Hervé di Rosa, apostle of Art Modeste and a great traveller, draws a new map of the art world

As the founder of La Maison Rouge, a private foundation dedicated to showing private art collections, Antoine de Galbert has always favored a different kind of art. He is exhibiting Hervé di Rosa‘s personal collections as well as his “Art modeste”, a symbiosis of art brut, primitive art and popular art, for which the artist has created a museum, the MIAM,  musée international des arts modestes, in Sète. Whether you like it or not, Di Rosa’s experience with African and Latin American art is fascinating.

Hervé di Rosa, a very versatile artist who started with “figuration libre” in the eighties

You enter the show through a short tunnel covered with 30 black and white frescoes on Kraft paper called “La Vie des Pauvres”, a strong and terrifying vision of life, so different from his utopical multicolor paintings.

La vie des pauvres, detail, 30 acrylic panels on kraft paper, 1993

Then you walk into a vividly colored room with china and plates made in Portugal, windows filled with miniature cars and trucks collected since childhood, and a large room with International treasures such as his Mexican ex votos (he lived in Mexico for three years) and works inspired by Haitians, Benin people, Ghaneans and Cameroonians. The inventively of this 57 year old artist who was first exhibited by the gallerists  Gillespie Laage Salomon in 1982, is endless and his sense of humor refreshing nowadays. With François Boisrond and Robert Combas, he started the movement of “La Figuration libre”.

Hervé di Rosa, “Virgen del arte contemporaneo”  Sevilla, 2013

When you walk out of the show, your mind is full of images which you love and hate… You have travelled very far.

(Until January 22, La Maison rouge, 10 bd de la Bastille)