Each summer, the musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence invites an art gallery to present the masterpieces it has acquired throughout its existence, and this year it is turn of Galérie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger.

After the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation and the Doris and Donald Fisher collection from the MoMa in San Francisco, this year sees the Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger being celebrated at the musée Granet with the exhibition « Passion de l’art – Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger depuis 1925 ».

As one of the oldest contemporary art dealers in Europe, this avant-gardist gallery has brought the likes of Nicolas de Staël, Pablo Picasso, André Masson, Piet Mondrian and many others to attention of the public.

It all started in 1925 when a young woman originally from Alsace, Jeanne Bucher opened her own place in Paris to display works by Cubist Surrealist, primitivist and pre-war artists, many of whom had become close friends. After her death in 1947, her great nephew, Jean-François Jaeger took over the management of the space and following along the same artistic lines, displayed post-war abstract works from Europe and the U.S., as well as pieces by the new figurative and realist painters of the 1970’s.

Today, the gallery’s spirit of discovery and adventure remains very much alive with Jaeger’s great granddaughter, Véronique, whose golden rule is to always look at “the mystery of the creative act with a fresh eye and a sense of wonderment”. “As gallery owners”, she says, “we’re necessarily the first to collect our artists and we have an intrinsic relationship with them”.

Ordered chronologically and divided into three main sections to reflect the artistic criteria of the gallery’s three successive owners, the exhibitions present more than 100 priceless masterpieces that include André Bauchant’s Bataille des Eléphants, an early tapestry by Jean Lurçat, and Vassily Kandisky’s Communauté.

The exhibition “An Art Lover’s Collection – the Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger since 1925″ runs until the 24th of September.

The museum is opened every day from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10am to 7pm. A full-price ticket costs €8 and the reduced admission is €5.

CONTACT DETAILS
Musée Granet
18, rue Roux-Alphéran
13100 Aix-en-Provence
Tél: +33 (0)4 42 52 88 44/43

All images courtesy musée Granet