75 years of the Museum of Modern Art of Ceret

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Ceret celebrates its 75th anniversary by highlighting the relationships it has established with artists over the decades, through an exhibition that reviews this history of exchanges, donations and commissions that have shaped its identity. Under the title 75 years of friendship: artists and the museum, the exhibition explores how the museum has become a meeting point and collaboration between creators of different generations.

Inaugurated today and open until November 16, 2025, the exhibition, curated by Jean-Roch Dumont Saint Priest , director of the museum, and Aude Marchand , head of collections, invites us to travel through more than sixty works by fundamental artists such as Pablo Picasso , Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse . These key figures actively contributed to the development of the museum, with their commitment and the works that, in addition to being exhibited, have been a living testimony to their close relationship with the museum. Many of these artists offered pieces of great significance during the 1950s.

La mappemonde, Valentine Prax. © Adagp, Paris, 2025

One of the unique features of the collection of the Musée d'Art Moderne de Ceret is that it is based on a long-standing friendship with artists who, since the beginning of the 20th century, found in Roussillon a creative context that crossed borders and reflected the Mediterranean spirit. Since the 1910s, prominent figures of the avant-garde found in Ceret a space of freedom and creation, in an atmosphere of encounter between Paris and Barcelona. Since the arrival of Picasso and Georges Braque in 1911, many other artists with notable careers decided to work in the city. The attraction to this space came not only from the beauty of the landscape and the Mediterranean climate, but also from its cultural richness and the authenticity of the place, which forged a unique identity.

At the inauguration of the museum, Henri Matisse responded to the call of Pierre Brune, the first director of the institution, with thirteen drawings made during his Fauvist period. In the year of his death, 1954, Matisse completed this donation with one of his most emblematic works: Large Head of a Woman, which would become a centerpiece of the collection.

Grande tête de femme, Henri Matisse (1945).

Between 1950 and 1986, the first directors of the museum were artists with close ties to the painters and sculptors who had resided in Céret. Thanks to them, the dream of Pierre Camo , the Céret poet who, as early as the 1930s, had imagined a museum in the city, came true. Artists such as Matisse had done before, responded to Pierre Brune's call to contribute to this project. In the 1970s, names such as Claude Viallat and Vincent Bioulès established a special and lasting link with the museum, at a time when few institutions supported young creators.

Abstraction, Auguste Herbin (1939). © Adagp, Paris, 2025

Since 2000, the museum has deepened its commitment to contemporary art from the south of France and Catalonia, with a solid policy of exhibitions and donations, some of them large-scale. The exhibition also celebrates the museum's goal of continuing to be a platform for contemporary art, maintaining links with new generations of artists such as Anne-Marie Pêcheur , Hervé Fischer , Toni Grand and Tom Carr . In fact, from March 1, 2025, the museum presents a new permanent itinerary for its contemporary collection, which includes seven sections that mark the passage of the visit, offering a new vision of the great challenges of art from the 60s to the present day. Visitors will be able to rediscover avant-garde exhibitions of the museum and delve into outstanding trajectories, such as that of the group Supports/Surfaces. The exhibition also reflects on the role of nature, the local artistic environment, the fecundity of painting after Matisse and the energy of the contemporary Catalan scene.

This exhibition, therefore, not only celebrates the museum's past and history, but also reaffirms its role as a singular center within the contemporary art panorama, keeping alive the dialogue between creators, the Mediterranean and local cultural heritage.

Du simple au double, Toni Grand (1993). © Adagp, Paris, 2025. M.Garcia