Les collections de la Ville de Menton

The Bastion, a legacy museum

Ville de Menton — 2023-11-02T16:14:41Z

In 1957, as Jean Cocteau's work on the decoration of the town hall's wedding hall was nearing completion, the mayor of Menton came to him with a new offer: "Palmero offers me this morning to create in Menton a museum of my art in the small fort located at the end of the seawall between the port and the promenade." The poet showed enthusiasm: "It's a beautiful ruin and if it gets repaired I will soon transform it."
The idea of a museum dedicated to his works appealed to Cocteau for several (…)

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Jean Cocteau ceramicist

Ville de Menton — 2023-10-31T15:38:48Z

In 1953, Jean Cocteau visited the Madoura workshop in Vallauris, at the invitation of Picasso, who had been creating ceramics there with Suzanne and Georges Ramié since 1946. Captivated by this medium, Cocteau took to the game, lending a hand to his friend to decorate a series of plates and going so far as to make one himself. However, he did not continue the experiment, for fear of having to remain in the shadow of the master who had undertaken to dominate ceramics as he dominated painting: (…)

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The "Innamorati"

Ville de Menton — 2023-10-31T15:38:44Z

When he decorated the Saint-Pierre chapel in Villefranche-sur-Mer, Jean Cocteau painted on its walls characters dressed in traditional Mediterranean attire: the young men wear the floppy caps of local fishermen and the young women the "capeline", a wide-brimmed straw hat. Shortly afterwards, he represented these characters again, this time as a couple, on the walls of the wedding hall in Menton: thus were born his famous lovers.
A few years later, in 1961, he discovered in the portfolios (…)

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Jean Cocteau and pastels

Ville de Menton — 2023-10-31T15:38:42Z

Jean Cocteau began working with soft pastels at the end of the 1940s. Notably, he drew the cartoon for his monumental tapestry Judith and Holofernes using this medium in 1949. This practice was a departure from his usual technique of line drawing, and it would subsequently introduce him to other coloured mediums: "I simply rubbed pastel on coarse paper and I saw that this prevented me from being just a graphic artist. I saw that rather than writing, it brought me closer to the profession of (…)

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