Anni and Josef Albers are brilliantly reunited at MAM

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Josef Albers, Gitterbild, Grid mounted, 1921, the Josef and Anni Albers foundation

It is the most comprehensive show (150 works) of Anni and Josef Albers together and, “Art and Life” at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, was made possible thanks to the extraordinary collaboration between Fabrice Hergott and Nicholas Fox Weber, director of the Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, CT who declared at the opening:  “This is the realization of a dream”. He has known Anni Albers for the last twenty years of her life and remembers taking Josef, 87,  to the Metropolitan museum to see the new Islamic galleries the 1975. The experience of working for four years together (the show was postponed for two years) was so exceptional that a number of works by the two artists will be given to MAM by the foundation. We all know Josef Albers‘ design work and his major part as the Head of the Design Department at Yale University, but Anni’s tapestries and paintings had remained quite secret and the juxtaposition of the two is a revelation.Read More

News of the week

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This work by Jean Michel Othoniel in the gardens of Petit Palais is reminiscent of his fountains in Versailles

The happiest news of the week is the nomination of Christophe Leribault, 57, as President of Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, two museums with the largest Impressionist collection in the world, which are often number one on the to-see-list of foreign visitors. He has done marvels at Musée du Petit Palais for 9 years and will inaugurate a Jean-Michel Othoniel exhibition “The Narcissus Theorem” there on the 28 th of September as well as the Russian-Finnish artist Ilya Repine‘s show on October 5. His last completed exhibition will be of turn-of-the-century Italian painter Boldini which has been postponed to next March. He was one of the candidates for the Louvre but President Macron knew better.Read More

Jenny Robinson shows her gigantic prints at the French Académie

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Winters light, Hunter’s point, 2018 – Lithography on Japanese paper Okawara, at galerie Documents 15

British artist Jenny Robinson reigns over the 6 th arrondissement. After winning the Printmaker’s prize Mario Avati, a 40 000€ award given by Académie des Beaux Arts to confirmed printmakers in memory of Mario Avati she was offered an exhibition at Pavillon Comtesse de Caen, and another one at Galerie Documents 15, a few hundred meters away. At the opening, she was introduced and congratulated by her fellow printmaker, Erik Desmazières, for her reinterpretation of the urban landscape which she does with great poetry. Read More

ArtParis is proof that painting is back in fashion

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Ziad Dalloul, Le repos des choses, 2021 at Galerie Claude Bernard

Art fairs are always exciting because you never know what you will discover, by chance. This new edition of ArtParis in front of the Eiffel Tower was particularly successful. The weather was lovely, everyone was tanned and art dealers admitted that they had a very good year during lockdown. The first gallery I stepped into was Claude Bernard’s with his paintings by Paul Rebeyrolle, Sam Szafran and Ziad Dalloul. At School gallery, La Fratrie invented crazy little collages and Magnin-A had Nathalie Boutté’s Japanese papers and Ana Silva’s embroidered canvases. Read More

The Eye of a collector, a new London art fair

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Susie MacMurray, Stalker, 2021,  at pangolin London, Photo Georgia de Chamberet

A new art fair “The Eye of the collector” curated by Nazy Vassegh, formerly CEO of Masterpiece, opened in London and Georgia de Chamberet visited it for Parisdiary.

“After a year of ‘flattening the curve’, to attend an experimental, edgy new kind of art fair in superb surroundings was just the ticket to lift post-pandemic angst and Brexit uncertainty. From 8 to 11 September, works from thirty British galleries (with two exceptions, Turnabuoni from Milan and Long Sharp from Indianapolis) were presented for sale at Two Temple Place, known for many years as Astor House, one of London’s hidden architectural gems on the Embankment. Among those who participated were Thomas Gibson Fine Art, Ariadne, Gazelli Art House, Vigo, Gallery 1957, Gallery Fumi, Agnews, Charles Ede, Rebecca Hossack and Kate MacGarry…Read More

A crazy rentrée but what fun!

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Bianca Bondi, Armchair created for La Scala theater in the series invented by Aline Vidal

It was a race this week if you wanted to see half of what took place in the capital. But with the magnificent weather and the use of subway and walking rather than taxiing, you could achieve a lot. After discovering the very pretty exhibition galleries at Christie’s with new windows on the street, I rushed to Galerie du Passage, to see American artists Matt Mitros and José Sierra’s fun ceramics. Then at La Scala Paris, Aline Vidal was inaugurating a new armchair created by an artist, South African born this time, Bianca Bondi. Nathalie Obadia was opening her large gallery on Faubourg Saint Honoré and all of this while ArtParis was mesmerizing everyone with the quality of its paintings. Read More

Youth equals talent with Pierre Renart and Julien Vermeulen

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Julien Vermeulen, three Totems

The most uplifting moment of the Design week (until 18 September) for me was to meet Pierre Renart and Julien Vermeulen, both 30, and with a ten year professional career, whose work I have admired for a couple of years. It was thanks to Florence Guillier-Bernard from Maison Parisienne, who patiently collects brilliant craft designers and throws them into the light. These two young guys are as charming as they are talented. One is a cabinet maker, the other one a plumassier (a feather artist) and they show together in a beautiful apartment on Ile Saint Louis.

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In Brussels, Fondation Boghossian is a true discovery

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Duane Hanson, Window Washer, 1984, courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Icons” is the theme chosen by Henri Loyrette for his very successful exhibition at Fondation Boghossian in Brussels. It is set in the magnificent art deco Villa Empain, built in 1930 by Louis Empain, age 22, on the avenue des Nations (now avenue Franklin Roosevelt) where all the embassies are settled. The house has gone through many hands from the German army in 1943 to the USSR embassy and the RTL television channel until 1990. It was acquired by the Boghossian Foundation in 2006 and entirely renovated by the artist Jean Boghossian and its director Diane Hennebert. It was awarded the Europa Nostra Prize for the quality of the work. The façades in polished granite, the different marbles, walnut and rosewood panelings, stained glass window and mosaics are all quite exceptional and it provides a perfectly intimate decor for the icons chosen for the show.Read More