Arles Moderne

Son of the artist Alfred Latour, an archaeologist by training but open to the art of his time, Jacques Latour was the first curator to introduce the concept of temporary exhibitions to the museum when he took up his post in 1949. Through his projects, which were highly innovative for the time, he aimed to turn the Réattu into a museum of twentieth-century art, a type of institution that was virtually non-existent in France at the time. He brought into the city's collections the first works by Ossip Zadkine, Valentine Prax, André Marchand, Jacques Hauer, Théo Kerg, Marcel Gromaire and many others, which revolutionised the cultural landscape of Arles, which was still very much rooted in Antiquity and Provençal traditions. He was also the first to organise a Van Gogh exhibition in Arles, bringing him into direct contact with the contemporary artists who had made Provence their home.
This revolutionary impetus, interrupted by Latour's sudden death in 1956, was immediately taken up by another young archaeologist, Jean-Maurice Rouquette. Organiser of the first Picasso exhibition in 1957, and co-creator, in 1965, of the first ‘Section d'Art Photographique’ in a French art museum, Rouquette in turn cultivated a particular taste for living artists, to which the museum is still heir today.
The exhibition takes a fresh look at this ‘conquest of modern art’, comparing works exhibited and acquired by Latour and Rouquette (paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures and photographs) with period documents drawn from the museum's archives and works from the same period acquired later, with a view to strengthening the modern collection. It's a way of exploring, on an Arlesian scale, the different currents in the history of art from the 1920s to the 1960s, from neo-impressionism to cubism, via surrealism and abstraction.

List of artists exhibited :
Berenice Abbott / Robert Barral / Peter Beard / Roger Bezombes / Brassaï / Auguste Chabaud / Pierre Charbonnier / Jean- Gabriel Chauvin / Lucien Clergue / Albert Costes / Gabriel Delprat / Jean Dieuzaide / Albert Duraz / André Fougeron / Tsuguharu Foujita / Josep Franc Clapers / René Dürrbach / Achille Emile Othon Friesz / Joseph George / Marcel Gromaire / Jacques Hauer / Pierre Jahan / Théo Kerg / Moïse Kisling / Germaine Krull / Alfred Latour / Fernand Léger / Alfred Lesbros / Jean Lombard / Jean Lurçat / Dora Maar / Alfred Manessier / Man Ray / André Marchand / Jean Metzinger / Henri Ottman / Roger Picard / James Pichette / Georges Pomerat / Mario Prassinos / Valentine Prax / Germaine Richier / Henri- Emilien Rousseau / Marie-Thérèse Rozes / Georges Saad / Maurice Sarthou / Georges Serré / Jeanloup Sieff / Hans Silvester / Jean-Pierre Sudre /