Ferrero Gallery opens in Old Nice

An exceptional venue for a legendary brand. The oldest contemporary art gallery in Nice, founded in 1954 by photographer Jean Ferrero and taken over in 2003 by Guillaume Aral, has just moved to the scenic quarters of Old Nice. Its vaulted cellars now serve as picture rails and alcoves revealing unique works of art.

The famous School of Nice certainly represents the gallery’s DNA, leaving enough space, however, for some promising young talents. Works by César, Arman, Ben, Jean-Claude Farhi, Claude Gilli, Jean Mas, Sacha Sosno are thus rubbing shoulders with Christo or Mimmo Rotella. The creations of some less known, but just as unique Riviera artists, certainly don’t lack originality. Just take Guido Palmero who has chosen car doors for a frame. A piece of metal thus magically blends in with his fascinating painting.

The gallery occupies two levels. The ground floor, the White Cube, features the art in its various forms. Drawings, sculptures, carpets and furniture blend in a joyful cultural mix. This gallery is a perfect illustration of the evolution of the art of the French Riviera.

The Ferrero Gallery
17 Rue Droite (Vieux-Nice), Nice
+33 (0)4 9388 3444
http://www.galerieferrero.com/

The creative power of Soulages at the Lympia Gallery in Nice

This milestone exhibition is held in summer at the Lympia Gallery in Nice. It is featuring about hundred works, some of them rare jewels from private collections. The event is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Pierre Soulages, arguably the most highly rated French and, certainly, internationally recognized artist.

This is a chance to discover his art. During his lifetime, the Louvre thankfully has managed to hold an exhibition dwelling on the painter’s ideas, evolution and techniques. It was a long journey before he discovered his world famous «outrenoir». First there was the pure white notable in its intensity and fluctuations, then an ochre and brown obtained from nut husks, and infinite shades of deep gray drawn from tar. Some of his lithographs emanate a lyric blue.

This former Lympia prison transformed into a cultural space suggests several paths to the painter’s universe. Among other things, it is featuring his utensils (brushes, blades and sticks) bringing out an infinite range of metallic gray, unsuspected brown and subtle black. We also accompany the artist on his journey with a Senegalese friend and poet, Léopold Sédar Senghor.

Oh look at those engraved copper plates made into a work of art thanks to a number of techniques. Pierre Soulages’ art has truly reached its pinnacle here. His black is omnipresent, masterful and captivating. A part of every colour is reigning supremely in his paintings.

The Lympia Gallery
2 Quai Entrecasteaux, Nice
Tel +33(0)4 8904 5310

Eugène Frey’s Luminous Decorations At The Villa Paloma In Monaco

A superb winter exhibition, highlighting Eugène Frey’s luminous decorations, carries on through the summer at the New National Museum of Monaco. It is introducing us to a technique of scenography, developed on the Monte-Carlo Opera stage through the 1930s and largely contributing to its renown. This is the first collection of 300 paper and over 100 glass plates by Eugène Frey who invented a complex system of light projections combining photographic, pictorial and cinematographic techniques. It conveys multiple variations of colours, lights and shapes to a stage setting, introducing some moving images too.

The exhibition reveals an interaction between this fabulous technique and the experimental creation by artists, choreographers and directors from the early 1920s to the present day.

This presentation is enriched by João Maria Gusmão’s contemporary outlook. The artist is sharing his literary, plastic and «filmic» insight, reenacting different projection techniques. He is treating us to a specific production called «Traveling without motion». This micro cinema is producing moving images without film or an operator’s assistance. Still another reason for visiting the sun-bathed Villa Paloma.

NMNM. Villa Paloma
56 Boulevard du Jardin Exotique
+377 9898 4860

Mounira Al Solh at the Picasso Museum in Vallauris

This is a singular and clever feminist version of Picasso’s «War and Peace» chapel in Vallauris. A multidisciplinary Lebanese artist, Mounira Al Solh, has her own particular way of crossing people’s destinies and sharing their adventures. The Syrian refugee crisis has thus inspired several of her drawing series.

At the invitation of the Pablo Picasso National Museum in Vallauris, the young woman is exhibiting her recent work «Mina El Shourouk ila Al Fahmah — Lackadaisical sunset to sunset». This is a tent embroidered with twenty-four Arabic words symbolizing different hours of the day and night. An intimate and protected tent space is relating several stories of female emancipation in the Arab world. This installation is crowned by a specially designed embroidery, giving a feminist version of Picasso’s Peace Warrior and resonating with the Lebanese protest movement. This original and heartfelt creation is echoing perfectly with Picasso’s «War and Peace» masterpiece. A modern and feminine outlook on the same agenda.

National Pablo Picasso Museum
«War and Peace» chapel
Place de la Liberation, Vallauris
Tel. +33(0)4 9364 7183

Jacques Monory in blue and pink at the Maeght Foundation

His images seem to be taken from movies. This is a striking vision of reality, people, objects, the street and the interior. The Maeght Foundation is paying tribute to Jacques Monory revisiting the work of this major narrative artist. Using newspaper photos and films of the 1950s, he is impersonating a certain vision of everyday life, and of urban life. He is trusting that the image will symbolically narrate the breaking news and stories shaping our reality.

The singularity of the frost blue flooding his paintings, both intense and airy, is fascinating. This monochrome indigo is suggestive of the artist’s childhood memories. An open-air cinema projection using a blue filter for the night scenes … It is a magic colour, an introduction to a dream, while the Indian pink transforms our reality into a fairy tale or a futuristic nightmare.

Journeys across the United States, with its immense spaces, revolvers, long sedans and more than the odd «femme fatale». Living a «film noir», we brace ourselves in anticipation of a thriller, apprehensive as to the world’s future. Almost despite himself and with no apparent motive, Jacques Monory is recreating a film on a canvas.

Fondation Maeght
633, Chemin des Gardettes, Saint-Paul-de-Vence
+33 (0)4 9332 8163
info@fondation-maeght.com

Faraway Colours by Zora Mann and Sol Calero at Villa Arson in Nice

Two women, two distant lands, two outlooks and two colour symphonies at the Villa Arson, in Nice. Zora Mann’s lines evoke tribal figures, entangled patterns, bright, luminous tones, yet conveying a peculiar softness. Born to East African parents, she’s spent time in their home country, being shaped by its culture. The exhibition is therefore called «Waganga» or «soul healers».

This is a singular, original and compelling art, a dream of elsewhere, a psychedelic inspiration… A dazzling work coming from afar, from the very guts. «My paintings often depict the interiority … Our body and mind serve as a scenography to an interior event. They are conveying a permeability, humans being destined to live in a body and look from within a skull. I am painting from the inside towards outside». Zora Mann is delivering her emotions, her very deep inner being.

Sol Calero is introducing us to another continent and another vision of the world. Born in Venezuela, she now works in Berlin. Her art is a combination of painting and sculpture. This reading room at the Villa Arson, abundant in art, paintings and ceramics, represents a profusion of exotic fruit and flowers, an immersion in the South American universe… Her multifaceted art is strongly imbued with her origins and memories. A journey elsewhere, an unexpected landscape, the roots. An initiation not to be missed.