The former convent and college des Precheurs in Aix Centre ville has been sold for 11.5 million euros to house an extensive collection of Picasso’s works—2,000 in all—including paintings, ceramics, and sculptures. The Musée Jacqueline et Pablo Picasso will be the third museum in France to be in France to be …

Picasso’s work has been chosen to be the co-subject of the summer show at Aix’s Musée Granet. ‘Picasso/Picabia’ begins on at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence on June 9th and runs through to 23rd September.  It promises to be an intriguing juxtaposition of two very different artists working in the south of France. …

Previously published on Ginger and Nutmeg: The Château is certainly iconic in Vauvenargues a small village of barely 1000 people. Pablo Picasso loved the place for the isolation that it provided for his work. After his death, Jacqueline proposed that the castle become a museum, the village never approved the …

I have to hand it to the Musée Regards de Provence seems to keep finding interesting local artists to introduce to us all. This time, André Maire (1898-1984) was an inveterate traveller. He was very curious about people, civilizations and religions, and painted his impressions as he went. Continue reading …

Now that I’ve seen the movie “Loving Van Gogh” — in French no less, with no subtitles — I remember my first visit to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. I started my quest for Vincent Van Gogh’s trail in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence early on a beautiful, sunny morning. Temperatures were in the high 70s, and a …

‘Cézanne at Home’ and a retrospective of the painter Tal Coat have recently opened at the Musée Granet, both worth a visit. ‘No painting by Cézanne will ever enter this museum’, proclaimed Henri Pontier who was curator in 1900. His attitude is made even worse by the fact that, during …

This is a huge celebration of the linkages between Pablo Picasso and the Mediterranean region, with exhibitions already organized in Naples, Rabat, Malaga, Perpignan, and Venice and many more in the pipeline. Here in Provence, these are the forthcoming exhibitions in the programme: Picasso et Maitres Espagnol Carrieres de Lumieres …

As the current annual son-et-lumiere show at the Carrieres de Lumieres in Les Baux de Provence draws to a close, (Bosch, Breughel, Arcimboldo ends Jan 7th, it’s always interesting to see what is next on the agenda. And the theme for 2018 is…Picasso et les Maitres Espagnols.

There were just a few paintings still to hang when I left Lourmarin in late September. Before departing—and two days before the opening–I popped by to see Jacqueline Bricard, proprietor of the naïf art gallery bearing her name and curator of the “Regard Naïf Européen” exhibition. She was in the …

I’ve just been to a wonderful exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. It was called Matisse in the Studio, and it shows how the objects that Matisse surrounded himself with appeared in his art. Henri Matisse was a collector: He had an array of vases, chairs, carpets, furniture, …