Pablo Picasso’s Storied Time on the Riviera

Ruim dertig jaar lang baande Pablo Picasso een spectaculair pad door de Rivièra. Hij was briljant, wreed en boeiend. Tegen de tijd dat hij in 1973 stierf in zijn villa in Mougins, vijf mijl landinwaarts 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.

De 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.

Altijd rusteloos trok hij door Menerbes, waar hij een huis had gekocht voor zijn voormalige geliefde Dora Maar, en Golfe-Juan, waar hij in de villa van een vriend logeerde. Hij bracht tijd door in Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Cannes, Vallauris en Antibes, waarvan de laatste twee toegewijde Picasso-musea hebben.

Musée Picasso in Antibes

De 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 haar memoires uit 1964 Leven met 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.

“Regenvlagen bliezen langs de wallen, en de uitgemergelde beelden op het terras van het Chateau Grimaldi droop van het vocht”, schrijft hij in de openingsregels van Chagrin in drie delen, “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.

“Wij komen uit dezelfde familie”, vertelde Picasso naar verluidt aan Richier op een van de Salons de Mai in Parijs, waar het werk van de beeldhouwster in 1947 voor het eerst werd getoond.

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.

Picasso's Villa in Cannes: Villa Californië

Villa La Californie werd in 1920 in Cannes gebouwd. Pablo Picasso kocht Villa La Californie in 1955 en woonde daar met zijn laatste vrouw en muze,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.

De vader van Marina Picasso was de zoon van Picasso bij zijn eerste vrouw, Olga Khokhlova, een Russisch-Oekraïense ballerina. Hij werd vernederd doordat hij gedwongen werd te werken als chauffeur van de kunstenaar. Marina Picasso herinnert zich dat ze door haar verarmde vader Paulo naar de poort van het grote huis met drie verdiepingen, La Californie, werd gebracht om bij een onverschillige Picasso om aalmoezen te bedelen.

“Het is niet een huis waar ik veel goede herinneringen aan heb”, zei ze. “Ik zag daar heel weinig van mijn grootvader. Achteraf begrijp ik dat hij misschien gefascineerd was door de schilderkunst en dat niets anders belangrijker voor hem was. Alleen als kind ervaar je dat niet zo.” Vijftien jaar therapie hielp Marina Picasso de bittere herinneringen te verwerken. Ze uitte haar woede in een memoires uit 2001, 'Picasso, mijn grootvader'.

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

Na Villa La Californie kochten Pablo Picasso en zijn vrouw Jacqueline nog een villa, dit keer 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.

Gesitueerd in Mougins – 15 minuten rijden landinwaarts 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.

Het warme klimaat het hele jaar door en het prachtige licht van de omgeving maakten Mougins al snel tot een gewilde bestemming voor zowel amateur- als professionele kunstenaars. Illustere beroemdheden waren frequente bezoekers, onder wie Winston Churchill, die graag schilderde op het terrein van de uitgestrekte villa. Churchill was een goede vriend van Benjamin en Bridget en werd een regelmatige bezoeker van hun huis in Mougins, waar hij vele zomerse dagen en nachten in hun tuin zat te schilderen.

Een kunstenaar van een geheel andere categorie, Pablo Picasso, was ook een vriend van de Guinnesses en werd, net als Churchill, een regelmatige bezoeker van hun huis. Zo ingenomen was Picasso door Mas de Notre Dame de Vie dat hij het huis uiteindelijk kocht van Benjamin en Bridget's zoon Loel.

Het pand dateert uit de 18e eeuw en heeft een weids uitzicht op het massief van Estérel en de baai van Cannes. Het is samengesteld uit verschillende woningen en is tijdens de meest recente verbouwing uitgebreid met een aantal geavanceerde toevoegingen zoals nieuwe glazen ramen, een poolhouse, zwembad, lift, airconditioning, spa, garages, huis voor conciërges en diverse andere bijgebouwen tot financiële moeilijkheden en huwelijksconflicten van de eigenaar stopten het werk dat onvoltooid bleef.

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.

De enige originele ruimte uit de Picasso-periode is de studio in het hoofdgebouw die de legendarische kunstenaar had gecreëerd door verschillende ruimtes te openen en die nog steeds sporen van verf draagt, maar geen van zijn werken.

Meer willen? Hier is een lijst met beroemde villa's, de beroemdheden die ze bezaten, en de gekke dingen die daar gebeurden.