Hélène Delprat “Listen, it’s the eclipse” – Fondation Maeght – Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 06570

From March 22 to June 9, 2025, the Maeght Foundation presents a monographic exhibition by Hélène Delprat designed specifically for the rooms on the ground floor of the historic building. History and art history – including certain key artists of the Maeght Foundation – secretly infuse the work of Hélène Delprat, a major figure on the contemporary art scene. His works have been alongside those of these great masters for many years in the collection of the Maeght Foundation. After an exceptional year celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the Maeght Foundation which saw its attendance increase by nearly 46% (in 2024, 190,000 visitors came to discover the anniversary exhibition “Amitiés, Bonnard-Matisse” as the new extension of the building ), the 2025 programming of the Maeght Foundation is placed under the sign of women: women artists and exhibition curators. In the spring, Hélène Delprat will be in the spotlight under the curatorship of Laurence Bertrand Dorléac. This summer, the Maeght Foundation will highlight Barbara Hepworth, curated by Eleanor Clayton. The exhibition “Listen, it’s the eclipse”, offered from March 22 to June 9, 2025, explores the world of Hélène Delprat, whose original story intersects with that of the Maeght Foundation. At 16, she discovered Giacometti and The Imaginary Museum of Malraux which impressed her to the point of still remembering it today in its current display. The poetic title of the exhibition is borrowed from Alfred Jarry and sets the tone: “Listen, it’s the eclipse”. The best of Hélène Delprat's personal and shared history is offered to us through a journey of more than sixty works which retraces a singular adventure: she often preferred the backroads rather than the assured royal road, from the moment she left the School of Fine Arts, through his stay at the Villa Medici and his entry into the prestigious Galerie Maeght. Having always liked to complicate her life by breaking everything that came naturally, she will flee success. She will slip away without ever stopping painting while complaining bitterly about the difficulty of getting there. In her joyful anger, finding almost everything awful, she has fun with nothing and reinterprets everything she deeply loves in art, in literature but also in the cinema or in daily life: in the media, in the café, at the hotel, on a walk. Everything she paints, films, sculpts or weaves serves as a diary of her days and nights. His art is as much haunted by the ghosts of history (of war in particular) and the history of art (from Piero della Francesca to William Hogarth, from Ad Reinhardt to Paul McCarthy…) as by the popular and familiar images. She is therefore eager for press images, from the Gazette Drouot, and comic strips from yesterday and today. She is constantly printing, photocopying, filing… As for the traumatic episodes in her life, she prefers to give them the cryptic form of a rebus. His propensity to deride the worst makes his art all the more alive, colorful, funny and very moving. More than sixty paintings (including very large formats), drawings, sculptures, films, photographs and ceramics will be divided into eight sequences. Two original sculptures imagined and created for the pools of the Maeght Foundation set the tone from the entrance. Guest curator: Laurence Bertrand Dorléac