On the evening of Monday 4th July,
25 members of our association were invited on a visit by Claire Muchir, the curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Collioure.
She offered us, with great enthusiasm, artistic and historical content and sensitivity. a guided tour of the exhibition: “Collioure Babel des Art”
Now we have a wsih to return, to be able at leisure to marvel at certain works we only glimpsed.
We were all waiting impatiently, with some emotion, to meet the two original watercolors by Charles Rennie Mackintosh painted in Roussillon:
The Fort Maillert (Fort Mailly – Port-Vendres)
and Slate roofs (slate roofs – Fetges) between 1925 and 1927.
Almost a century after their birth in Roussillon, their return was long overdue until Monday July 4th.
It is indeed difficult to bring original works from Great Britain these days.
It took all the patience and tenacity of Claire Muchir to accept refusals from other Scottish museums and then to persuade the Glasgow School of Art to lend these watercolors
and thus authorize a return to their place of birth.
The members of your board of directors, who had become accustomed to only exhibiting reproductions, had beating hearts when they viewed them.
We strongly encourage you to visit this exhibition, to contemplate the works of our flagship artist and then come and visit us, at the Centre which will open in its new premises in Place Castellane, on August 5th.
This great moment ended, as it should in Roussillon, with a cocktail reception offered by the association.
Mackintosh would certainly not have disapproved of it if we are to believe what he describes of Catalan flavors in his correspondence
So see you soon ! And thanks again to Claire Muchir for providing us with this unique time.