*"You arrive, and you don't know what you'll find. First, you don't know how the painter will behave. But you arrive completely emptied out, completely open. Without that, it doesn't work. No will to make things happen: just let them happen."*Texte en italique
Denise Colomb, film by Anne Schaeffer, 1990
From Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Denise Colomb brought back dozens of portraits of painters and sculptors, captured in the intimacy of their studios from the postwar years through the late 1970s. Although she took up photography in 1935, in Indochina, she received her first commission in 1947, with Antonin Artaud. Her first exhibition was held at the Librairie Le Minotaure in 1948.
Her passion for artists owed much to her older brothers, the gallerists Pierre and Edouard Loeb, who left their mark on the history of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the art market. In autumn 1925, Pierre mounted the first Surrealist exhibition and went on to become one of the most important dealers of the twentieth century, on a par with Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill. Edouard, for his part, launched the careers of Bram van Velde, Soto, and Tinguely, and helped send Max Ernst's reputation soaring after the war.
This exhibition was conceived in partnership with the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie, to which Denise Colomb donated her body of work after she stopped practicing photography in the 1990s. Visitors will encounter Nicolas de Staël - one of her most iconic series - Sonia Delaunay, Calder and his mobiles, Germaine Richier, and nearly thirty other artists captured through her lens.
Antoine Cahen
Délégué Général of the Comité Denise Colomb
En partenariat avec la Ville de Paris et la Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la photographie