The other Babel of the arts

Col­lioure (Cotl­li­ure in Cata­lan) on the Mediter­ranean coast of French Cat­alo­nia is known for its phal­lic bell­tower, for Charles Naudin’s ex­otic gar­den of palms and co­conut trees, for the final rest­ing place of the poet An­to­nio Machado, and yet above all it oc­cu­pies a leg­endary place in the his­tory of mod­ern art be­cause Henri Ma­tisse ar­rived there in the spring of 1905. It was with­out doubt a big cul­tural mo­ment, but after more than a hun­dred years, even in France the image of Col­lioure as the “cra­dle of Fau­vism” is start­ing to get tired.

For many years after that 1905, artists from all over the world con­tin­ued to flock to Col­lioure, most of them at­tracted, it is true, by the leg­endary im­print that Ma­tisse had left, but also, as would hap­pen at the same time in Ceret, Tossa, Arles and Cadaqués, be­cause that rural Mediter­ranean area pro­vided an oasis of light and peace in the in­creas­ingly dark years of in­ter­war Eu­rope.

Col­lioure, Babel of the Arts is the name of the ex­hi­bi­tion that until Oc­to­ber 3 ex­plores the wider artis­tic na­ture of the town in the Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art, in Villa Pams. It is a fes­ti­val in every sense: for the ex­u­ber­ance of colour on dis­play and for the res­ur­rec­tion of long-for­got­ten names, such as the flam­boy­ant artist Nina Ham­nett, the “Queen of Bo­hemia”, who left mem­oirs that allow us to fol­low the every­day life of the artis­tic group: of Valen­tine Prax, who would marry the sculp­tor Óssip Zad­kine; of Fer­nande Bar­rey, part­ner of Japan­ese-French artist Tsug­uharu Fou­jita; of Hans Purrmann, Ma­tisse’s most tal­ented stu­dent, who ar­rived there in 1911.

The list goes on: the Pol­ish painter Mela Muter, who lived in Col­lioure be­tween 1921 and 1929 and who would later reap­pear in Tossa, the Costa Rican painter Manuel Cano de Cas­tro, god­fa­ther of Zad­kine, the ar­chi­tect Charles R. Mack­in­tosh, who set­tled in Port-Ven­dres in 1924 and de­voted him­self to paint­ing wa­ter­colours of the Marenda coast.

There are more: Leopold Sur­vage, also beloved in Ceret, the Eng­lish­man Rudolph Ihlee, who painted as if he were a rare cross be­tween the Du­aner Rousseau and the enig­matic Balthus, Jean Peské, a French-Pol­ish painter who was be­hind the ini­tia­tive to set up the Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art with do­na­tions from painter friends, in the same year of 1934 when Rafael Benet, Enric Casanovas and com­pany in­au­gu­rated the mu­seum in Tossa with con­tri­bu­tions from abroad.

Com­ing from Eng­land, Switzer­land, Ger­many, Japan or Cat­alo­nia, dozens of artists con­verged on Col­lioure, some­times for weeks and some­times for years, turn­ing the town into a lab­o­ra­tory of light in the face of grow­ing fas­cism. It is an op­ti­mism the town shared with other colonies of con­tem­po­rary artists, such as those of Ceret or Tossa. In fact, many moved from one des­ti­na­tion to an­other, liv­ing a sort of shared com­mu­nal life and adopt­ing the cus­toms, speech, and the fru­gal and yet ex­u­ber­ant food of the lo­cals. Apart from many land­scapes, the ex­hi­bi­tion fea­tures still lifes crowded with aubergines, pep­pers and lemons along­side fish that seem to flap with life on the table.

Cu­ra­tor Claire Muchir has or­gan­ised the ex­hi­bi­tion by na­tion­al­ity, re­flect­ing how the artists ended up re­lat­ing most to those whose lan­guage they un­der­stood. Among them is the Cata­lan Vir­gili Batlle Vall­majó, who not only ap­pears in the Col­lioure ex­hi­bi­tion, but also in the Musée Ter­rus in nearby Elne, which has a ret­ro­spec­tive of the artist from Olot until Oc­to­ber 12.