SMALL COLLECTION PERHAPS BUT CERTAINLY IMPRESSIVE

avril 24, 2014

From across the Rhone, the Opera house was quite visible and I knew the Fine Arts Museum was just behind it. This time around, I found my way as if I was going « home ». The building itself is not a real beauty from the exterior but it has been renovated in the interior and the inside garden is a dream.

but the inner garden is a dream

Not so beautiful from the street

and pleasant to walk around

I asked one of the people at the desk where the « new collection » was. I don’t blame him for looking at me blankly as the so called « new collection » is from 1977. When I described the art I had seen in photos, he was even more confused and suggested that perhaps this was not the place for me to be and that I should go to the Contemporary Museum. The so called modern collection was perhaps « too small » for me to be interested.

I walked up the three flights of stairs taking in the different galleries as I climbed. Then I « fell on » the André Dubois collection which as, in actual fact, what I had seen in the TGV Magazine. It was relatively recent as donated to the museum in 2006. The small exhibition too was special and on until June 2014.

André Dubois (1931-2004) was a collector and had received an artistic education himself. He met the Albert Gleizes and Juliette Roche-Gleizes in 1951 and becomes over the years very knowledgeable about their art. I knew Albert Gleizes work but not that of his wife.
I quite liked what I saw but for some, you will understand why the gallery was empty. At least I could look at each painting in comfort and naturally discover other painters which I did not know....these paintings are bold and bold in colour. They move energetically and as you look at them, shapes, creatures, instruments, figures emerge....I "watched" them for a long time, discovering something new each time I went back to look at a picture again. That's why I love modern art. There is always something new to discover, something different for each eye.....

Claude Bellegarde (1967-) History of the eye

Paul Regny (1918-2013) Slowness

Andrée le Coultre (1917-1986) The Hairdresser -1969

Robert Pouyaud (1901-1970) Metaphysique -1966


Juliette Reche-Gleizes (1884-1980) Le Parron ? 1916

Albert Gleizes (1881-1953) Arabesque 1951-53

Albert Gleizes (1881-1953) Earth and Sky 1935

Then into the modern collection. Small? The XX century collections exhibited masterpieces by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Bonnard and Jean Dubuffet, and in 1997 a legacy by the actress and passionate collector Jaqueline Delubac (1907-1997) resulted in the addition of works by Fernand Légèr, Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, transforming Lyon’s Fine Arts Museum into what I would think to be a very notable European collection. Here is a little of what I saw…….and what I do enjoy about a permanent collection is the relationship between the realistic and the abstract.....