Exhibition at the Musée Estrine: Georges Arditi

With the exceptional support of the artist's family, the Musée Estrine and La Piscine de Roubaix are joining forces to dedicate an exhibition to Georges Arditi (1914-2012).

Georges Arditi was born in Marseille in 1914 into a family of Greek-Spanish origin. His first cousins were the Canetti brothers, Elias (Nobel Prize winner), Georges (biologist) and Jacques (producer). Trained at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in the studio of Legueult and then Cassandre, he exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne from 1945 onwards. Georges Arditi is a prolific artist, a representative of the latter École de Paris, which oscillated between figuration and abstraction in the 1950s.

As well as painting, Georges Arditi was active in the decorative arts, working in the theatre, as a bibliophile illustrator and as a tapestry cartonnier.

Despite a retrospective at the Musée de la Poste in 1990, his work remains little known. The exhibitions at the Musée de La Piscine and the Musée Estrine aim to restore Georges Arditi to his rightful place in the history of art in the second half of the 20th century.

The exhibition focuses on the artist's first three creative periods and his path through figuration, realism and abstraction: from the self-portraits, group portraits and still lifes of the 1940s, which were strongly influenced by Quattrocento painting and the exhibition of 17th-century French "Painters of Reality" held in 1934 at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, to the workshops and urban views of 1952-1958, which were more influenced by the decomposition-recomposition experiments of Cubism.

At Saint-Rémy, the focus will be on the spectacular landscapes inspired by the effects of light and colour around Mont Ventoux, with an emphasis on abstract work from 1958 to 1973.