Discovering La Commanderie de Peyrassol, the Fondation Venet, the Fondation Maeght, the Fondation Hartung Bergman and the Fondation CAB, between the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes.
Summer getaways are the perfect opportunity to appreciate the Mediterranean horizons and breathtaking views from the heights of the hinterland and the perched villages. But the Côte d’Azur is also an artistic destination rich in sublime places: this is evidenced by the presence of numerous art foundations, the visit of which is a true delight.
The Commanderie de Peyrassol: a haven of vineyards and garrigue for the Philippe Austruy collection.
In the Var, the Commanderie de Peyrassol, a Templar order founded in the 13th century that has been hosting, since its acquisition and renovation in 2001 by collector Philippe Austruy, an exceptional selection of contemporary art, is located in the commune of Flassans sur Issole, about thirty kilometers from Saint-Tropez on the foothills of the Massif des Maures. Originally an ancient Templar stopover, the estate covers 1,000 hectares of vineyards arranged as a small Provençal village where one walks among vineyards, a Mediterranean forest of species, a bastide and its botanical garden, vegetable garden, cellars and an art center to discover the collection of Philippe Austruy, as well as the monumental sculptures and installations created in situ by the invited artists with whom the collector maintains privileged ties. The iconic installation of Daniel Buren opens the estate, and the artist’s signature can be found on the transparent cellars in various colors. The forest trails lead to the outdoor works of Vasarely, Joana Vasconcelos, Ugo Rondinone, Bernar Venet, Ben, Arman, César, Gisela Colon, Dan Graham, Franck Stella, Anne and Patrick Poirier, Jean Tinguely and many more. At the heart of the estate, the art center, a complex of three concrete buildings designed by architect Charles Berthier, exhibits the works from the Austruy collection: Niki de Saint Phalle, Bertrand Lavier, Étel Adnan, François Morellet, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Anish Kapoor, Jacques Monory, Niele Toroni, Robert Barry, Jésus Rafael Soto, Chiharu Shiota, Lee Ufan and other key figures from various contemporary art movements. Temporary exhibitions are also offered throughout the seasons. A way to combine art and wine in a stunning setting at the heart of the pine forest, cedars and centuries-old oaks of the Var. We stop at the «village of Peyrassol» square for a refreshing break at Bistrot de Lou, or for lunch or dinner amidst the vineyards with a view of Daniel Buren’s Rainbow Floating Damier at the restaurant chez Jeannette, which offers cuisine with Provençal flavors using the produce from the vegetable garden, a fragrant cuisine of the various aromatic herbs that grow in the «remarkable» gardens designed around the bastide by the landscaper Gaële Bazennerye. The tasting and sales room opens through a corten steel awning designed by architect Charles Berthier, who is also the faithful architect of the Bernar Venet Foundation. The Commanderie de Peyrassol is a space out of time that brings together the indispensable figures of contemporary art in a charming setting. It is also possible to stay on site in one of the guest houses offered to visitors.
The Venet Foundation in Muy: an exceptional site for monumental art.
It was in Muy in the Var that Bernar Venet established his foundation, ultimately halfway between his native Alpes de Haute Provence and Nice, the city where his vocation as an artist was realized before his departure for the United States. It was the gallery owner Enrico Navarra who came up with the idea of locating the foundation near Saint-Tropez. Dedicated to conceptual art, the foundation created in 2014 is spread around a 16th-century windmill purchased with his wife in 1989. The artist also made it his home by building minimalist-style houses. After 54 years spent in New York and with projects around the world, Bernar Venet has returned to his Provence roots. His American-based foundation is a place that mirrors his journey, woven of significant encounters with artists who have accompanied his path. A way to extend a hand upon his arrival in New York. When Bernar and Diane Venet buy the Moulin des Serres, a property organized around a dam on the Nartuby River, they discover a classified site rich in history and anecdotes (Jean Marais filmed a scene from The Bossu there) that was the site of the Paulvé factory that manufactured the control systems for the railways. Today, two parks of monumental sculptures stretch on both sides of the river; an exhibition gallery hosts temporary exhibitions of artist friends every summer during the period when the public is allowed to visit; and the »factory» hangar for experimental projects is a place where the artist designs his sculptures of ever greater dimensions, always seeking an objective approach, where the act is the essence of creation, leaving meaning to the side. Bernar Venet calls his sculptures ’autoreferential,« meaning that they speak only of themselves, freed from any moral, symbolic, or utilitarian dimension. They emerge in the contingency between the artist’s gesture and the laws of matter. The entire Fondation thus forms a sublime journey of art and architecture. Bernar Venet’s friends have enriched the collection with their in situ creations: among others, the chapel by Franck Stella installed in 2016, composed of six monumental abstract reliefs in a circle measuring 15 m in diameter; a swimming pool designed by François Morellet; installations by Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Dan Flavin, Robert Motherwell, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Kenneth Noland, or Anish Kapoor… During the visit to the Venet Foundation, you will also have the opportunity to experience the immersive experience of James Turrell’s work: Elliptic, Ecliptic is one of the installations in the series of James Turrell’s Skyspaces. Inside this ovoid building, the viewer is invited to sit down and observe the sky through a constricted space.
This summer 2023, the temporary exhibition honors Robert Barry for his conceptual work, whose material is the word, the medium the intangible, and a graphic device that invites us to play with associations of concepts to address open-ended questions from different perspectives. A new sculpture by Bernar Venet has also found its place in the park in recent weeks: six arches, an installation created with the architect Charles Berthier, the artist’s faithful partner for the Foundation’s buildings. This monumental sculpture is composed of a set of steel corten arches that are stretched towards the sky from their underground roots, for a gaze that plays with the continuity between interior and exterior, offering new perspectives.
The foundation’s purpose is to preserve the Bernar Venet collection, which, in addition to its own works, includes acquisitions and works by artists selected according to their affinities. Bernar Venet does not conceive of it as a finished work, but as a project that is always evolving and that will outlast him. For the artist, as he recently stated, it is his heart’s desire to give back what society has given him, having come from nothing and from a family without wealth. The concern for transmission is constant in this tireless artist when it comes to sharing his experience through exchanges that he always conducts with passion and enthusiasm and with total simplicity. Last spring, when an exhibition was dedicated to him this season in Nice as a form of return to the starting point of his career, Bernar Venet gave a lecture at the Mediterranean University Centre on the Promenade des Anglais, happy to see the Niçois who had accompanied him again, happy to tell with malice that he had «stolen» materials from the Opera to create his first works, happy to have been able to return this loot to the city of Nice in the form of the 9 monumental obliques lines that border the Promenade or the Arc whose curve reproduces that of the Bay of Angels installed in the Albert Ier garden.
The Venet Foundation visit is possible in summer from June to September, from Wednesday to Friday, by reservation, as it is also the artist’s home: the discovery is therefore made in the company of the artist’s formidable assistants who reveal all the backstage of the creation. Nightly and special visits are also offered during the summer season.
The Maeght Foundation, a symbol of the history of post-war art.
The Maeght Foundation has just reopened its doors to visitors this summer 2023 after a few months of closure to initiate an architectural renovation that is expected to continue in the coming months. This haven of peace under the pines, lulled by the singing of cicadas at the edge of the mythical village of Saint-Paul de Vence and its legendary Golden Dove, is imbued with the artistic history of the 20th century and the figure of the indispensable merchants Aimé and Marguerite Maeght. This is the first independent art foundation in France, conceived in 1964 with architect Josep Lluis Serp. The Maeght family drew inspiration from their visits to American foundations such as the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia or the Guggenheim Museum. At the inauguration in July 1964, André Malraux, then Minister of Culture, declared: «Here is attempted something that has never been attempted: creating the universe in which modern art could find both its place and that hinterland that was once called the supernatural.» The couple’s artist friends left their mark on the walls by appropriating the various spaces: Giacometti, to whom a courtyard is dedicated, Mirò, who designed an emblematic labyrinth, Calder, Braque, Chagall, whose mosaic welcomes visitors, or Fernand Léger, who invested gardens and spaces. The permanent collection features works from all the major names of modern and contemporary art of the 20th century, but – as was the will of the Maeght Foundation – the foundation continues today to support and highlight contemporary creation through temporary exhibitions often commissioned by personalities or descendants of artists. This summer 2023 is the opportunity to (re)discover, for a retrospective rich in the full diversity of his work, the Canadian artist Jean Paul Riopelle. The exhibition «Parfums d’atelier», under the curatorship of the artist’s daughter, Yseult Riopelle, allows us to explore all the dimensions of his prolific work, between free figuration and abstraction, deployed on different media. Paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, ceramics, collages, tapestries make up a panorama that opens a look at the unique techniques and experiments used by Jean Paul Riopelle, in his various workshops between Canada and France.
We always take advantage of these temporary exhibitions to stroll through the gardens among the sculptures, and to see the paintings of Soulages, Bonnard, Chagall, Léger, all artists who crossed the path of a couple that would contribute to transforming the relationship with art.
In the summer, the restaurant Les Agitateurs in Nice, run by a passionate young team of carefully selected local products, moves to the Maeght Foundation for lunches and dinners «under the pines», offering a chance to enhance your visit with good dishes with Mediterranean flavors and a taste of sunshine.
The Hartung Bergman Foundation in Antibes, a peaceful place charged with cosmic vibrations.
The Hartung Bergman Foundation, founded in 1994 in the late artist’s memory in accordance with his wishes, opened its doors to the public last year, and it can now be visited during the summer season on weekdays. Located in the heights of Antibes, the complex, which includes a house and the workshops, was, from 1973 until their death in the late 1980s, the place of life and inspiration for the couple with a romantic destiny, who dedicated their lives to the search for pictorial abstraction nurtured by the observation of natural and cosmic phenomena, with a particular interest in the science of infinity. The minimalist architecture is the original design conceived by the artists with the architect Mario Jossa (a disciple of Marcel Breuer); it is nestled in the heart of a field of hundred-year-old olive trees from which the couple harvested to make their oil. Marcelle, their cook, witness to the daily work of these immense artists, is always there and offers her visitors her fresh little salads of the day, as well as her citrus-flavoured delicacies.
Bergman and Hartung have always taken care to archive, document, and catalog meticulously everything that could have informed their research and experiments. Their respective workshops feature large windows that open onto Mediterranean light that has inspired the chromatic uniqueness of some of their works. The stone drying table in front of Anna Eva’s workshop allows us to imagine the artist’s creative life, who drew heavily on the golden ratio, seeking the purest proportion in her compositions. Her superimpositions of metal sheets that play with light transcribe on the canvas the cosmic variations observed from different viewpoints and different locations, notably during stays in Norway. At the end of the visit, we enter with emotion into the experimental workshop of Hans Hartung, restored to its original state, with its paintings, pigments, instruments, his wheelchair, and his crutch. The walls are dotted with paint sprayed with a sulfate-based spray. It seems as if the artist has just left the room, which is very disturbing.
Every year, a renewed confrontation highlights a dimension of their works, and this summer 2023, the visit of the Hartung Bergman Foundation extends the retrospective dedicated to Anna Eva Bergman at the Museum of Modern Art in the City of Paris, which took place in the spring and benefited from exceptional loans from the foundation. This conservation site serves as a valuable resource and documentation center, in addition to being a venue for exhibitions, for those working on the work of these two major artists.
The CAB Foundation in St Paul de Vence, between architecture, design and conceptual art.
The Cab Foundation in St Paul de Vence is located right opposite the Maeght Foundation. Its founder, Hubert Bonnet, wished to extend the mission of promoting minimal and conceptual art initiated in Brussels with this new address in this mythical village. For almost three years, the magnificent building from the 1950s, renovated by the designer architect Charles Zana, has been hosting part of the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions throughout the seasons. In the winter season, the foundation also becomes a residence for artists. There is also a sculpture garden surrounding the residence: Richard Long, Bernar Venet, Peter Downsborough, Charlotte Van der Borght, Jonathan Monk, Arik Levy or Fabrice Samyn. And a Jean Prouvé modular, demountable house, a structure measuring 6m x 6m, furnished and installed in the park, surrounded by a basin, sheltered from pines and citrus trees, a house that can be booked for stays immersed in the avant-garde experiments of this major figure of Art Deco. The Cab Foundation offers four designer guest houses designed by Charles Zana and a restaurant, Sol, which offers residents and visitors pleasant breakfasts, brunches, snacks, lunches and dinners. This summer 2023, an exhibition is dedicated to Niele Toroni and her brushstrokes, and another exhibition highlights the emblematic creations of the decorative architect Andrée Putman.
The permanent collections feature works by Sol LeWitt, François Morellet, André Cadere, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris… The welcome is remarkable thanks to the emphasis on exchanges and conversations about the works on display: feel free to ask the curator, who always takes pleasure in sharing passionate knowledge about the emergence of the movements of minimalism in the 20th century.
