Musée Zadkine and Fondation Cartier
France > Paris > Southern > Montparnasse > Fondation Cartier
Just north of the boulevard du Montparnasse, and within a few minutes' walk of the Jardin du Luxembourg, is the tiny Musée Zadkine, at 100 bis rue d'Assas (Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; €4; M° Vavin & RER Port-Royal). The museum occupies the Russian-born sculptor Ossip Zadkine's studio-house, where he lived and worked from 1928 – after a spell at La Ruche – until his death in 1967. In the garden, enclosed by ivy-covered studios and dwarfed by tall buildings, his angular Cubist bronzes seem to struggle for light – one of the most compelling, Orphée, is half buried among the bushes. Inside, is a collection of his gentler wooden torsos, along with smaller-scale bronze and stone works, notably Femme à l'Éventail. Studies for the renowned La Ville Détruite, whose twisted, agonised torso was intended to express the horror of aerial bombing, can be seen inside and in the garden.Taking a shortcut down rue Campagne-Première leads through to boulevard Raspail and the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, at no. 261 (Tues–Sun noon–8pm; €5; M° Raspail); it's no more than ten minutes' walk. The foundation is housed in a stunning glass and steel construction designed in 1994 by Jean Nouvel, architect of the Institut du Monde Arabe. A glass wall follows the line of the street like a false start to the building proper, leaving space for the Tree of Liberty planted by Chateaubriand during the Revolution to grow in the garden behind. All kinds of contemporary art – installations, videos, multi-media – often by foreign artists little known in France, are shown in temporary exhibitions that use the light and very generous spaces to maximum advantage.
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