The Maeght Foundation in France is celebrating its 60th anniversary this summer

The French Riviera has long been a haven for artists. Pierre-Auguste Renoir spent his last years, from 1907 to 1919, here in a house in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Pierre Bonnard settled in Le Cannet in 1920. Pablo Picasso lived and worked in Vallauris from 1948 to 1955. And many of the most important artists of the 20th century would stay at La Colombe d’or, an emblematic hotel that is the heart and soul of Saint. -Paul de Vence. The other jewel in the crown of this city, west of Nice, is the Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this summer, with the opening of an extension.

In the 1960s, art dealers and publishers Aimé and Marguerite Maeght decided to create a private foundation to display their collection, based on models they had seen in the United States. They were encouraged by the Cubist artist Georges Braque who saw in the project a way to cope with the loss of his son Bernard, who died of leukemia in 1953. The Maeght Foundation, the first of its kind in France, opened in July 1964. At its inauguration , the then Minister of Culture André Malraux said: “This is not a museum, but a place made for love and for the love of art and artists.”

Today, the museum houses around 13,000 objects, including 2,000 works by Joan Miró (the largest collection in France), as well as specific installations by Braque, Pierre Tal-Coat, Marc Chagall, Pol Bury, Germaine Richier and Alberto Giacometti, whose sculptures fill the yard

Closed and off for the past seven months, Fondation Maeght reopened its long-awaited expansion last month. “We had the idea for the expansion in 2004. It was what my grandfather wanted, but we couldn’t find the right person for the job,” said Isabelle Maeght, the Maeghts’ granddaughter, during a press conference.

Designed by Parisian firm Silvio d’Ascia Architecture, the new section adds 5,005 square meters to the museum’s footprint, without disturbing the original architecture by Josep Lluís Sert, who also built Miró’s studio in Mallorca. Instead, d’Ascia chose to dig four additional galleries under the existing building; the largest of which is located under Giacometti’s patio. (They are only visible from the Chemin de Rondes, which runs behind the museum.) The largest is below Giacometti’s patio.

“This is an expansion by subtraction project,” d’Ascia said during the press preview. “As an architect it is important to know when to put aside the ego, especially when faced with an invisible project. I had to adopt a silent approach so as not to disturb the already perfect balance of the foundation”.

These new underground galleries overlook a pine forest and the Mediterranean Sea, thus keeping alive the dialogue between art, nature and architecture that served as the foundation of the Maeghts’ vision for their museum.

Adrien Maeght, 94, son of the Maeghts and current chairman of the foundation, added: “The basement rooms designed by Silvio d’Ascia brought the place into the 21st century.”

The expansion will now allow the foundation to display its permanent collection (downstairs in the expansion) alongside temporary exhibitions (upstairs in the original building), such as the current one for Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard. The new “Galerie de la Bibliophilie” opens the renovated building, showing selections from the 45,000 books in the foundation’s collection. Down a dozen steps are paintings by Pierre Soulages, Jean Paul Riopelle, Jean Messager, Fernand Léger and others. The final room is dedicated to recent acquisitions, including a figurative painting by Hélène Delprat, which will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the foundation next spring.

The budget for the expansion project amounts to 5 million euros, including 1 million euros from Adrien Maeght and 500,000 euros each from the French State, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region and the department of Alpes-Maritimes. The Dassault family also gave one million euros, through its “History and Heritage” fund, managed by the grandchildren of Marcel and Madeline Dassault, friends of the Maeghts and who attended the inauguration of the foundation in 1964. The company Triverio, which oversaw the construction of the original building 60 years ago, participated as a corporate sponsor. “Without friendship this foundation wouldn’t even exist,” Isabelle Maeght said several times throughout the preview.

The theme of friendship also played a role in the Bonnard-Matisse exhibition, as both artists were friends of the Maeghs. “Bonnard and my father first met in Cannes in 1936 through a lithograph to be printed,” writes Adrien Maeght in the exhibition catalog. Bonnard introduced Aimé Maeght to Matisse in 1943, but they only became close after Matisse and Marguerite met by chance in a doctor’s waiting room; “A man sat next to her and asked her to pose for him,” and she soon became his “active agent.”

Today there are about 40 drawings of Marguerite de Matisse; several of them appear in the new hang collection. “At the age of fourteen,” Adrián continues in the catalog, “I had the privilege of attending one of these posing sessions and making an eight-minute film, the only document I know of that shows Matisse’s drawing.” You can also see that of Matisse The Bush (The Bush), which hung over Bernard’s bed during his illness.

Featuring both the artist’s landscapes and visions of the Saint-Tropez light, self-portraits and various portraits of his recurring models, the exhibition mostly avoids pairing works by Bonnard and Matisse. That’s intentional, according to the show’s curator, Marie-Thérèse Pulvenis de Sévigny, former curator of the Musée Matisse in Nice. The focus here is on the Maeghts and their relationship with the artists: Bonnard encouraged them to open a gallery in Paris, and Matisse was chosen for the inaugural show in 1945. “What matters here is the synergy between the three, which served as a springboard for the foundation,” he said.