Montparnasse
Encyclopedia
Montparnasse is an area of Paris
, France
, on the left bank
of the river Seine
, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse
and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse was absorbed into the capital's 6th and 14th arrondissements in 1669.
The area also gives its name to:
The Pasteur Institute
is located in the area. Beneath the ground are tunnels of the Catacombs of Paris
.
The name Montparnasse stems from the nickname "Mount Parnassus
" (In Greek mythology
, home to the nine Greek goddesses – the Muses – of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighbourhood in the 17th century by students who came there to recite poetry.
The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century. During the French Revolution
many dance halls and cabaret
s opened their doors.
The area is also known for cafes and bars, such as the Breton
restaurants specialising in crêpe
s (thin pancakes) located a few blocks from the Gare Montparnasse.
, Montparnasse became famous at the beginning of the 20th century, referred to as les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), when it was the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris. From 1910 to the start of World War II, Paris' artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse, an alternative to the Montmartre district which had been the intellectual breeding ground for the previous generation of artists. The Paris of Zola
, Manet
, France
, Degas, Fauré
, a group that had assembled more on the basis of status affinity than actual artistic tastes, indulging in the refinements of Dandyism, was at the opposite end of the economic, social, and political spectrum from the gritty, tough-talking, die-hard, emigrant artists that peopled Montparnasse.
Virtually penniless painter
s, sculptors
, writers, poet
s and composers came from around the world to thrive in the creative atmosphere and for the cheap rent at artist communes such as La Ruche
. Living without running water, in damp, unheated "studios", seldom free of rats, many sold their works for a few francs just to buy food. Jean Cocteau
once said that poverty was a luxury in Montparnasse. First promoted by art dealers such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, today works by those artists sell for millions of euros.
They came to Montparnasse from all over the globe, from Europe, including Russia and Ukraine
, from the United States, Canada, Mexico
, Central
and South America, and from as far away as Japan. Manuel Ortiz de Zárate
, Camilo Mori
and others made their way from Chile
where the profound innovations in art spawned the formation of the Grupo Montparnasse
in Santiago. A few of the other artists who gathered in Montparnasse were Pablo Picasso
, Guillaume Apollinaire
, Ossip Zadkine
, Carmelo Gonzalez, Julio Gonzalez
, Moise Kisling
, Jean Cocteau
, Erik Satie
, Marios Varvoglis
, Marc Chagall
, Nina Hamnett
, Jean Rhys
, Fernand Léger
, Jacques Lipchitz
, Max Jacob
, Blaise Cendrars
, Chaim Soutine
, James Joyce
, Ernest Hemingway
, Michel Kikoine
, Pinchus Kremegne
, Amedeo Modigliani
, Ford Madox Ford
, Toño Salazar
, Ezra Pound
, Max Ernst
, Marcel Duchamp
, Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti
, Henri Rousseau
, Constantin Brâncuşi
, Paul Fort
, Juan Gris
, Diego Rivera
, Federico Cantú, Angel Zarraga
, Marevna
, Tsuguharu Foujita
, Marie Vassilieff
, Léon-Paul Fargue
, Alberto Giacometti
, René Iché
, André Breton
, Alfonso Reyes
, Pascin
, Salvador Dalí
, Henry Miller
, Samuel Beckett
, Emil Cioran
, Reginald Gray
, Joan Miró
and, in his declining years, Edgar Degas
.
Montparnasse was a community where creativity was embraced with all its oddities, each new arrival welcomed unreservedly by its existing members. When Tsuguharu Foujita
arrived from Japan in 1913 not knowing a soul, he met Soutine
, Modigliani
, Pascin
and Leger
virtually the same night and within a week became friends with Juan Gris
, Pablo Picasso
and Henri Matisse
. In 1914, when the English painter Nina Hamnett
arrived in Montparnasse, on her first evening the smiling man at the next table at La Rotonde graciously introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". They became good friends, Hamnett later recounting how she once borrowed a jersey and corduroy trousers from Modigliani
, then went to La Rotonde and danced in the street all night.
Between 1921 and 1924, the number of Americans in Paris swelled from 6,000 to 30,000. While most of the artistic community gathered here were struggling to eke out an existence, well-heeled American socialites such as Peggy Guggenheim
, and Edith Wharton
from New York City
, Harry Crosby
from Boston
and Beatrice Wood
from San Francisco were caught in the fever of creativity. Robert McAlmon
, and Maria
and Eugene Jolas
came to Paris and published their literary magazine Transition
. Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse would establish the Black Sun Press
in Paris in 1927, publishing works by such future luminaries as D. H. Lawrence
, Archibald MacLeish
, James Joyce
, Kay Boyle
, Hart Crane
, Ernest Hemingway
, John Dos Passos
, William Faulkner
, Dorothy Parker
and others. As well, Bill Bird
published through his Three Mountains Press until British heiress Nancy Cunard
took it over.
The cafés and bars of Montparnasse were a meeting place where ideas were hatched and mulled over. The cafés at the centre of Montparnasse's night-life were in the Carrefour Vavin, now renamed Place Pablo-Picasso. In Montparnasse's heyday (from 1910 to 1920), the cafés Le Dôme, La Closerie des Lilas, La Rotonde
, Le Select, and La Coupole—all of which are still in business— were the places where starving artists could occupy a table all evening for a few centimes. If they fell asleep, the waiters were instructed not to wake them. Arguments were common, some fuelled by intellect, others by alcohol, and if there were fights, and there often were, the police were never summoned. If you couldn't pay your bill, people such as La Rotonde's proprietor, Victor Libion, would often accept a drawing, holding it until the artist could pay. As such, there were times when the café's walls were littered with a collection of artworks, that today would make the curators of the world's greatest museums drool with envy.
There were many areas where the great artists congregated, one of them being near Le Dôme at no. 10 rue Delambre called the Dingo Bar
. It was the hang-out of artists and expatriate Americans and the place where Canadian writer Morley Callaghan
came with his friend Ernest Hemingway
, both still unpublished writers, and met the already-established F. Scott Fitzgerald
. When Man Ray
's friend and Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp
, left for New York
, Man Ray set up his first studio at l'Hôtel des Ecoles at no. 15 rue Delambre. This is where his career as a photographer began, and where James Joyce
, Gertrude Stein
, Jean Cocteau
and the others filed in and posed in black and white.
The rue de la Gaité in Montparnasse was the site of many of the great music-hall theatres, in particular the famous "Bobino
".
On their stages, using then-popular single name pseudonym
s or one birth name only, Damia
, Kiki
, Mayol
and Georgius
, sang and performed to packed houses. And here too, Les Six
was formed, creating music based on the ideas of Erik Satie
and Jean Cocteau
.
The poet Max Jacob
said he came to Montparnasse to "sin disgracefully", but Marc Chagall
summed it up differently when he explained why he had gone to Montparnasse: "I aspired to see with my own eyes what I had heard of from so far away: this revolution of the eye, this rotation of colours, which spontaneously and astutely merge with one another in a flow of conceived lines. That could not be seen in my town. The sun of Art then shone only on Paris."
While the area attracted people who came to live and work in the creative, bohemian
environment, it also became home for political exiles such as Vladimir Lenin
, Leon Trotsky
, Porfirio Diaz
, and Simon Petlyura. But, World War II forced the dispersal of the artistic society, and after the war Montparnasse never regained its splendour. Wealthy socialites like Peggy Guggenheim
, who married artist Max Ernst
, lived in the elegant section of Paris but frequented the studios of Montparnasse, acquiring pieces that would come to be recognzed as masterpieces that now hang in the Peggy Guggenheim Museum
in Venice, Italy.
The Musée du Montparnasse
opened in 1998 at 21 Avenue du Maine. Although operating with a tiny city grant, the museum is a non-profit operation.
, the French rail company, has its head office in Montparnasse and the 14th arrondissement.
Prior to the completion of the current Air France
head office in Tremblay-en-France
in December 1995, Air France was headquartered in a tower located next to the Gare Montparnasse
rail station in Montparnasse and in the 15th arrondissement; Air France had its headquarters in the tower for about 30 years.
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, on the left bank
Rive Gauche
La Rive Gauche is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here the river flows roughly westward, cutting the city in two: looking downstream, the southern bank is to the left, and the northern bank is to the right....
of the river Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse
Boulevard du Montparnasse
The Boulevard du Montparnasse is a two-way boulevard in Montparnasse, in the 6th, 14th et 15th arrondissements in Paris.-Situation:The boulevard joins the place Léon Paul Fargue and place Camille Jullian. The Tour Montparnasse and place du 18 juin 1940 also found along it.- See also :*Cimetière du...
and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse was absorbed into the capital's 6th and 14th arrondissements in 1669.
The area also gives its name to:
- Gare MontparnasseGare MontparnasseParis Montparnasse is one of the six large terminus railway stations of Paris, located in the Montparnasse area in the XIVe arrondissement. The station was opened in 1840, and rebuilt completely in 1969...
– trains to BrittanyBrittanyBrittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
, TGVTGVThe TGV is France's high-speed rail service, currently operated by SNCF Voyages, the long-distance rail branch of SNCF, the French national rail operator....
to RennesRennesRennes is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France. Rennes is the capital of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department.-History:...
, ToursToursTours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
, BordeauxBordeauxBordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, Le MansLe MansLe Mans is a city in France, located on the Sarthe River. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le Mans. Le Mans is a part of the Pays de la Loire region.Its inhabitants are called Manceaux...
; rebuilt as a modern TGV station; - The large Montparnasse – BienvenüeMontparnasse - Bienvenüe (Paris Metro)Montparnasse — Bienvenüe is a station of the Paris Métro which is a transfer point between lines 4, 6, 12 and 13. It is the third-busiest station on the metro system in Montparnasse at the intersection of the 6th, 14th and 15th arrondissements.-Location:...
métroParis MétroThe Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...
station; - Cimetière du Montparnasse – the Montparnasse Cemetery, where Charles BaudelaireCharles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Constantin BrâncuşiConstantin BrancusiConstantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Simone de BeauvoirSimone de BeauvoirSimone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
, Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, and Susan SontagSusan SontagSusan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
are buried - Tour MontparnasseTour MontparnasseTour Maine-Montparnasse , also commonly named Tour Montparnasse, is a tall office skyscraper located in Paris, France, in the area of Montparnasse. Constructed from 1969 to 1972, it was the tallest skyscraper in France until 2011, when it was surpassed in height by the Tour First...
, a lone skyscraperSkyscraperA skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
.
The Pasteur Institute
Pasteur Institute
The Pasteur Institute is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who made some of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine at the time, including pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax...
is located in the area. Beneath the ground are tunnels of the Catacombs of Paris
Catacombs of Paris
The Catacombs of Paris or Catacombes de Paris are an underground ossuary in Paris, France. Located south of the former city gate , the ossuary holds the remains of about 6 million people and fills a renovated section of caverns and tunnels that are the remains of Paris' stone mines...
.
The name Montparnasse stems from the nickname "Mount Parnassus
Mount Parnassus
Mount Parnassus, also Parnassos , is a mountain of limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi, north of the Gulf of Corinth, and offers scenic views of the surrounding olive groves and countryside. According to Greek mythology, this mountain was sacred to Apollo and the Corycian nymphs,...
" (In Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, home to the nine Greek goddesses – the Muses – of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighbourhood in the 17th century by students who came there to recite poetry.
The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century. During the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
many dance halls and cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
s opened their doors.
The area is also known for cafes and bars, such as the Breton
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
restaurants specialising in crêpe
Crêpe
A crêpe or crepe , is a type of very thin pancake, usually made from wheat flour or buckwheat flour . The word is of French origin, deriving from the Latin crispa, meaning "curled". While crêpes originate from Brittany, a region in the northwest of France, their consumption is widespread in France...
s (thin pancakes) located a few blocks from the Gare Montparnasse.
Artistic Montparnasse
Like its counterpart MontmartreMontmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
, Montparnasse became famous at the beginning of the 20th century, referred to as les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), when it was the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris. From 1910 to the start of World War II, Paris' artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse, an alternative to the Montmartre district which had been the intellectual breeding ground for the previous generation of artists. The Paris of Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, Manet
Manet
-MANET as an abbreviation:*MANET is a mobile ad hoc network, a self-configuring mobile wireless network.*MANET database or Molecular Ancestry Network, bioinformatics database-People with the surname Manet:*Édouard Manet, a 19th-century French painter....
, France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
, Degas, Fauré
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...
, a group that had assembled more on the basis of status affinity than actual artistic tastes, indulging in the refinements of Dandyism, was at the opposite end of the economic, social, and political spectrum from the gritty, tough-talking, die-hard, emigrant artists that peopled Montparnasse.
Virtually penniless painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
s, sculptors
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, writers, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s and composers came from around the world to thrive in the creative atmosphere and for the cheap rent at artist communes such as La Ruche
La Ruche
La Ruche is an artist's residence at the Paris South-Western outskirts.Located in the "Passage Dantzig," in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, La Ruche was an old three-storey circular structure that got its name because it looked more like a large beehive than any dwelling for humans...
. Living without running water, in damp, unheated "studios", seldom free of rats, many sold their works for a few francs just to buy food. Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
once said that poverty was a luxury in Montparnasse. First promoted by art dealers such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, today works by those artists sell for millions of euros.
They came to Montparnasse from all over the globe, from Europe, including Russia and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, from the United States, Canada, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Central
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
and South America, and from as far away as Japan. Manuel Ortiz de Zárate
Manuel Ortiz de Zárate
Manuel Ortiz de Zárate Pinto was a Chilean painter.Born Manuel Revuelta Ortiz de Zárate Pinto in Como, Italy, he was the son of Chilean composer Eleodoro Ortiz de Zárate and of María Cristina Pinto Errázuriz...
, Camilo Mori
Camilo Mori
Camilo Mori Serrano was a painter and a founder of the Grupo Montparnasse....
and others made their way from Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
where the profound innovations in art spawned the formation of the Grupo Montparnasse
Grupo Montparnasse
The Grupo Montparnasse was an organization of Chilean artists who had joined the gathering of great artists in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France, in the early part of the 20th century...
in Santiago. A few of the other artists who gathered in Montparnasse were Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
, Ossip Zadkine
Ossip Zadkine
Ossip Zadkine was a Belarusian-born artist who lived in France. He is primarily known as a sculptor, but also produced paintings and lithographs.-Early years and career:...
, Carmelo Gonzalez, Julio Gonzalez
Julio González
Julio González may refer to:* Julio César González , Mexican light-heavyweight boxer* Julio González , Cuban responsible for the 1990 Happy Land Fire...
, Moise Kisling
Moise Kisling
Moise Kisling was a Polish painter.Born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he was encouraged to travel to the center for artistic creativity in the early 20th century, Paris, France.In 1910, Kisling moved to Montmartre and a few years later to...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Erik Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
, Marios Varvoglis
Marios Varvoglis
Marios Varvoglis was a Greek composer of the Modern Era. He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris and the Schola Cantorum with Leroux, Georges Caussade, d'Indy and others...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, Nina Hamnett
Nina Hamnett
Nina Hamnett was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' chanteys, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia.- Early life :...
, Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys , born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th-century novelist from Dominica. Educated from the age of 16 in Great Britain, she is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea , written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.-Early life:Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica...
, Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz was a Cubist sculptor.Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire...
, Max Jacob
Max Jacob
Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
, Blaise Cendrars
Blaise Cendrars
Frédéric Louis Sauser , better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.-Early years:...
, Chaim Soutine
Chaim Soutine
Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Michel Kikoine
Michel Kikoine
Michel Kikoine , was a French painter of Jewish-Belarusian origin.- Life :Kikoine was born in Rechytsa, Belarus. The son of a Jewish banker in the small southeastern town of Gomel, he was barely into his teens when he began studying at "Kruger's School of Drawing" in Minsk. There he met Chaim...
, Pinchus Kremegne
Pinchus Kremegne
Pinchus Krémègne, aka Pinchus Kremegne , was a French artist of Jewish-Russian origin, primarily known as a sculptor, painter and lithographer....
, Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
, Toño Salazar
Toño Salazar
Antonio "Toño" Salazar was a Salvadoran caricaturist, illustrator and diplomat. Born in Santa Tecla, in 1920 he went to study in Mexico on an art scholarship then in 1922 traveled to France to join the throng of artists and writers from around the world who were living, working, and learning in...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti
Suzanne Duchamp
Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti was a French Dadaist painter. Born in Blainville-Crevon, Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie Region of France, she was the fourth of six children born into the artistic family of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp.Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti was the younger sister of:*Jacques Villon née...
, Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...
, Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, Paul Fort
Paul Fort
Paul Fort was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. At the age of 18, reacting against the Naturalistic theatre, Fort founded the Théâtre d’Art...
, Juan Gris
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life...
, Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
, Federico Cantú, Angel Zarraga
Ángel Zárraga
Ángel Zárraga Argüelles was a Mexican painter. He was founding member of the cultural organization El Ateneo de la Juventud.-Biography:...
, Marevna
Marie Vorobieff
Marie Bronislava Vorobieff-Stebelska , also known as Marevna, was a Russian-born Cubist painter. She is internationally known for convincingly combining elements of cubism with pointillism and – through the use of the Golden Ratio for laying out paintings – structure. She tends to be accredited...
, Tsuguharu Foujita
Tsuguharu Foujita
was a painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings.- Education :In 1910 when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music....
, Marie Vassilieff
Marie Vassilieff
Mariya Ivanovna Vassiliéva , , better known as Marie Vassilieff, was a Russian painter....
, Léon-Paul Fargue
Léon-Paul Fargue
Léon-Paul Fargue was a French poet and essayist.He was born in Paris, France on rue Coquilliére. As a poet he was noted for his poetry of atmosphere and detail. His work spanned numerous literary movements...
, Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
, René Iché
René Iché
For the town in Morocco see Iche, MoroccoRené Iché was a 20th century French sculptor.-Life and work:...
, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, Alfonso Reyes
Alfonso Reyes
Alfonso Reyes Ochoa was a Mexican writer, philosopher and diplomat.-Early life:Alfonso Reyes parents were Bernardo Reyes and Aurelia Ochoa...
, Pascin
Pascin
Julius Mordecai Pincas, known as Pascin, Jules Pascin, or the "Prince of Montparnasse", was born in Bulgaria to parents of four ethnicities. During World War I, he worked in the United States. He is best known as a painter in Paris, where he was strongly identified with the Modernist movement and...
, Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
, Reginald Gray
Reginald Gray (artist)
Reginald Gray is a portrait artist born in Dublin in 1930. He studied at The National College of Art and then moved to London, becoming part of the School of London led by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach. In 1960, he painted a portrait of Bacon which now hangs in the permanent...
, Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
and, in his declining years, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
.
Tsuguharu Foujita
was a painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings.- Education :In 1910 when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music....
arrived from Japan in 1913 not knowing a soul, he met Soutine
Chaim Soutine
Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....
, Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, Pascin
Pascin
Julius Mordecai Pincas, known as Pascin, Jules Pascin, or the "Prince of Montparnasse", was born in Bulgaria to parents of four ethnicities. During World War I, he worked in the United States. He is best known as a painter in Paris, where he was strongly identified with the Modernist movement and...
and Leger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
virtually the same night and within a week became friends with Juan Gris
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
. In 1914, when the English painter Nina Hamnett
Nina Hamnett
Nina Hamnett was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' chanteys, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia.- Early life :...
arrived in Montparnasse, on her first evening the smiling man at the next table at La Rotonde graciously introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". They became good friends, Hamnett later recounting how she once borrowed a jersey and corduroy trousers from Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, then went to La Rotonde and danced in the street all night.
Between 1921 and 1924, the number of Americans in Paris swelled from 6,000 to 30,000. While most of the artistic community gathered here were struggling to eke out an existence, well-heeled American socialites such as Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
, and Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
from New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Harry Crosby
Harry Crosby
Harry Crosby was an American heir, a bon vivant, poet, publisher, and for some, epitomized the Lost Generation in American literature. He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England, a member of the Boston Brahmin, and the nephew of Jane Norton Grew, the wife of financier J....
from Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and Beatrice Wood
Beatrice Wood
Beatrice Wood was an American artist and studio potter, who late in life was dubbed the "Mama of Dada," and served as a partial inspiration for the character of Rose DeWitt Bukater in James Cameron's 1997 film, Titanic...
from San Francisco were caught in the fever of creativity. Robert McAlmon
Robert McAlmon
Robert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.-Life:McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of ten children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister....
, and Maria
Maria Jolas
Maria Jolas , born Maria McDonald, was one of the founding members of transition in Paris with her husband Eugene Jolas....
and Eugene Jolas
Eugene Jolas
John George Eugene Jolas was a writer, translator and literary critic.-Biography:Eugene Jolas was born in Union City, New Jersey, but grew up in Forbach in Elsass-Lothringen , to which his family returned when he was two years old. He spent periods of his adult life living in both the U.S...
came to Paris and published their literary magazine Transition
Transition (literary journal)
transition was an experimental literary journal that featured surrealist, expressionist, and Dada art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by poet Eugene Jolas and his wife Maria McDonald and published in Paris...
. Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse would establish the Black Sun Press
Mary Phelps Jacob
Caresse Crosby , born Mary Phelps Jacob , was an American patron of the arts, poet, publisher, and peace activist...
in Paris in 1927, publishing works by such future luminaries as D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
, Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
and others. As well, Bill Bird
Bill Bird
William Augustus Bird was an American journalist, now remembered for his Three Mountains Press, a small press he ran while in Paris in the 1920s for the Consolidated Press Association...
published through his Three Mountains Press until British heiress Nancy Cunard
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class but strongly rejected her family's values, devoting much of her life to fighting racism and fascism...
took it over.
Café de la Rotonde
The Café de la Rotonde is a famous café in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France. Located on the Carrefour Vavin, at the corner of Boulevard du Montparnasse and Boulevard Raspail, it was founded by Victor Libion in 1910...
, Le Select, and La Coupole—all of which are still in business— were the places where starving artists could occupy a table all evening for a few centimes. If they fell asleep, the waiters were instructed not to wake them. Arguments were common, some fuelled by intellect, others by alcohol, and if there were fights, and there often were, the police were never summoned. If you couldn't pay your bill, people such as La Rotonde's proprietor, Victor Libion, would often accept a drawing, holding it until the artist could pay. As such, there were times when the café's walls were littered with a collection of artworks, that today would make the curators of the world's greatest museums drool with envy.
There were many areas where the great artists congregated, one of them being near Le Dôme at no. 10 rue Delambre called the Dingo Bar
Dingo Bar
The Dingo American Bar and Restaurant at 10 rue Delambre in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France opened its doors in 1923. Most commonly referred to as the Dingo Bar, it was one of the few drinking establishments at the time that was open all night...
. It was the hang-out of artists and expatriate Americans and the place where Canadian writer Morley Callaghan
Morley Callaghan
Morley Callaghan, was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, TV and radio personality.-Biography:...
came with his friend Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, both still unpublished writers, and met the already-established F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
. When Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
's friend and Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, left for New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Man Ray set up his first studio at l'Hôtel des Ecoles at no. 15 rue Delambre. This is where his career as a photographer began, and where James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
and the others filed in and posed in black and white.
The rue de la Gaité in Montparnasse was the site of many of the great music-hall theatres, in particular the famous "Bobino
Bobino
Bobino at 20 rue de la Gaîté, in the Montparnasse area of Paris , France, is a music hall theatre that has seen most of the biggest names of 20th century French music perform there....
".
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s or one birth name only, Damia
Marie-Louise Damien
Marie-Louise Damien was a French singer and actress better known by the stage name Damia.-Robert Hollard:...
, Kiki
Alice Prin
Alice Ernestine Prin , nicknamed Queen of Montparnasse, and often known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a French artist model, nightclub singer, actress, memoirist, and painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated, early 1920s culture of Paris.- Early life :Alice Prin was born in...
, Mayol
Félix Mayol
Félix Mayol was a French singer and entertainer.-Career:Mayol was born in Toulon, France. His parents were both amateur singers and actors, who arranged for Felix to make his debut stage at six years of age....
and Georgius
Georges Guibourg
Georges Guibourg was a French singer, author, writer, playwright, and actor, George Guibourg, alias Georgius, alias Theodore Crapulet, was one of the most popular and versatile performers in Paris for more than 50 years....
, sang and performed to packed houses. And here too, Les Six
Les Six
Les six is a name, inspired by The Five, given in 1920 by critic Henri Collet in an article titled "" to a group of six composers working in Montparnasse whose music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music.-Members:Formally, the Groupe des...
was formed, creating music based on the ideas of Erik Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
and Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
.
The poet Max Jacob
Max Jacob
Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
said he came to Montparnasse to "sin disgracefully", but Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
summed it up differently when he explained why he had gone to Montparnasse: "I aspired to see with my own eyes what I had heard of from so far away: this revolution of the eye, this rotation of colours, which spontaneously and astutely merge with one another in a flow of conceived lines. That could not be seen in my town. The sun of Art then shone only on Paris."
While the area attracted people who came to live and work in the creative, bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
environment, it also became home for political exiles such as Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, Porfirio Diaz
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican-American War volunteer and French intervention hero, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N...
, and Simon Petlyura. But, World War II forced the dispersal of the artistic society, and after the war Montparnasse never regained its splendour. Wealthy socialites like Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
, who married artist Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, lived in the elegant section of Paris but frequented the studios of Montparnasse, acquiring pieces that would come to be recognzed as masterpieces that now hang in the Peggy Guggenheim Museum
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. It is one of several museums of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation....
in Venice, Italy.
The Musée du Montparnasse
Musée du Montparnasse
The Musée du Montparnasse is a museum at 21 Avenue du Maine, in the 15th arrondissement, Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France.The museum opened its doors on May 28, 1998...
opened in 1998 at 21 Avenue du Maine. Although operating with a tiny city grant, the museum is a non-profit operation.
Economy
SNCFSNCF
The SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...
, the French rail company, has its head office in Montparnasse and the 14th arrondissement.
Prior to the completion of the current Air France
Air France
Air France , stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, , and is one of the world's largest airlines. It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance...
head office in Tremblay-en-France
Tremblay-en-France
Tremblay-en-France is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.More than one-quarter of Charles de Gaulle Airport lies on the territory of the commune of Tremblay-en-France, in particular terminals 2A, 2B, 2C, and 2D...
in December 1995, Air France was headquartered in a tower located next to the Gare Montparnasse
Gare Montparnasse
Paris Montparnasse is one of the six large terminus railway stations of Paris, located in the Montparnasse area in the XIVe arrondissement. The station was opened in 1840, and rebuilt completely in 1969...
rail station in Montparnasse and in the 15th arrondissement; Air France had its headquarters in the tower for about 30 years.
Further reading
- Billy Kluver, Julie Martin Kiki's Paris: Artists and Lovers 1900-1930 (the definitive illustrated account of the golden age of Montparnasse.)
- Shari
- Being Geniuses Together, 1920-1930 by Robert McAlmonRobert McAlmonRobert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.-Life:McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of ten children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister....
, Kay BoyleKay BoyleKay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
(1968)
External links
- La Rotonde Terasza, Paris (1917), by Marie VorobieffMarie VorobieffMarie Bronislava Vorobieff-Stebelska , also known as Marevna, was a Russian-born Cubist painter. She is internationally known for convincingly combining elements of cubism with pointillism and – through the use of the Golden Ratio for laying out paintings – structure. She tends to be accredited...
-Stebelska (Marevna) (scroll down to 5th painting). - Homage to Friends from Montparnasse by Marie VorobieffMarie VorobieffMarie Bronislava Vorobieff-Stebelska , also known as Marevna, was a Russian-born Cubist painter. She is internationally known for convincingly combining elements of cubism with pointillism and – through the use of the Golden Ratio for laying out paintings – structure. She tends to be accredited...
-Stebelska (Marevna), c.1962, oil/canvas, top left to right: Diego RiveraDiego RiveraDiego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
, Ilya EhrenburgIlya EhrenburgIlya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...
, Chaim SoutineChaim SoutineChaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....
, Amedeo ModiglianiAmedeo ModiglianiAmedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, his wife Jeanne HébuterneJeanne HébuterneJeanne Hébuterne was a French artist, best known as the frequent subject and common-law wife of the artist Amedeo Modigliani.- Early life :...
, Max JacobMax JacobMax Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
, galerie owner Leopold Zborowski http://www.imageartsetc.com/stock-images/detail.asp?pid=1406http://www.imageartsetc.com/stock-images/detail.asp?pid=1428; bottom left to right: Marevna, her and Diego Rivera's daughter MarikaMarika RiveraMarika Rivera was a French film actress and dancer.She was born in Paris, the non-marital daughter of the Mexican artist Diego Rivera and his mistress, the Russian-born painter Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska . Rivera, who was married to Angelina Beloff, did not accept his daughter...
, (Amedeo Modigliani), Moise KislingMoise KislingMoise Kisling was a Polish painter.Born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he was encouraged to travel to the center for artistic creativity in the early 20th century, Paris, France.In 1910, Kisling moved to Montmartre and a few years later to...
. - "Legendary Sin Cities" — CBC television documentary
- The Montparnasse district - Photographs of the years 1900 at our days