Hélène de Beauvoir between river and sea: exhibition dedicated to French artist in Sarzana

The exhibition Hélène de Beauvoir between River and Sea, which the Val di Magra is dedicating to the French artist Hélène de Beauvoir (Paris, 1910 - Goxwiller, 2001), is on until September 24 (it opened on August 22): after having been exhibited in the places dear to her (in fact, the exhibition was first in Bocca di Magra, then in Lerici and then in Ortonovo), the works of the painter, sister of the writer Simone de Beauvoir, arrive in Sarzana, where they are on display at the Firmafede Fortress. The public has the opportunity to admire a nucleus of twenty-five previously unpublished paintings that Hélène de Beauvoir painted during her stays in the village of Trebiano Magra, where she resided since 1963 together with her husband, the diplomat Lionel de Roulet, bringing to the banks of the Magra several personalities of 20th-century French culture (starting with Jean-Paul Sartre). In the shadow of Trebiano Castle, in a house she owned that had a splendid view of the Gulf of the Poets, the artist, a symbol of feminist art, was able to express herself with paintings full of light, marked by warm Mediterranean tones, which were affected by the debate of the time about the figurative and the abstract: Hélène de Beauvoir proposed a solution that remained solidly anchored in clear figuration (although her beginnings had occurred under the sign of almost pure abstraction), interpreted, however, from a perspective that looked to the avant-garde, from Cubism to Constructivism.

On display are works such as On the Magra the fishermen’s boats are butterflies (1977), La grande déesse (July 1980), Le levrier (December 1984), Leda (June 1993), paintings that, the exhibition presentation states, “represent visual glimpses of the landscape that Hélène discovered during her walks, bringing back to the canvas a nature transformed into an almost abstract and dreamy impression with mythological connotations.” The exhibition was also made possible thanks to the collaboration of sculptor Walter Tacchini, a friend of the painter, who inherited Hélène’s house as well as several of her works, including those that make up the nucleus exhibited in Sarzana.

The exhibition can be visited daily with hours 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4-7 p.m. Tickets cost 4 euros Monday through Friday and 5 euros on Saturday and Sunday. Free for children under the age of six. The cost of the ticket, in addition to the exhibition, also includes admission and a visit to the Firmafede Fortress. For more information you can visit the Sarzana Firmafede Fortress website.

Hélène de Beauvoir between river and sea: exhibition dedicated to French artist in Sarzana

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