Here's another museum in Paris that I have walked past many times and finally visited a few weeks ago: the Musee Zadkine, located in the house, garden, and studio of sculptor Ossip Zadkine, on the Rue d'Assas just to the southwest of the Luxembourg Gardens.
Zadkine was born in Russia and emigrated to Paris in 1910, when he was twenty-two. Zadkine and his wife moved into this building in 1928. Regardless of what you think of Zadkine's sculpture (I happen to like it), the house is a lovely two storey villa, and the studio at the end of the garden is a modest-sized structure, well lit by large windows, and with a narrow staircase against one wall that rises to a small mezzanine.
At the time I visited, all of the interior spaces exhibited a mixture of Zadkine's work and work by other artists, ranging from Picasso all the way up to contemporary sculptors.
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| Dubuffet |
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| Giacometti |
The garden is populated with Zadkine's sculpture from the post-WWII period, around the time that he won the sculpture prize at the Venice Bienniale.
Even without seeing the date on the plaque, you might guess this was a piece from the late 1940s or early 1950s because of that style, so typical of the period, of sharp, angular parts and a sort of meat cleaver separation of bodily forms.
It's a beautiful little museum, both for the work on display and for the feeling that you get of just walking into an artist's space, just like Zadkine's friend Henry Miller did back in the days of the Montparnasse artistic ferment, where painters and writers and dancers and musicians and the rich and the sordidly poor all rubbed shoulders.
Zadkine was born in Russia and emigrated to Paris in 1910, when he was twenty-two. Zadkine and his wife moved into this building in 1928. Regardless of what you think of Zadkine's sculpture (I happen to like it), the house is a lovely two storey villa, and the studio at the end of the garden is a modest-sized structure, well lit by large windows, and with a narrow staircase against one wall that rises to a small mezzanine.
At the time I visited, all of the interior spaces exhibited a mixture of Zadkine's work and work by other artists, ranging from Picasso all the way up to contemporary sculptors.
