One of the last museums I visited in Paris was the Musée Zadkine. It is a relatively small museum located in the southern part of the 6th arrondissement, at 100bis, rue d'Assas. It is dedicated to the works of Ossip Zadkine, a Russian sculptor who lived and worked in Paris after 1910, where he became immersed in the Cubist movement, alongside Picasso.
The museum is his house, donated to the city by his wife, after her death. Like the Musée de la Vie Romantique, it takes a sharp eye to find it.
Going down the rabbit hole, so to speak, one finds the inner gateway.
Aha! Turn here and enter the courtyard of the house and studio where Zadkine worked. Note: the lady in the mustard-colored coat was not with me, but since we entered at the same time (both a little confused) she provided an excellent sighting point for the museum. The first building one sees, straight ahead, was the studio: you must pay first and then enter here.
Zadkine was a sculptor, and he worked in all materials: metal, wood, stone. The first two rooms hold examples of his work on a relatively small scale. The work is very reminiscent of Picasso and Modigliani, but the variety of materials really interested me. It seemed as if he was working similar ideas about representation across a lot of different materials to test how to work each one, and how each material would collaborate with his artistic experiments.
There was a specific exhibition on while I visited, titled "Creation/Destruction" which centered on a wooden sculpture--this time larger than life--that Zadkine carved and then placed in his garden. He left the sculpture there and, over time, weather and the elements "deconstructed" it. Now it is seen, recovered, in four pieces. The sculpture used a continuous theme for Zadkine, that of modernist caryatids inspired by those originally on Athens's Parthenon but reimagined in Cubist terms. The pieces accompanying this on display show the same elements the sculptor built into other, contemporary works: the elongated female shape, the raised arm, the turned head, etc. Again, the same elements are found on sculptures across a variety of materials and sizes.
The life of the sculpture was also documented from Zadkine's original work, to days and nights (years!) in the garden, and its recovery/restitution.
Meanwhile, out in the garden, most sculptures are seated, and in the studio as well the exhibition and Zadkine's other works are displayed. On a warmer day (this was the same day as the very chilly winds and the icy covering of the fountain seen here), the garden would be absolutely wonderful, allowing one to sit in a charming bench just outside the museum's front door.
The nice thing about this museum is that it is next door to the Jardins du Luxembourg, not far from shopping in the lovely stores of the 6th or 7th, and a great place to spend an hour in a day crowded with shopping and/or strolling.
Pearl
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