L'école Prouvé devient une galerie d'art

The article

On the Blé Lorraine website, Thomas Riboulet announces the conversion of the former school in Vantoux, on the edge of Metz, into an art gallery. Opened in 1951 and closed to pupils in 2014, the building had been renovated in 2018 to house the showroom of the Pôle Design Architecture et Mobilier; after the latter's departure, the municipality selected the project of Nathan Chicheportiche, presented as co-founder of Galerie Nathan Chiche.

For the first exhibition, the faience tiles that earned Jean-Pierre Raynaud, aged 84, his international reputation are placed on the original pupils' desks and tables. The artist, present at the opening, reworked them with coloured letters and numbers and the print of a human skull, in the manner of a vanitas. The gallery intends to show artists who echo Jean Prouvé, with four exhibitions a year, talks, classes and a bookshop set up in the annexe.

The article then turns to the architecture: designed in the early 1950s by Jean Prouvé and his brother Henri, the school has been listed as a historic monument since 2001 for its compass-shaped portal frames supporting a modular structure. The journalist recalls the urgent need to rebuild schools after the Second World War, to which Jean Prouvé responded with a prefabricated system assembled in a few weeks, and mentions the wood, the steel, the portholes and the large south-facing bay windows.

The restoration, he adds, was financed by the sale of the headmaster's demountable house, which is now in Japan.

Read the article on the Blé Lorraine website ↗