Paris

In the old city of SAINT PAUL you can still see some lost painter working from a terrace, picturing the valleys full of orange trees, pines, vineyards and flowerbeds.
But what a pity that the town was denatured by this intense commercialism. The character of main street, rue Grande, a narrow crooked street which runs the full length of the village and lined with 16th and 17th nice houses of which a few still bear coats of arms, is completely destroyed and changed into too numerous craftsmanship (?) boutiques, ateliers, souvenir shops, and other tourist traps of a doubtful nature. Pass the place de la Grande-Fontaine with its pretty urn shaped fountain. The small city has a 13th century church and a “Musee municipal d’Histoire” on the place du Castre. Soon you will arrive at la Porte du Sud or porte de Vence. Just next to the porte is the cemetery where Chagall is buried. Try to find his grave, it's not easy. When I found it I noticed no cross on the grave (he was Jewish) but somebody had put little white cobblestones on the tomb like it is done in the Jewish tradition. The cobblestones were artistically laid out in the form of one of Chagall's famous doves. It was quite moving.
A tour around the ramparts gives a good view of the surrounding countryside studded with dark cypresses and azure swimming-pools , as well as a better sense of life in St. Paul as a walk down the Grand Rue provides. You could catch some glimpse of bougainvillaea -filled gardens and treasured terraces.
The second unavoidable site in Saint Paul is the FONDATION MAEGHT, a world class museum of modern art, in fact my favourite on the Cote. More than 225,000 visitors enter every year. The foundation is the story of Aimé Maeght and his friendship with Pierre Bonnard. The miracle of Maeght’s encounter with Bonnard, living in Le Cannet and passed away in 1947 was that it revealed Maeght’s hidden talents for discovering new artists. Maeght opened a gallery in 1945 in the rue de Teheran in Paris and became one of the most important places for modern and contemporary art in those days. Maeght organized exhibitions of Bram van Velde, Miro, Chagall, Calder, Giacometti and a lot of others. Thanks to their immense success they made a fortune and financed with his wife Marguerite their and their own money the proud foundation Maeght in Saint-Paul. The inauguration took place in 1964. Until today the Fondation Maeght needs no regional or national body to tell him what to do. They tried and succeeded to respect the surrounding landscape and luckily, they didn't have in mind to do some " fake-provencal" cheap imitation. On the contrary, Miro is omnipresent in a stunning labyrinth of statues, Pol Bury with his fountains, sculptures in strange shapes, scattered all over the garden. They also restored an abandoned chapel in memory of their deceased son. The Foundation realized a perfect osmosis between the sculptures, the architecture and the environment. The used materials are very simple: brute concrete and rose roman bricks.
Today there are regularly retrospectives held at the foundation: Kandinsky, De Stael, Van Velde, Miro and Klee. During the construction they had active help from Chagall, Braque, Miro and Giacometti making mosaics, glass stained windows in the chapel from Braque, sculptures and ceramics. In the building and outside on the lawns we can see numerous works of all the artists I named already plus Bonnard, Matisse, Fernand Leger and Zadkine.
When we enter the garden, we have right away the surprise of Giacometti’s “Cat” and Miro’s “Egg”. Try to locate the Calder “mobile” and a joyful ceramic of Leger.
The collection of paintings and sculptures is a very important one, the greatest names of the 20th century: going from Tapies, Leger, Riopelle, Bonnard, Matisse, etc. A MUST

Bibliography:

John Pemble, "the Mediterranean Passion, Victorians and Edwardians in the South", (Oxford University Press 1988), Mary Blume, "Cote d'Azur. Inventing the French Riviera" (Thames and Hudson, London 1982) Stephen Liegeard, "La Cote d'Azur (Ed.Serre, Nice 1988), Patrick Howarth, “When the Riviera was ours” (Century, London 1977, “De Grote Verzamelaars” by Ger.van het Groenewoud(ed. Alkmaar 1995), “La Fondation en fete” (Office du Tourisme, Nice 1995)

La Colombe d'Or

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