Galerie Maeght is displaying pictures by Clovis Prévost, highlighting one of contemporary art’s most hidden secrets, that of a man who worked alongside artists such as Calder, Miro, Tàpies, Monory, Pol Bury, Dali etc … and their guests. A human and artistic adventure that started with luck.
Clovis Prévost, an architecture student, while traveling through Barcelona, stopped to take pictures of Gaudi’s astonishing and unfinished masterpiece, The Sagrada Familia. The dust of time gave his pictures a velvety effect . Frescos, wide angle views and close-ups all provided a strange beauty that appealed to Salvador Dali. He decided to make a book, « La vision artistique et religieuse de Gaudi », with photos by young unknown Clovis, text by Robert Descharnes with introduction and illustrations by the illustrious “genius” of Cadaquès.
When Gallery owner Adrien Maeght, founder of one of the world’s greatest private collections in Saint Paul de Vence, discovered the book, he asked Clovis to make a movie. The photographer had never held a movie camera, but he called on some friends and finished the project. Clovis became the official photographer and filmmaker for the Maeght Foundation, embarking on a long adventure that continues to this day. This exhibition retraces the long and fruitful work of this rare witness of the daily lives of contemporary art giants.
But Clovis Prévost, who became their friend, was not a merely passive witness. His pictures are, for the most part black and white, portraits, panoramic workshop views, artists at work, , they show a complicity with his subjects that give an intensity to the images. And the there is his passion for Art Brut, and among them the Facteur Cheval’s.
That is how this unknown photographer, through documentaries and pictures of the art world and its greatest contemporary artists, captured a very exciting scope of 20th century art… and this exhibition will be, for many, the chance to discover a remarkable man of pictures.
Paul Alessandrini
52 photographs
Until March 17
Galerie Maeght
42 rue Du Bac
75006 Paris
