First artistic traces
Man and artist, a great love story in the Lot ! The biped has been a painter since mankind has been present on earth. This is what the caves of Pech Merle in Cabrerets and Cougnac near Gourdon testify. On the walls of these caves, pictorial works representing animals, but also hands in negative were drawn by the hand of men there is more than 20 000 years. In Cabrerets, more than 70 animals are represented. The museum of regional prehistory Amédée Lemozi next to the cave allows to deepen the subject of the parietal art.
The Lot for workshop
Ossip Zadkine is considered the master of Cubist sculpture. During half a century - crossed by the horror of the Second World War - Zadkine produced more than 400 sculptures, thousands of drawings, watercolors and gouaches, engravings, etc. He was born at the turn of two centuries, in 1890 in what is now Belarus, and died in 1967 in Paris. Established in France since 1910, he bought with his wife Valentine Prax in 1934, a house in Arques, a small village in Quercy, which will become the place of creation of many sculptures. His work is now known worldwide, and is presented in two museums in France, one in Paris, rue d'Assas in the house he occupied; the other in Les Arques, in his studio.
In the line of Zadkine, other contemporary artists from the Lot produce major works on the current artistic scene. Marc Petit is one of them. Born in 1961 in Saint-Céré, he spent his childhood in Cahors where he made his first sculptures. You can admire his work in front of the north tympanum of the Cathedral of Cahors, where L'Ange du Lazaret is presented, or at the Maison Lagrive, where Marc Petit's work is exhibited, 400 quai Lagrive in Cahors.
The sculptor Michel Zachariou is from Paris. He chose the Lot in the 70's and it was finally the Lot that adopted him. Since 1981 and his first "inhabited wall" that he created for the Bibliothèque départementale de Prêt, the artist has regularly been asked to create public works such as his "Personnage au repos" (Character at rest) in 1984, commissioned by the Lycée technique et industriel de Souillac, or the "Horloge monumentale à billes" (Monumental clock with balls) in 1997 by the city of Cahors, which can be seen on the Place Saint-Urcisse. Others will remember with emotion his "Musical Fountain" which amused so many children from 1989 to 2004, on Place Fouilhac in Cahors.
A- museums you!
Henri Jean Guillaume Martin, known as Henri Martin, a post-impressionist painter, was born in Toulouse in 1860 and died in Labastide-du-Vert in the Lot in 1943. His works constitute the artistic background of the museum that bears his name in Cahors. Installed in 1920 in a former 15th-century bishop's palace, the establishment has been undergoing major renovation work since 2016. Reopened in 2022, it offers a larger and more contemporary space, integrated into the Tassart Park, adjacent to the building. The scenography, completely revised, presents the collection of about forty paintings of the painter but also other pieces such as archaeological or unusual objects. All in all, 900m2 will host the collections: about 700 for the permanent exhibitions and 100 for the temporary ones.
The Lot promises many unusual museums such as the one of the Unusual in Cabrerets or the automatons in Souillac! You will discover a magnificent collection of mechanical toys and old automatons - late 19th and early 20th century - which attests to the history of the Roullet-Decamps company. A journey into the world of childhood and the enchantment of these small objects of modern art with a charming patina and mechanisms that are certainly outdated but full of poetry.
An opening to contemporary art
Didier Pierre Chamizo, known as Chamizo, is a contemporary painter born on October 15, 1951 in Cahors, he is considered as one of the precursors of street art and he created the Abstraction-Figuration lettrique consisting of interweaving words in his paintings or on carcasses of television sets. Artist of the revolt, it engages during the events of May 68 in the proletarian revolution. A struggle that will lead him to prison until 1991 when he will be pardoned by Mitterrand.
In Saint-Céré, you will find the workshop-museum Jean Lurçat. Painter, ceramist and tapestry designer, Jean Lurçat was born in the Vosges in 1892 and died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1966. In 1945, he bought the Château des Tours-Saint-Laurent, a remnant of an eleventh century fortress that dominates the town of Saint-Céré from its ramparts. With his wife Simone, they restored the site to make it habitable and establish workshops. In 1986, Simone donated the castle to the General Council of the Lot department, wishing that this place be dedicated to the exhibition of Jean's work. One discovers there the universe of the artist, his artistic activity and more particularly his works in tapestry of which he renewed in depth the language in the XXth century.
One cannot talk about contemporary art without mentioning Georges Pompidou. As a councillor of the town of Cajarc between 1965 and 1969 - the date of his election to the presidency of the Republic - he always kept his love for the Lot. Claude Pompidou, his wife, following in her husband's footsteps, played a major role in the creation of the "La Maison des Arts Claude et Georges Pompidou", which was inaugurated on August 26, 1989 with an exhibition in memory of the President.
The MAGCP is today a major place for contemporary art in Occitania. This house has succeeded in decentralizing art from the big cities to implant seeds in a rural environment. Two large temporary exhibitions punctuate the calendar of this center of contemporary art. The collections benefit from a particularly pampered scenography and give rise to a work of mediation in particular near the school. The opening to the general public is also one of the vocations of the places with a free access to the exhibitions and the installation each summer of a course of contemporary art of full air in the valley of the Lot. Clearly, art is considered here as a popular medium which has its place in the daily life of the inhabitants and visitors.
