Strasbourg is the capital city of the Grand Est region, formerly Alsace, in northeastern France. It’s also the formal seat of the European Parliament and sits near the German border, with culture and architecture blending German and French influences. Its Gothic Cathédrale Notre-Dame features daily shows from its astronomical clock and sweeping views of the Rhine River from partway up its 142m spire.
Tag Archives: France
Views: “L’Estaque Aux Toits Rouges” by Paul Cézanne
L’Estaque aux toits rouges by Paul Cézanne is one of the finest views of L’Estaque, the Provençal fishing village where the artist forged a radical new way of depicting the world around him.
Exhibited in 1936 and hidden away ever since, this remarkable piece will finally come back on view as part of The Cox Collection: The Story of Impressionism, taking place at Christie’s New York on 11 November.
While Cézanne is primarily associated with Aix-en-Provence, the village of L’Estaque near Marseille was a place that he returned to again and again when he sought sanctuary. His relationship with the village began when he holidayed there as a child with his mother. Then, in 1870, when Cézanne left Paris to avoid conscription into the army following the start of the Franco-Prussian War, he escaped to L’Estaque.
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Urban Design: Paris’ Grand Plan To Become Europe’s Greenest City (Video)
From the Champs-Élysées to the Eiffel Tower, the French capital is getting the mother of all makeovers.
Art Insider: Van Gogh’s Creative Spark In Paris
Vincent Van Gogh was a master of creating sumptuous still lifes. In this latest Expert Voices, Sotheby’s specialist Simon Stock describes how his painting “Nature Morte: Vase Aux Glaïeuls”, offered in Sotheby’s upcoming Modern Art Evening Sale (9 October | Hong Kong), perfectly captured the essence of the artist’s first summer in Paris in 1886. Discover how the artist infused his inspiration of Japanese wood block prints into his paintings, and how he painstakingly captured the joy of living in his still lifes, but also the transience of life.
Paris Walks: ‘Le Marais’
The fashionable Marais district in the 4th arrondissement, also known as SoMa (South Marais), is filled with hip boutiques, galleries, and gay bars. Once the city’s Jewish quarter, the area still hosts numerous kosher restaurants. The grassy Place des Vosges is home to elegant arcades and the Musée Victor Hugo, where the writer lived. Streets around Saint-Paul metro lead to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.
Walking Tour: Caen In Normandy, France (4K)
Caen is a port city and capital of Calvados department in northern France’s Normandy region. Its center features the Château de Caen, a circa-1060 castle built by William the Conqueror. It stands on a hill flanked by the Romanesque abbeys of Saint-Étienne and Sainte-Trinité, which both date from the same period. The multimedia Mémorial museum is devoted to World War II, the 1944 Battle of Normandy and the Cold War.
Bicycle Tour: Northern Mediterranean Coast (4K)
Touring the North Mediterranean on a Brompton Folding Bike.
Art Exhibit: ‘Chaïm Soutine / Willem de Kooning’ At The Musée de l’Orangerie
The Musée de l’Orangerie presents an exhibition bringing together the works of Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943), painter of the Paris School of Russian origin (now Belarus) and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), abstract expressionist American of Dutch origin.
This exhibition will focus more specifically on exploring the impact of Soutine’s painting on the pictorial vision of the great American painter.
Soutine indeed marked the generation of post-war painters by the expressive force of his painting and his figure of “accursed artist”, grappling with the vicissitudes and excesses of Parisian bohemia. His work was particularly visible in the United States between the 1930s and 1950s, when the figurative artist of European tradition was re-read in the light of new artistic theories. The gestural painting and the pronounced impasto of Soutine’s canvases lead critics and curators to proclaim him a “prophet”, herald of American abstract expressionism.
It was precisely at the turn of the 1950s that Willem de Kooning began the pictorial work of Women, canvases in which a singular expressionism was built, between figuration and abstraction. The development of this new language corresponds to the moment when the painter summons the artistic universe of Chaïm Soutine and confronts it. De Kooning discovered his predecessor’s paintings in the 1930s, then at the retrospective which devoted the painter to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1950. He was then particularly marked by the presentation of Soutine’s paintings in the Foundation’s collections. Barnes of Philadelphia, where he visited with his wife Elaine in June 1952.
French Walks: Collonges-la-Rouge – The Red Village
The former fiefdom of the Counts of Turenne, the medieval village of Collonges-la-Rouge, nestling some twenty kilometres to the south of Brive-la-Gaillarde, surrounded by peaceful, green countryside planted with chestnut and walnut trees, will enchant you with its picturesque charm and its famous red sandstone.
From the old grain and wine hall built in the 16th century to the magnificent houses with thackstone and slate roofs, through the Flat Gate (Porte Plate) and the fortified church, you’re sure to be won over by the beauty of this famous Corrèze town with its twenty-five towers. Lovers of beautiful stone buildings can enjoy a stroll along its pleasant streets lined with smart façades. A genuine journey through time, a walk around the village will not only show you the remarkable Church of St. Peter, with its splendid 12th-century tympanum carved out of white Turenne limestone and its imposing gabled Romanesque bell tower, but also some lavish 15th and 16th-century houses crowned with towers and turrets.
Walking Tours: Colmar In Alsace Region, France (4K)
Colmar is a town in the Grand Est region of northeastern France, near the border with Germany. Its old town has cobblestone streets lined with half-timbered medieval and early Renaissance buildings. The Gothic 13th-century, Eglise Saint-Martin church stands on central Place de la Cathédrale. The city is on the Alsace Wine Route, and local vineyards specialize in Riesling and Gewürztraminer wines.
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