From January 24, 2015
to February 1, 2015

For its first participation in BRAFA Art Fair (Brussels), the gallery had chosen to honor the South of France, often ressembling earthly paradise for painters. The happiness of being able to paint in this "big studio" under the open sky for a large part of the year is increased tenfold by the strength of the landscapes, the explosion of light and colors that compose them.

Among the artists selected to embody this southern orientation, some had gone to the South to develop their research and had settled there, such as Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin, Edmond Cross or Louis Valtat.
Others had only been passing through, not failing on this occasion to record their impressions. The region also had, at the beginning of the 20th century, talented local painters, fantastic individualities matured in the sun of Provence that we have honored. René Seyssaud, Auguste Chabaud, Louis-Mathieu Verdilhan and Alfred Lombard are among them. The landscape is not always present in the works we have selected, but each one of them emanates the effluvia of this famous "spirit of the South", as if the palette and the brushes had kept for the studio a remnant of this original essence, a reminder of this remarkable breath.

This exhibition was an exhortation to forget for a moment the winter mists, the time of a swim in the clear waters of the Mediterranean, an invitation to dive without thinking in the big blue one summer afternoon.