The Draguignan Museum of Fine Arts is currently offering a very special exhibition with an incredible history.
Indeed, originally from the south of France, Marguerite Maeght knows well the story of Saint Roseline whose miracles are famous in this region. She then decides to ask her for a grandson (she already has several granddaughters). Her wish granted, the collector and patron feeling indebted, calls on her closest artist friends to tackle the restoration of the chapel dedicated to the saint, located in Arcs-sur-Argens. Giacometti, Chagall, Bazaine and Ubac will participate in this project and give this building a celestial dimension.
Marguerite Maeght’s wish is presented at the Draguignan MBA until September 22.
Marguerite Maeght and her artists
From a face-to-face meeting – portraits of Saint Roseline, by Nicolas Mignard and of Marguerite Maeght, by Alberto Giacometti – the exhibition explores, through the personal, intimate and family wish of the patron, her atypical commission placed with artist friends Bazaine, Ubac, Giacometti and Chagall to materialize her gratitude to the saint, like an ex-voto. This connivance born of many years spent in contact with the artists, within the Maeght gallery, founded in Paris after the war, reinforced during the creation of the Fondation de Saint-Paul de Vence, is evoked by a dozen issues of the magazine Derrière le miroir and unpublished audiovisual archives translating the couple’s shared vision of art and the creation of their time. These documents and testimonies also remind us that Aimé and Marguerite Maeght, before becoming merchants, never forgot their first activity as printers and art publishers.
