Fondation CAB: A hotel in an artist’s village on the Côte d’Azur – Travel

Anyone who is willing to pay so much money for an overnight stay must of course be obsessed with design, says Hubert Bonnet. “And then you still have to go through the garden in the morning to get to the bathroom.” The art collector Bonnet, who runs the “Fondation CAB” art foundation in Brussels, has moved part of his collection to the Côte d’Azur, to the town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, since last summer. In the beautiful gallery rooms with curved 1950s architecture, not only installations and works can be viewed. You can also stay overnight here.

Either in the four guest rooms in the main building, furnished with original mid-century design, between velvet armchairs by Fritz Hansen, slotted steel lamps by Alvar Aalto and mirrors by the Brazilian Sergio Rodrigues. Or in one of the exhibits themselves: in the wooden Maison Prouvé in the garden of the foundation’s premises – where the bathroom is located outside the small log cabin.

It is named after its creator, Jean Prouvé, who died in Nancy in 1984. The blacksmith, who belonged to the Résistance, transferred industrial production techniques to architecture. From 1939 he developed a construction method for demountable buildings made of standardized, prefabricated wooden modules. The first building was constructed in 1944; the buildings were intended to help alleviate the housing misery in Lorraine and Franche-Comté at the time. The hut that has now been built in Saint-Paul-de-Vence also dates from that time. Hubert Bonnet had the 36 square meter wooden building with the corrugated iron roof erected over the water basin of his foundation property, small goldfish dive under the foundation. The house is bright and contemporary and not a bit dated. Only the interior bears witness to the time of origin: around the table with a yellow formica top are red upholstered leather chairs, also originals by Prouvé.

Open detailed view

Open detailed view

Electricity, insulation or a wet room were not planned in the 1940s – so the bathroom was housed in the pump house, which previously housed the fountain system of the overbuilt pools. Today’s overnight guests also have air conditioning and electric light at their disposal, sockets were artfully embedded in wooden floorboards, and there was space for a refrigerator behind the bed wall. It was complicated with the electricity, Bonnet sighs. And even if the house has since been adapted to today’s standards – two fluffy bathrobes hang on the coat hooks, also designed by Prouvé, the bed linen is embroidered with the initials of the foundation – you should expect little luxury and a lot of design in a night in the maison Prouvé: “The experience counts,” says the collector.

Bonnet’s foundation completes the community’s art trail. A little further up the road is the Fondation Maeght, credited as France’s first privately initiated arts institution. Outstanding artists worked on the museum with a sculpture garden, which was opened in 1964 by a couple of gallery owners: Georges Braque decorated the water basins with mosaics, Marc Chagall the walls, Joan Miró designed ceramics for a labyrinth along the garden and terrace paths. The museum café was designed by Diego Giacometti, the younger brother of Alberto Giacometti, whose slender bronzes are also found in the museum collection.

Another hotel is like a tête-à-tête with 20th century art history

The fact that this small town on a rocky hill, surrounded by the round defensive walls from the 14th and 16th centuries, has developed into a meeting place for artists since the 1920s is due to the Hotel La Colombe d’Or. The walls and ceilings of the two dining rooms bear witness to the illustrious house guests of the past decades: you sit under a bouquet of flowers by Picasso, a lobster portrait by Georges Braque, a large abstraction by Joan Miró or a mobile by Alexander Calder alongside other works by Matisse and César or Pierre Bonnard. It’s like a tête-à-tête with 20th century art history.

From the small brick terrace of hotel room number 26, the view falls on cypresses and quarry stone walls in light gray, on the plane trees on the village’s boules pitch, right next to the Café de la Place, where tourists gather at lunchtime. Someone is always playing pétanque here. If you don’t get a single point in the game, you’ll be sent to the café to kiss the bottom of “Fanny”, a sculpture by the sculptor César, discreetly hidden behind a red theater curtain. It’s polished, from the smack of generations – and of course from the disinfectant of the last two years, as a waiter humorously explains.

Artists still stay at the Fondation CAB to this day

A local artist left a boules scene captured on canvas in room 26, but also a small oil painting by hotel founder Paul Roux, whose grandson François now runs the house, is featured here, a Provençal landscape with narrow, wind-bent cypresses and a small Cottage, probably not much bigger than the Maison Prouvé. At the time, Paul Roux and his artist friends Henri Matisse and André Derain came up with the idea of ​​opening a local painting school that would select a young artist every year – the prize was a stay at the Colombe d’Or.

The Fondation CAB also allows artists to stay overnight, today it’s called the Artist-in-Residence program. The American Tessa Perutz, for example, shows her luminous gouaches here. The 33-year-old followed the numerous footsteps of the great artists who came here in the past decades, following the magic of the south. In the end they all ended up in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Even the avant-garde loved it sweetly. And the tourist loves it too.

information

Fondation CAB, double room from 200 euros, overnight stay in the Maison Prouvé from 600 euros, www.fondationcab.com

La Colombe d’Or, double room from 380 euros, www.la-colombe-dor.com