Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Picasso
Although Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) moved to the Côte d'Azur rather late in life (the
Spanish artist was in his mid-sixties when he moved to Golfe-Juan with his lover
Françoise Gilot in 1946), his influence over the region and the region's influence on him
were significant.
Antibes & Vallauris
It was following an offer from the curator of Antibes' Château Grimaldi (now the Musée
Picasso) that Picasso set up a studio on the third floor of the historic building. Works from
this period are characterised by extraordinary postwar
joie de vivre
and Mediterranean
mythology.
It was that same year that Picasso visited the nearby potters'
village of Vallauris and discovered ceramics. Picasso loved the
three-dimensional aspect of the art and experimented end-
lessly. His method was somewhat unorthodox: he melted clay,
used unglazed ceramics and decorated various pieces with re-
lief motifs; he also eschewed traditional floral decorations for
a bestiary of his favourite mythological creatures.
Picasso settled in Vallauris in 1948 and although he left in
1955, he carried on working with ceramics until his death. His
time in Vallauris wasn't only dedicated to ceramics however; it
was here that Picasso got 'his chapel' (arch-rival Matisse had
finished his in 1951). It was the chapel of the town's castle, in which he painted
War and
Peace
(1952), the last of his monumental creations dedicated to peace, after
Guernica
(1937) and
Massacre in Korea
(1951).
Picasso Sights
»Musée Picasso, Antibes
»Musée Picasso La Guerre et
La Paix, Vallauris
»Château de Vauvenargues
»Musée de la Photographie
André Villers, Mougins
Vauvenargues & Mougins
In 1959 Picasso bought the Château de Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence. The castle
slumbered at the foot of the Montagne Ste-Victoire, depicted so often by Cézanne, whom
Picasso greatly admired. It was Cézanne's early studies on cubism that had led Picasso
and his peers to launch the cubist movement (which seeks to deconstruct the subject into a
system of intersecting planes and present various aspects of it simultaneously); Picasso
was also an avid collector of Cézanne's works.
