Pablo Picassos sagenumwobene Zeit an der Riviera

Über 30 Jahre hat Pablo Picasso einen spektakulären Weg durch die Riviera gebahnt. Er war brillant, grausam und fesselnd. Als er 1973 in seiner Villa in New York starb Mougins, fünf Meilen landeinwärts von Cannes, Picasso had lived in the French Riviera and Provence for nearly three decades after relocating semi-permanently from Paris, where he moved from his native Spain in 1904.

Die Cote d'Azur, with its mimosa blossoms, olive groves and sun-drenched hills, was closer geographically and perhaps spiritually to his mother country, from which he had been in exile after his stance against the fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Picasso fell under the southern spell of Provence and the French Riviera on his first visit to Avignon in 1912 (his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, painted in 1907, refers to a street with the same name in Barcelona), and he visited frequently during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1945, already in his sixties, with Paris liberated but hardly recovered from the war, he began to voyage there more regularly.

Immer ruhelos fuhr er durch Menerbes, wo er ein Haus für seine frühere Geliebte Dora Maar gekauft hatte, und durch Golfe-Juan, wo er in der Villa eines Freundes übernachtete. Er verbrachte Zeit in Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Cannes, Vallauris und Antibes, von denen die beiden letzteren Picasso-Museen gewidmet sind.

Musée Picasso in Antibes

Die Musée Picasso in Antibes sits ablaze in white-hot sunlight on the edge of the Mediterranean, housed in a 17th-century chateau with ramparts that plunge right into the rocks below. The time he spent there in the autumn of 1946 represents a tiny but pivotal sliver in the artist’s life. As is frequently the case with Picasso, it was buoyed by energy from a new muse and love, the painter Françoise Gilot, whom he had met three years earlier in occupied Paris.

In ihren Memoiren von 1964 Leben mit Picasso, Gilot writes of her first visit to what was then known as Chateau Grimaldi in Antibes: “You’re going to swear here that you love me forever,” she recalls him saying, and she duly obeyed, though Gilot would leave him in 1953. But her presence in Antibes was vital to the sense of regeneration as a man and as an artist that Picasso felt during his stay. While there, she learned she was pregnant, and her son, Claude, was born the following May.

The chateau was at the time a struggling museum of Napoleon-era collectibles, and Picasso had coincidentally tried to buy the building two decades earlier. In 1946, with plenty of empty space to fill, the curator agreed to let Picasso use the second floor as his atelier.

Still as prolific as he had been in his youth, Picasso began painting with astonishing vigor and excitement, on any of the scarce materials available in postwar Antibes: plywood, fiber cement panels, boat paint and Ripolin, which was cheap, and ready-mixed.

When he left the chateau in late November (when its name was officially changed to the Musee Picasso), he donated 23 paintings and 44 drawings from his stay there and later, an extraordinary collection of unique ceramics he made in nearby Vallauris, in which Franoise’ s curvaceous body is often transformed into pots that evoke an ancient heritage.

The museum, filled with the work Picasso made there and soon after, represents an almost perfect time capsule. The Antibes period shows a palpable sense of renewal, marked by a profound visual response to the light, atmosphere and rituals of the Mediterranean setting (sea urchins, fish, fisherman); it’s also bursting with ardor for Françoise, the woman with whom he would share the next years.

It is most masterfully embodied in Joie de Vivre (1946), the largest painting in the collection. “This conveys Picasso’s joy after World War II at being on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the company of Françoise Gilot,” says Marilyn McCully, leading Picasso specialist who has most recently written about his visits to the Cote d’Azur in the 1920s and 1930s. “The mixture of her presence –the dancing nymph in the center– and creatures drawn from mythology who dance around her in the composition clearly demonstrates how Picasso brought personal and ancient associations together in his work.”

Outside on the Museum’s terrace, the lapis watery backdrop makes an ideal setting for the sculptures of Germaine Richier, which evoke both the antiquity associated with the Mediterranean region and the modern that Picasso so boldly represents indoors. Given his unfortunate reputation with women, chronicled so forcefully by Gilot herself, it’s a bit of karmic irony to have these bronzes here, standing tall above the water like sentries. Even more delicious to have them immortalized by Graham Greene, who lived in Antibes for 25 years — the confluence of art, literature and history that is a matter of course on the Cote d’Azur.

„Regenböen wehten an den Wällen entlang, und die ausgemergelten Statuen auf der Terrasse des Schlosses Grimaldi tropften vor Nässe“, schreibt er in den ersten Zeilen von Leid in drei Teilen, “and there was a sound absent during the flat blue days of summer, the continual rustle below the ramparts of the small surf.”

Germaine Richier, born in 1902, came of age in the arts at a time when they were affected, scarred and molded by the devastation of two world wars. She was also of a generation where the artistic talents of women such as Camille Claudel were largely ignored and sculpture still presented itself mostly in figures that were heroic, macho renderings of the permanence of man.

„Wir stammen aus derselben Familie“, soll Picasso zu Richier in einem der Salons de Mai in Paris gesagt haben, wo die Arbeiten der Bildhauerin 1947 zum ersten Mal gezeigt wurden.

The two artists met again in Antibes, at the museum which did not yet bear his name, but in which Picasso’s work in Antibes had been shown to the public since 1947. Richier responded enthusiastically when she was offered to exhibit her sculptures in the summer of 1959 – one of the factors undoubtedly was that the Arles-born artist was happy to be welcomed by the Malaga-born painter.

She died in 1959 while setting up an exhibition at the Musee Picasso; the pieces here are both the largest in scale and biggest grouping of her work. They embody a time where a heroic self-perception of man (and woman) has been marred and questioned by the horrible deeds perpetrated in World War II. They portray Mankind as a reduced vulnerable hybrid shell-here, in front of a deep blue Mediterranean background.

Nothing is more French: existential questioning, violent history, against a beautiful cultivated setting, on the ramparts of a onetime fortress, outside of a former atelier where love, life and creation took hold.

Picassos Villa in Cannes: Villa California

Die Villa La Californie wurde 1920 in Cannes erbaut. Pablo Picasso kaufte die Villa La Californie 1955 und lebte dort mit seiner letzten Frau und Muse,Jaqueline Roque until 1961, when they abandoned it because another building was built that blocked his sea view. It was here that the Spanish artist created his masterpiece ‘The Bay of Cannes’.

His granddaughter, Marina Picasso, inherited the house at age 22. Since Ms Picasso inherited the villa, she has renovated it in 1987, renaming it the ‘Pavillon de Flore’. It has since acted as a museum and gallery open to the public. In 2015 she put the house up for sale, stating to the press that it came with less than fond memories of an “indifferent” grandfather.

Marina Picassos Vater war Picassos Sohn von seiner ersten Frau, Olga Khokhlova, einer russisch-ukrainischen Ballerina. Er wurde gedemütigt, indem er gezwungen wurde, als Chauffeur des Künstlers zu arbeiten. Marina Picasso erinnert sich, wie sie von ihrem verarmten Vater Paulo vor die Tore des großen dreistöckigen Hauses La Californie gebracht wurde, um von einem gleichgültigen Picasso Almosen zu erbetteln.

„Es ist kein Haus, an das ich viele gute Erinnerungen habe“, sagte sie. „Ich habe dort sehr wenig von meinem Großvater gesehen. Im Nachhinein verstehe ich, dass er vielleicht von der Malerei fasziniert war und ihm nichts anderes wichtiger war. Außer als Kind erlebt man das nicht so.“ Fünfzehn Jahre Therapie halfen Marina Picasso, die bitteren Erinnerungen zu verarbeiten. 2001 machte sie ihrer Wut in ihren Memoiren „Picasso, My Grandfather“ Luft.

The sale “will be a way for me to turn the page on a rather painful story,” she told the newspaper Nice-Matin. She has reportedly received an offer of nearly £110 million for the villa, along with an extensive collection of his works.

Picasso’s Villa in Mougins: Notre-Dame-de-Vie

Nach der Villa La Californie kauften Pablo Picasso und seine Frau Jacqueline eine weitere Villa, diesmal in Mougins, where Picasso lived for 12 years, until his death in 1973 at age 91. During that time, the painter, more closed in on himself, worked tirelessly, turning the house of Notre-Dame-de-Vie into a gigantic artistic workshop.

The long saga of the 15-bedroom property and three-hectare estate started long before the Spanish painter bought it, when for decades it belonged to the Anglo-Irish Guinness brewing family. Benjamin Seymour Guinness first spotted the spectacular Mas de Notre Dame de Vie property in the 1925.

Gelegen in Mougins – eine 15-minütige Autofahrt landeinwärts von Cannes on the French Riviera – the property was then a “mas” (a traditional farmhouse) but Guinness, a banker and philanthropist descended from the banking arm of the Guinness family, and his artist wife Bridget converted it into a luxurious villa.

Das ganzjährig warme Klima und das wunderschöne Licht der Umgebung machten Mougins bald zu einem begehrten Ziel für Künstler, sowohl für Amateure als auch für Profis. Illustre Berühmtheiten waren häufige Besucher, darunter Winston Churchill, der gerne auf dem Gelände der weitläufigen Villa malte. Churchill war ein guter Freund von Benjamin und Bridget und wurde ein regelmäßiger Besucher ihres Mougins-Hauses, wo sie viele Sommertage und -nächte damit verbrachte, in ihrem Garten zu malen.

Ein Künstler einer ganz anderen Kategorie, Pablo Picasso, war ebenfalls ein Freund der Guinness und wurde wie Churchill ein regelmäßiger Besucher ihres Hauses. Picasso war von Mas de Notre Dame de Vie so angetan, dass er das Haus schließlich von Benjamins und Bridgets Sohn Loel kaufte.

Das Anwesen stammt aus dem 18. Jahrhundert und bietet einen weiten Blick auf das Massiv von Estérel und die Bucht von Cannes. Es besteht aus verschiedenen Wohneinheiten und wurde während des letzten Umbaus mit einer Reihe raffinierter Ergänzungen wie neuen Glasfenstern, einem Poolhaus, einem Swimmingpool, einem Aufzug, einer Klimaanlage, einem Spa, Garagen, einem Haus für Hausmeister und verschiedenen anderen Nebengebäuden bis zur Finanzierung erweitert Schwierigkeiten und Ehekonflikte des Eigentümers stoppten die unvollendet gebliebenen Arbeiten.

After the master’s death at this villa in 1973, his widow Jacqueline Roque withheld inheritance and feuded with Picasso’s children. A spiteful woman, Roque also barred the grandchildren that were a result of Picasso’s first marriage, Marina Picasso and her brother Pablito, from the artist’s funeral. Pablito Picasso committed suicide a few days later. Jacqueline lived in the villa until 1986, when she also committed suicide (by shooting herself) there.

It was Jacqueline’s daughter from a previous marriage, Catherine Hutin-Blay, who inherited the estate. It stayed abandoned for almost 30 years, and she sold it in 2007 to the Dutch entrepreneur for €12 million. He had fallen in love with the house, pledged €10 million worth of extensive remodeling and renamed it “Cavern of the Minotaur” in honor of Picasso’s obsession with the mythical beast.

Der einzige originale Raum aus der Picasso-Zeit ist das Atelier im Haupthaus, das der legendäre Künstler durch Öffnung mehrerer Räume geschaffen hatte und das noch Farbspuren, aber keine seiner Werke trägt.

Mehr wollen? Hier ist ein Liste berühmter Villen, die Prominenten, denen sie gehörten, und die verrückten Dinge, die dort passiert sind.