The sculptor Ossip Zadkine and the painter Valentine Prax, his wife, spent almost forty years together, from 1928 to 1967, in the house, workshops and garden on rue d'Assas. Forty years is precisely the age celebrated this year by the Zadkine museum, which opened in 1982 in this same place, thanks to the bequest of Valentine Prax. To celebrate this anniversary, the museum presents a life of workshops that takes the visitor to the heart of the studio of the two artists. Nearly a hundred works form the core of the exhibition, which includes a fine selection of masterpieces by Zadkine, but also paintings by Prax and numerous unpublished photographs, some of great photographers, like André Kertész or Marc Vaux. It occupies all the rooms of the museum in a renewed scenography, which evokes "the spirit of the workshop".
After the sculptor's death in 1967, Valentine Prax, while pursuing her career as a painter, devoted herself to the protection and promotion of Zadkine's work. In 1978, she bequeathed all of her property to the City of Paris, on condition that the municipality design a museum in rue d'Assas. On April 15, 1981, Valentine Prax died. A year later, on April 19, 1982, the Zadkine museum was inaugurated, the house-studio became the studio-museum.
COMMISSARIAT
Cécilie Champy-Vinas, directrice du musée Zadkine
Pauline Créteur, chargée de recherches à la Bibliothèque nationale de France