He is the creator of numerous magazine covers and editions of literary works. He is also the author of collections and albums, drawings for advertising, objects and motifs for interior decoration and film sets. Pierre Le-Tan was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His father, the Vietnamese painter Lê Phổ, son of the viceroy of Tonkin, who came to Europe in 19312 to complete his studies at the Beaux-Arts, settled in Paris in 1937. After the war, he married the daughter of an officer French. The couple live in rue de Vaugirard. Their two sons, Pierre Le-Tan and his brother, live in an environment steeped in art. Pierre Le-Tan draws a lot. At seventeen, on the advice of an American friend of his mother’s, he sent drawings to the New Yorker, and he was only nineteen when the prestigious magazine published two covers of the young designer.
Ted Riley, his agent, is also representing Sempé and Steinberg. The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Fortune, Madame Figaro, Tatler Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, The World of Interiors, etc., publish his drawings. Among many other covers, he illustrates those of editions of John Train, Marcel Aymé, Mario Soldati, Harry Mathews, Peter Carey, Raymond Carver, Jean-Benoît Puech … From Memory Lane, in 1981, he works on several occasions in collaboration with Patrick Modiano. He composes many albums. He draws for the advertising of Galeries Lafayette, Suez, Gucci, Lanvin, La Jouvence de l’Abbé Soury. In 1997, he designed the sets for Quadrille, a film by Valérie Lemercier4. The National Museum of Modern Art in Madrid devoted a retrospective to him in 2004. He has three daughters, Olympia, who is a stylist, for whom he has produced numerous visuals2, as well as Cléo. He died on September 17, 2019 at the age of 69.
