The Jean Cocteau Museum celebrates the delicate grace of the painter Raoul Dufy, who absorbed the Mediterranean's light and colour during his many stays on the Riviera.
“Dufy is a benefactor,” wrote Louis Vauxcelles, one of the early 20th century's most illustrious art critics. Yet exhibitions on Raoul Dufy, prodigy of line and colour, are still all too rare, making it even more notable that this Menton one covers the entire gamut of his creativity. Like Jean Cocteau, Dufy recognised no frontiers between the arts, so this exhibition takes in oils, watercolours, drawings, weaving, fashion, theatre and even publishing, through some 300 items from a private collection – a feature shared by the museum itself, home to the Séverin Wunderman collection. So a collector's instinctive purchases lead us to discover Dufy in his byways as well as his highways, with additional input from ceramics loaned by Galerie Landrot plus museum pieces. Dufy is boldness of colour and its transparency too, the influence of Impressionism but likewise of Fauvism and Cubism; a world of sailing regattas, showjumping, celebrations, flowers and scenery, often far removed from the hassles of everyday life. His oeuvre is particularly apposite in this museum of undulating architecture suffused in soft Mediterranean light, designed by Rudy Ricciotti.
Exposition « Raoul Dufy, les couleurs du bonheur »
jusqu’au 9 octobre
Menton,
2 quai Monléon
museecocteaumenton.fr
Par Tanja Stojanov
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