Thirza Vallois is the author of
Around and About Paris, Volume I, II, III published by Iliad Books, UK.
Romantic Paris, co-published by Interlink (US) and Arris Books (UK).
"Montparnasse Déporté, Artistes d'Europe" at the Musée du Montparnasse
21, avenue du Maine, 75015
Tel 01 42 22 91 96
http://www.museedumontparnasse.net/
Métro : Montparnasse Bienvenüe
Bus: 28, 48, 58, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96
daily except Mondays from 12:30 to 7:00 pm
Through October 2nd, 2005
At the western exit of the avenue du Maine tunnel, at the foot of the Tour Montparnasse, there is an
attractive iron gate that opens up into a serene leafy, pebbled alley. Come October, its profusion of
Virginia ivy bursts into a blaze of crimson fire. Tucked away at the back end of the alley is Lieu-Dit,
one of the city's most creative florists. But more importantly, this one-time depot of the western
stagecoach (back in 1840....), is home to the Musée du Montparnasse (also known as Chemin du
Montparnasse), where a bunch of enthusiasts, running on a shoestring budget, is keeping alive
the golden years of Montparnasse. Similarly to other 'cités d'artistes' sprinkled throughout
the outlying arrondissements of Paris, the studios that line the alley were reclaimed from
the 1900 World Fair and came into their own from 1912 on, when Marie Vassilieff opened here
an atelier, and also an academy, where she guided the young Chana Orloff.
During the years of destitution of World War I, Vassilieff turned mother earth and made this
became the cantine of Montparnasse's legendary artists - Picasso, Modigliani, Braques, Léger,
Zadkine... and also Lenine and Trotsky, undesirable characters whose presence on her premises
caused her to be jailed. Shame on the media who omit to bestow on this modest sanctuary the
attention it deserves. All the more the shame, because it was earmarked for demolition in
the 1990s. It is thanks to the creation of the museum that the alley has been preserved and
that we have been spared the eyesore of hideous concrete clutter in its stead. For that alone,
it deserves attention and respect. And also for the fact that the place is still alive with
working artists' studios.
Every year the museum puts up quality exhibitions related to the golden era of Montparnasse.
This summer, through September, a homage is paid to the 122 deportee artists of Montparnasse,
"Montparnasse Déporté, Artistes d'Europe", a premiere on French soil, and not to everyone's
liking (too sensitive an issue according to some). The idea was born out of the commemoration
of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps, in January 2005. A poignant message
from the one-time minister, Madame Simone Weil, herself an Auschwitz survivor, states clearly the
importance and meaningfulness of the event:
"The exhibition enables us to estimate the artistic wealth and diversity we have been deprived of
by the Nazi enterprise. By becoming aware of their accomplished work, but also of the work that
might have been accomplished, we can take the measure to what extent the destruction of all
these artists has been an irreparable loss to mankind."
Jewish more often than not, most of the artists had come to Paris from central or eastern
Europe in the early 20th century, having fled persecution, or the fossilised oppressiveness
of ghetto life; often both. They came to be known as l'Ecole de Paris, Paris the beacon of
light towards which they streamed like butterflies (to paraphrase André Warnod's metaphor),
Paris the capital of the arts, Paris, the crossroads of all hopes (and more specifically,
Montparnasse, the birthplace and crossroads of a spectacular melting-pot of creative
effervescence between 1900 and 1930), Paris, the mother of universal tolerance who would soon
turn traitress and deliver the wings of the innocent butterflies to the Nazi flames.
Most of them never returned. Some were more famous than others, notably Chaim Soutine who
actually was never deported, but was carried off in 1943 by ill health owing to the terrible
conditions under which he was living during the Occupation. So was poet and painter Robert
Desnos, who was not Jewish, but was a Resistant, and was deported. He died of typhus fever,
in Teresin (1945), just two days before the liberation of the camp. His painting"Landscape
with a Butterfly", ( also titled "The Sword and the Butterfly"), brings a touch of dreamlike
light to a world of hopeless darkness. And the sword does look like a cross. Other anti-Nazi
artists are present too, the German Max Ernst, the French member of the Résistance,
Violette Rougier le Coq, and the legendary Jean Moulin, who even under the massive pressure
of his torturer, Klaus Barbie, never gave away the name of fellow resistants.
In 1937 he was France's youngest Prefect, appointed to Rodez in the Aveyron, from where he would
cycle to the magnificent village of Conques on Sundays, for the pleasure of capturing it in
sketches and drawings, as did painter Pierre Soulages. An immensely gifted artist, his self-portrait is not dated, but his sketch of the port of Marseilles dates from 1943, the year he was arrested. There is a portrait of Soutine by Modigliani, who was fortunate in a way to have died in 1920, because being an Italian Jew, in all likelihood he would have also been deported. As was Max Jacob, whose recent conversion to Catholicism was of little help once the Nazi death machine was set in motion: he died in the camp of Drancy, north of Paris, in 1944. The contrast with a delicate testimony of a carefree Paris, painted in the early 30s, at the opera, the circus, and at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, makes it almost impossible to conceive the inconceivable that was lying in wait, barely a decade ahead. Even more so when the painter stares at you out of his self-portrait, also painted in 1932, so real, so intense, so alive. And then no more.
There were all the other, less famous and sometimes equally talented artists. Some would have become famous. All were nipped in the bud. Both women and men. Rudolf Levy and his tender rendering of rural life, going back to 1915. Otto Freundlich, whose bronze sculpture dating from 1911 is as avant-garde and as cubic as the works left by Zadkine. Moise Kogan's poignantly tender female nudes, showered by their creator with so much love, admiration, sacred awe. A patch of old Paris in the early 1930s, the Paris populaire, of the faubourgs, captured by Nathan Grunsweigh with its picture house, l'usine à rêves that allowed the labouring classes to escape. A self-portrait of Granovsky, the "cowboy" of Montparnasse during the Crazy Twenties. His two nudes and a dancer, in pastel and chalk, are more alive than a living model. One watches it all speechless, taking in what's given in respectful silence, but one's mind remains restless, thinking constantly of what was destroyed, and of what was never given a chance to be conceived and birthed. There is no other way to experience this exhibition. The ghosts that created the works on display, are tangibly omnipresent in the little museum, thanks to the photos, letters and other documents that accompany the exhibition, notably a letter written by Alexandre Heimovitz to his wife and little daughter from whom he was separated during the Occupation, and who would soon be arrested never to return. The letter is accompanied by a drawing of his wife and little girl riding their bicycle, their little dog tailing behind. It could have been your family, it could have been mine. The letter is written in elegant French, sprinkled with the touching grammar mistakes of a keen foreigner. They so admired France. They so wanted to be adopted by her.
Those who did escape destruction and were lucky to return reverted to silence. As did those urged to witness by Claude Lanzmann in his film "Shoah." What else but silence can speak the unspeakable? Perhaps the lament of a violincello, a wood bas-relief by Shelomo Selinger who also carved into a block of oak "Les Rescapés", dated from as recently as 1989. Walter Spitzer's preparatory work for the Vél-d'Hiv monument has also been included in the exhibition. It was commissioned in 1996 for the commemoration of the rafle du Vél d'Hiv, so called after the winter velodrome where the Jews were rounded up on July 16th and 17th, 1942. The stadium stood on rue Nélaton, by the Eiffel Tower, but has been demolished since. Spitzer's monument stands at the back of the place des Martyrs juifs inconnus du Velodrome d'hiver, a long, convoluted name for a modest strip of a shady garden, by the Seine, where you will seldom meet a living soul, other than on the annual commemoration of the event. Uncannily, the monument faces the Eiffel Tower, the emblem of faith in human progress. Behind it, by the water, albeit invisible from this spot, is the reduced model of the no less emblematic Statue of Liberty, looking to the west...
Special homage is due to Hersch Fenster who, between 1945 and 1951, undertook the titanesque job of investigating, researching, collecting, all the testimonies, all the documents, all the files, so as to preserve them from oblivion. His self-published book, Nos Artistes Martyrs, written in Yiddish in 1951, was prefaced by Marc Chagall.
You will find out the full story of Montparnasse in Around and About Paris,Volume I and III,
by Thirza Vallois, in the chapters on the 6th, 14th and 15th arrondissements, and in Romantic
Paris, by Thirza Vallois.
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