In the highway crossing Liguria, called “Flowers’ Highway”, there are oleanders and you can always see the sea. Then, when you are in France, the highway broadens out, the first village is Menton and you feel like flying on the asphalt. You often stop to pay at the tollgates. At one point you arrive in Cagnes-sur-mer and exit, go to S. Paul de Vence and you land in a wizard venue. It seems easy to design a garden of sculptures and a museum. Here Marguerite and Aimé Maeght succeeded to do it  with catalan architect Josep Llouis Sert and the artists, whose artworks form one of the most important modern and contemporary art collection in Europe.

Miró designed a labyrinth filled with sculptures and ceramics, Chagall mural mosaics, Braque a pool where fishes swim and a stained glass window of a chapel that seems to be built for the Hobbit.  Marguerite and Aimé had a gallery in Paris and they chose the French Riviera and St. Paul de Vence because here there is the Colombe d’Or, in Vence the Matisse chapel, in Biot the Léger museum. And it was also the French Riviera of Picasso who has lived for a long time in the villa La Californie, and of Vallauris who cooked here his ceramics.

In the Maeght Foundation’s garden there are also several sculptures of basque artist Edouardo Chillida to whom an important retrospective exhibition is now dedicated.  He has studied architecture ­­– it would not have been his job –, but his works strongly deals with architecture. He was the goalkeeper of Real Sociedad and he was a talent, probably he would end up playing for Barcellona or Real Madrid but a damn opponent caused him a knee lesion that required too many surgery operations. One day, he left San Sebastian and moved to Paris. Every day at Louvre he watched Greek sculptures of Arcaic period and translated their dryness and strictness in his works. He came back to San Sebastian to fix in the rocks in front of his ocean his “Wind Combs”. He worked iron, steel, stone, marble, paper and above all alabaster with a very rigorous and clear idea of space.

Sert, Artigas, Miró and Chillida at Maeght Foundation in 1964 © Archives Maeght Foundation

Fond blanc, 1977 Oil on canvas, 27 x 22 cm
Maeght Family Collection
© Zabalaga-Leku, Adagp, Paris 201, photo Galerie Maeght

Homenaje a la mar III, 1984 Alabaster, 51 x 69 x 100 cm
Colección Telefónica, deposito Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid © Zabalaga-Leku, Adagp, Paris 201. Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Peine del viento© Zabalaga-Leku, Adagp, Paris 2011, photo Catalá-Roca

Eduardo Chillida with the installation Peine del viento in 1977© Zabalaga-Leku, Adagp, Paris 2011, Archives Chillida Family, photo Jesús Uriarte