Jacqueline Delubac Exhibition in Lyon

This time it is about another good collection I have visited in Lyon last weekend. The collection which has unfortunately just finished. It looks like I wait till the last day to visit & enjoy and write about it in order to make others who haven’t had a chance to go a bit jealous 😉 Oh well, I am just kidding! It has just happened that I had recently bought a Museum Card here in Lyon. It’s really a good deal, as paying 20 Euros you get the unlimited access to those 6 museums:

Good, isn’t it?

So, I want to make the most out of it now and try to visit each museum and as many collections as possible. It has also happened that the very good exhibitions like Erro and now

Jacquline Dublac have been scheduled to finish in Jan/Feb 2015. So I had the last chance to go and I did. I am sure there will be new ones to replace them soon and with my card I am going to explore those museums and their collections as well. So keep an eye on what’s happening in Lyon and in my life 😉 as this time I will try to write about something you actually will have a time to do.

So coming back to the main subject which is the last exhibition I have attended. Jacqueline Delubac: the choice of modernity. This was a major exhibition displayed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon. It presented Jacqueline Delubac as an actress, most elegant women of Paris and especially as an art lover and collector. It featured a waste choice of collection: from the photos of the Delubac herself, the posters of movies she played in, the costumes and dresses she wore; the short movie performances you could watch to the amazing collection of arts which she gathered in her life. You could admire the Rodins sculptures, the paintings of Picasso, Bacon just to name a few. She also gave to the museum the real furnitures from her home so you could get the idea on how she used to live at her amazing apartment in Paris.

But have you ever heard about Jacqueline Delubac. Well, I don’t want to sound bad, but I haven’t known her before going to the museum…so after seeing the exhibition I did the work and learned a bit more about her. And I need to admit she have had quite interesting life…so Jacqueline Delubac was born in Lyon! But she left the south of France for Paris in the 1920s. She started performing in the movies and plays in 1931, in 1935 she married Sacha Guitry (1885-1957) who placed her in her first play. Thanks to him she not only started her theatre career but also started to appreciate the art. She became the symbol of elegance in Paris and was pioneering in the avant-garde fashion. She played 27 theatre roles and she performed in 25 films. In 1939 she divorced Sacha Guitry and ended her acting career at the beginning of 1950s. Then She focused on her passion and love for art which she shared with Myran Eknayan, her new companion – also an art collector. She married him in 1981.

But she didn’t have any children and any heir and she didn’t want for her art to get wasted therefore she decided to donate her works of art to the public institutions. She died in 1997. After her death, the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon received 35 paintings and pastels by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Bonnard, Vuillard, Léger, Braque, Picasso, Miró, Bacon and others. The museum got the custody of the exceptional art including several bronze statues by Rodin and 19th century.

So yes, quite a person she was generous and so beautiful and truly very ‘chic’!

I enjoyed looking at the photos of her, at the collection of dresses (of course!) and the paintings – amazing but not the thing I would have in my small and cosy flat. The Picasso is really unique and there were just few paintings and sculptures I could put on walls, others were too creative/strange/unique/posh as per my style.