André, Jean et les autres...

For over half a century, André Verdet was a close friend of the painters and writers who frequented Saint-Paul de Vence. Author of numerous books on art, exhibition catalogs, and poetry collections, and also a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and ceramicist, he was a champion of the arts and his village, a vital link between Saint-Paul de Vence and the greatest artists of the last century.

André Verdet and Jean Ferrero met in the mid-1960s in Saint-Paul de Vence, at La Colombe d’Or, where Jean came to photograph the many artists who frequented the place. They quickly forged a strong friendship, inventing stories that often bordered on the farcical. In 1973, at his first gallery, on Place Ile de Beauté in Nice, Jean Ferrero organized a retrospective exhibition of André Verdet's work. The following year, it was André's turn to exhibit Jean's paintings at the Saint-Paul de Vence municipal museum.

These two great collectors both made donations to their beloved cities: André Verdet in 2001 to Saint-Paul de Vence and Jean Ferrero in Nice in 2014. Given the close ties between André and Jean, it was only natural that their two collections should come together in a single exhibition.

L’Artistique, which has housed and presented the Jean Ferrero Donation Collection since its reopening in 2019, is inviting the André Verdet Donation Collection for the exhibition “ANDRÉ, JEAN and the others…”.

More than a hundred works are presented, those of André Verdet belonging to both collections, but also those of artists they have in common, those others who shared their friendship, such as Arman, Ben, César, Gilli, Farhi, Malaval, Dolla, Venet and many others, as well as photographs which also bear witness to these links, some of which are signed by Jean Ferrero.