Auguste Chabaud (born October 3, 1882 in Nimes - died May 23, 1955 at Graveson)
From 14 he studied the Beaux Arts in Avignon under the master Pierre Grivolas and moved to Paris in 1899 to continue his studies at the Academie Julian and Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he met Matisse and Derain. The winery of his parents suffered a crisis in 1900, forcing Auguste to come back down in the south to Graveson.
In 1901, Chabaud must leave Paris to earn his living, he embarked as a pilotier on a ship and discovered the West African Coast. The same year his father died and he and his brother inherited the vineyard and land that only his brother will manage. At that time Augustus working hard on boucherie papers.
From 1903-1906 he did his military service in Tunisia where he comes back with sketchbooks filled with local images, especially numerous drawings of soldiers, indigenous and bar scenes populated by girls and seamen .
Back in Paris, Chabaud began in 1907 at the Salon des Independants exposing among the Fauves. He discovers a new life, the Paris nightlife and cabarets. Collectors are becoming interested in his work. In 1911, he started his Cubist period, large format work and sculpt.
Then many exhibitions followed including New York in 1913 where he exhibited alongside Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and Picasso, and then to Chicago, Boston. His paintings of the Fauve period perfectly describe the Parisian nightlife: nightclubs, theater cafes, prostitutes, in shades of bright colors (yellow, red), contrasting with the colors of the night (dark blue, black).
On his return from the war in 1919, he settled permanently at the family property in Graveson, in the Montagnette, facing the Alpilles . From 1920 he began his Blue Period (he uses the Prussian blue in a pure state) in which Provence, its people and its customs are highlighted.
He remained there until the end of his life, living as a recluse in his home with his wife and seven children. He died in 1955.
As was done with the Sainte Victoire Cezanne, Chabaud immortalized “la montagnette”, painting scenes of countryside, peasants walking on hills and the trails of the Alpilles. You can see some of his works at the Musee Cantini de Marseille, Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Musee du Petit Palais in Geneva.
In 1992 the Regional Council PACA opens a museum in his honor at Graveson. Painters regularly visit him homage, like Claude Viallat in 2003.
Auguste Chabaud wrote poems and books such as: Estocade of truth, Le Tambour Gautier, Je me suis pris pour Demosthene.
Manifest free, theory free, Matisse, Van Dongen, Marquet, Vlaminck, Dufy and Derain all shared the same desire to reinvent the art of painting, especially by building the painting from the color. Neither a school nor a system, Fauvism was a temporary trend agreement between young independent artists, subject to the sameclimate of the era and carried by the fate of exchanges and meetings. Its existence is the result of a desire to renew the art of painting. Fauve painting tunes to the flatness of the support, denies depth and volume to better separate the color refering to the object, thus freeing its expressive power.
Fauvism does not present itself as a homogeneous group of artists, rather as painters sharing the same need to represent things as they are felt and not as they seem to be in reality. Fauvism is part of the artistic process for which the artist must create his own nature, rather than trying to imitate nature. It is no longer about reproducing reality accurately, it is about feeling it and to make it feel. The painting is no longer the mirror of a landscape or a face, the key is to cause emotion, reaction, even shock: “A pot of paint flung in the face of the public”
To fully appreciate the Fauves, we must add to the six painters of room7 the precursor and pioneer of the movement: Auguste Chabaud. During the Salon Automne of 1905, Chabaud was doing his military service in Tunisia and his suspicious and lonely character, his stated refusal - not paradox free - to deny any artistic affiliation also classifies him as a separate beast, too unknown to the general public.
There is a museum dedicated to Chabaud at his hometown Graveson (www.museechabaud.com) and his family who still own the property opened his atelier which can be visited upon demand.
One week workshops runned by experienced artists and demonstrators.
An Artistic retreat set in beautiful region of Provence, in the south of France, with several One Week Workshop throughout the summer happening at the artist’s house, located on a hill in the pine wood with outdoor space and beautiful views.
Easy access with Ryanair in Nîmes and Marseille plus the Eurostar / TGV in Avignon
You will be hosted here for 1 week full board including lovely french food meals, taking tuitions in the dedicated studio and at several emblematic outdoor locations, such as Van Gogh’s room at the Asylum in St Rémy de Provence, at the foot of the Alpilles, the incredible perched medieval village Les Baux-de-Provence, the Museum of Aromes in Graveson-en-Provence (Chabaud’s workplace), Gordes and the splendid 12th century Cistercian abbey of Sénanque, to capture the special lights and shades of this godblessed region, surrounded by the smells of lavender, enjoy life à la provençale and improve your palette with like-minded artist. Just book now to enjoy an amazing experience!
A popular and contemporary artistic adventure. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vilar, the Avignon Festival is today one of the most important contemporary performing arts events in the world.
Every year in July, Avignon becomes a city-theater, transforming its architectural heritage into various performance venues, majestic or surprising, welcoming tens of thousands of theater-lovers (over 100,000 admissions) of all ages. Its legendary space is the “Cour d’honneur” (main courtyard) of the Popes’ Palace, the heart of outdoor performances, before nearly 2,000 spectators, on summer nights in Provence. The spectators, often on vacation and far from home, spend several days in Avignon and see a few of the 40 or so shows, mostly plays and dance recitals and occasionally or plastic arts events. The Festival successfully brings together a general public and international creation for an original alliance. Avignon is also a state of mind: the city is an open-air forum where festival-goers discuss the shows and share their experiences as spectators. For a month, everyone can have access to a contemporary and living culture.
Programme of the Festival d’Avignon 2010 (PDF - 1.9 mb)
Complement in English to the programme of the Festival d’Avignon 2010 (PDF - 788.8 kb)
Calendar of the Festival d’Avignon 2010 (PDF - 99.5 kb)
Map of the Festival d’Avignon 2010 (PDF - 224.2 kb)
Pre-programme Festival d’Avignon 2010 (PDF - 85.4 kb)
Press File of the Festival d’Avignon 2010 (PDF - 758.7 kb)
Gérard Philipe, Jean Vilar (founder), Léon Gischia during a rehearsal in the Cour d’honneur, 1952.
The Avignon Festival has become a major reference in the history of theater. Furthermore, it has turned into a nerve center that gives rise to the conjunction of creation andcurrent events, culture and opinion debates, the performing arts and their historical repercussions.
In 1947, Jean Vilar conceived the first Festival as a meeting place for a historyladen site, Avignon and its Popes’ Palace, and theater creation by staging Shakespeare’s Richard II, for the first time in France, and works by two contemporary playwrights, Paul Claudel and Maurice Clavel. It was this daring that permitted him to leave Paris and its small venues to bring a new theater into being. On its bare stage, under the stars, the actors moved, the colors shone, the texts enthralled the public, the music rang out, a spectacular ambience that prevented neither rigor nor the highest standards.
The Festival was consolidated with the arrival, in 1951, of Gérard Philipe, the most popular actor in France in the 1950s, who took part in the adventure, reprising the title role of El Cid and premiering in that of Le Prince de Hombourg. A few months later, Vilar was appointed director of the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) in Paris, and made Avignon, until 1963, a welcoming haven for this renewal of the theater: his troupe created his shows there, attracting an ardent and young public, eager for debates and encounters. The Festival was, at the time, the center for a theater ritual and civic engagement.
When he left the TNP in 1963, Vilar remained at the head of the Festival. He stopped presenting his shows there and decided to radically change the Festival so that it would be in osmosis with the mutations of society, while keeping the conviction that it must be an artistic creation center for a broad public. He doubled its length, invited other directors, opened it up to new generations and new aesthetics – Georges Wilson, then Roger Planchon, Antoine Bourseiller… and The Living Theater in 1968. He introduced dance – Maurice Béjart –, cinema – Jean-Luc Godard – and looked for new venues for productions so that the Popes’ Palace would no longer be the sole performance site. He metamorphosed Avignon into a forum. It was in Avignon that the theater encountered politics, becoming a laboratory for cultural policies, a forum for demands and a stage for contestation, particularly in 1968…
Paint in Provence has been chosen to feature in FranceGuide 2010 edition, the Official Guide of the French Government Tourist Office in North America.
Paint in Provence! appears in the column “La Bohème” page 48-49, the article is titled “Artsy Havens” written by Carolyne Parent. We thank them for choosing us.
The FranceGuide tourism magazine is aimed at the North American people in its 4 languages (English, French, Spanish & Portuguese) and is distributed in printed form with the most popular newspapers in North America, such as The Gazette, The Toronto Star, La Presse & Le Soleil among other popular magazines.
The Painters Festival (Les Fêtes de la Route des Peintres) are a yearly gateway to discover new artists and talents, indeed every year more and more galleries are coming to St Remy de Provence, to check on new artists who are expressing themselves in different medias.
During 4 sundays, the Painters Festival will propose about 6000 artwork by exactly 250 artists, painters and sculptors. The event takes place in the ancient town center of St Rémy de Provence, from 9am to 8pm.
They seem to have become the first of its kind in France by the number of artists and visitors, according to specialised French art magazines.
It is possible to acquire art straight from the painters and sculptors, with the chance to meet them and know the great variety of Provencal art currently happening: figurative or abstract, diverse pictural techniques (oil and ecu pastel, watercolour, gouache, acrylic, oil, etc), including the most avant garde.
Foreign and European customers should come alongside regional collectors to this art rendez vous, which takes about 2 hours to visit in detail.
You can book your painting holidays during the Festival, Workshop II (4th-11th) is fully booked,
but you are still on time to book for Workshop III (11th-18th) and onwards.
Each year in July, for a whole month, a cohort of artists, painters, actors, musicians, street performers, poets, dancers, singers, troubadours, puppeteers, jugglers and fools from France and much beyond come on the same day with one simple ambition:
To turn the town havoc, to show the bemused people their art, share their love and beautiful spectacles that took so long to prepare or hang on! is this very one an impromptu?
Posters during the Avignon Festival
This, in the dazzling and hot setting of the city of Avignon makes it one of the most beautiful Theatre performance you could ever see, a month is not enough to show all the artists’ performance, but there’s always something to catch at all times… In almost every street resides a theatre and every corner of a street can become a magical encounter with an improvised performance. Even if theatre is not your cup of tea, you will find that the city becomes extremely inviting, playful, laid back and really enjoyable to meander about during the Festival.
Avignon Festival Cour d'Honneur in the Pope's Palace
There are the big guns of theatre in main venues, such as the featured spectable inside the Pope Palace itself and there is the OFF festival, with literally hundreds of spectacles that are not solely theatrical, music, puppets, dance, poetry and multimedia art forms are prevailing throughout the festival, but life is a theatre and we all are actors, performers and trick masters. That’s what this Festival is all about.
So don’t worry if your French is not that hot because some spectacles are mute, in English, sung in a strange and beautiful language or overtitled (yes!), but most are for the eyes, the soul and the heart because Art is a Universal Language.
It can also be very difficult to find accomodation during this time were population multiplies by 2, so you’ll be lucky with Paint in Provence to stay in our provencal villa in the country just 10 minutes away from it all!
In the 19th and 20th centuries, many of the most famous painters in the world converged on Provence, drawn by the climate and the clarity of the light. The special quality of the light is partly a result of the Mistral wind, which removes dust from the atmosphere, greatly increasing visibility.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Van Gogh lived little more than two years in Provence, but his fame as a painter is largely a result of what he painted there. He lived in Arles from February 1888 to May 1889, and then in Saint-Rémy from May 1889 until May 1890.Van Gogh arrived in Arles on 21 February 1888 where he first painted local landscapes, using a gridded “perspective frame.” On 1 May he rented four rooms in the right hand side of the “Yellow House” and became friends with the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux, that he and Gauguin would later paint. His major project at this time was a series of paintings intended to form the décoration for the Yellow House, a serie that started with sunflowers, evolving to Portraits of local people and artists, finally setting for the Toile de 30 décorations, among which figures Starry Night Over the Rhone. Later in the year he and his visiting friend Paul Gauguin made a joint plein air painting exercise at the picturesque Alyscamps. The Red Vineyard was produced during the autumn.Starting suffering from hallucinations and paranoia, Van Gogh committed himself in May 1889 to the mental hospital of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in a former monastery in Saint Rémy de Provence, a bit remote and surrounded by cornfields, vineyards, and olive trees. During his stay there, the clinic and its garden became his main subject, and some of his work was characterised by swirls, as in one of his best-known paintings, The Starry Night. He took some short supervised walks, which gave rise to images of cypresses and olive trees.
1 year later his work was praised and he was called a genius.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), was born in Aix-en-Provence, and lived and worked there most of his life. The local landscapes, particularly Montagne Sainte-Victoire, featured often in his work.
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). Renoir visited Beaulieu, Grasse, Saint Raphael and Cannes, before finally settling in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1907, where he bought a farm in the hills and built a new house and workshop on the grounds. He continued to paint there until his death in 1919. His house is now a museum.
Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Matisse first visited St. Tropez in 1904. In 1917 he settled in Nice, first at the Hotel Beau Rivage, then the Hotel de la Mediterranee, then la Villa des Allies in Cimiez. In 1921 he lived in an apartment at 1 place Felix Faure in Nice, next to the flower market and overlooking the sea, where he lived until 1938. He then moved to the Hotel Regina in the hills of Cimiez, above Nice. During World War II he lived in Vence, then returned to Cimiez, where he died and is buried.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Picasso spent each summer from 1919 to 1939 on the Cote d’Azur, and moved there permanently in 1946, first at Vallauris, then at Mougins, where he spent his last years.
Other famous painters who lived or felt inspired by Provence include Joseph Vernet, Claude Monet, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maurice Denis, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Edvard Munch, Albert Marquet, Paul Signac, Nicolas de Staël among many others, and, who knows, maybe you?
