L'école Prouvé de Vantoux transformée en galerie d'art

The article

In L’Est Républicain, Lisa Lagrange visits the former Jean-Prouvé school in Vantoux ahead of the opening of Galerie Nathan Chiche, scheduled for 16 May. The report starts from the corridor, where the small coat hooks still face Prouvé's portholes, to recall that the school closed in 2014 and that it is listed as a historic monument.

After the departure of the architects and designers who had occupied the premises, the municipality, which owns them, looked for a new occupant and, from among several applications, chose that of Nathan Chicheportiche and his mother. The gallerist, who is from Paris, says he discovered the building during his art history studies and wants to open it to the public beyond the European Heritage Days, with artists who respond to Prouvé.

The exhibition is already installed. Jean-Pierre Raynaud, aged 84, has taken up again his faience tiles shown at the Venice Biennale in 1993, adding the print of a skull and coloured letters and numbers like those on children's magnetic boards. The town hall brought out the double desks it had kept, which will not be sold, to recreate a classroom and bring the artist into dialogue with the history of the school.

The article notes that Raynaud, who now rarely exhibits, accepted out of admiration for Prouvé. Nathan Chicheportiche says he has already approached other artists and stresses the location of the venue, a few minutes from Metz and an hour and a half from Paris by TGV.

Read the article on the L'Est Républicain website ↗