The Médard museum takes “A magical look” at Jean Hugo from Lunel

The Médard museum team, ready for the opening this evening. A.C.

Visible from this Wednesday, June 19 and until Sunday, September 22, the exhibition dedicated to the artist, who lived a large part of his life at the Mas de Fourques, opens the ban of a triple meeting with the Fabre and Paul-Valéry museums.

This is not the first time that the Médard museum has approached the artist Jean Hugo. Briefly in 2014-2015, through one of his illuminated manuscripts.

In more detail, in 2020-2021, with “Jean Hugo, a universe in his hand – Words, figures”. So intimate and so accomplished with the exhibition which takes place, from this Wednesday, June 19 (opening at 7:30 p.m.) and until Sunday, September 22, on the two levels of the municipal cultural building.

Two other meetings in Sète and Montpellier

With “Jean Hugo, the magic look – His life in Lunel from 1920 to 1984”, the Médard team is celebrating a double event: the fortieth anniversary of the death of the painter, writer, illustrator and decorator, who closed his eyes for good in his family home in Lunel in 1984, and the partnership with the Fabre and Paul-Valéry museums which are also addressing the great-grandson of the leader of Romanticism with two other exhibitions (*).

A reserve of sensations in the Lunel countryside

It is the local man that visitors will discover through a hundred paintings and personal objects, mainly loaned by family and individuals.
This man that we met every day in the market halls of the town of Pescalune, inhabited by this discretion which characterized him. A probable shyness even.

An inheritance from his mother

Because Jean Hugo, it is in his surrounding nature of the Fourques farmhouse that he lives, breathes, draws inspiration. "He settled here permanently in 1929 after the “whirlwind” Parisians of the post-war period and the legacy of the farmhouse from her mother, Aline Ménard-Dorian, explains Valérie Dumoulin, the new director of the Médard museum since 3&nbsp ;June. He already knows the place having spent his holidays there and having hung out in the studio of his father, Georges, who already painted himself" , continues the manager.

Five shows for an inauguration

This Wednesday, June 19, at 7:30 p.m., the exhibition dedicated to Jean Hugo will be inaugurated at the Médard Museum.

But before and a little after the ceremony, it is not one but five quarter-hour shows that the Bam company, from the association La Boîte à Malice, will give at 5:30 p.m., 6 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.

Five different parts performed on the forecourt of the museum and in which the actors Alexandre Pratlong, Bertrand De Sola, Céline Manchon and Jean-Frédéric Noa will lead the public, in starting from seven large decorative paintings of 2 m by 1.2 m from the world of Jean Hugo, following in the footsteps of the artist.

From his history to his influences, from his sensitivity to everything that the Lunel region has inspired him. A sensitive and interactive moment to boot, to experience “as if you were there”. Especially since this partnership with the museum is obviously free.

His passion for the Camargue and its traditions

Equipped with a notebook, Jean Hugo travels the surrounding lands. He draws, notes, soaks up what he sees, smells, hears. A reserve of sensations that he will distill, for decades, in sketches, words and especially in painting.

It is to this world that the museum dedicates its ground floor but also to the passion of Victor Hugo's descendant for the Camargue and its traditions. By going up one floor, it is an ascension towards the even more private world and behind the scenes of his life that the public of the exhibition penetrates.

His original workshop located on the first floor

A variation of Jean Hugo in self-portraits, photographs, books on flora and fauna that belonged to him and from which he drew inspiration for his works and writings. His cap too, an accessory that characterized him at a time.

Or even this shell vase and this toupin that the artist integrates into his paintings closely linked to the territory such Les Porteuses de Paysage , this wall model reproduced in a huge fresco on buildings at the entrance to the city on the RN 113 side which has now disappeared.
But also Lunel seen from the scrubland, with its bell tower of Notre-Dame-du-Lac which stands out in the distant sky. Without forgetting The Escaped Bull on the central square, Le Mas de Chambon and Le Mas de Bellevue… So many topics – available in oil, gouache, pastel – that Jean Hugo painted in his studio in the Mas de Fourques.

The memories and anecdotes of his children in video

The same as his seven children – Charles, Marie, Jean-Baptiste, Adèle, Jeanne, Sophie and Léopoldine (who can be found on video in a room of the expo, each telling a memory or an anecdote with their father) – moved and loaned it to the Médard museum with its original furniture as well as the real painting that Jean Hugo was painting before leaving this land of Lunel that he loved so much. In the privacy of the artist, I told you…

(*) To see at the Fabre Museum, from June 28 to October 13, “Jean Hugo, the magical gaze” ; at the Paul-Valéry museum, from June 29 to October 13, “Jean Hugo, between heaven and earth”. I subscribe to read more