Fondation Maeght
[4][5] The building was designed by the Spanish architect Josep Lluís Sert,[5] houses more than 12,000 pieces of art and attracts "on average, 200,000 visitors ... every year".
The group expanded with the addition of artists such as Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Bram and Geer Van Velde, and later, between 1946 and 1951, with Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder, Raoul Ubac, Alberto Giacometti, and Wassily Kandinsky, who exhibited at the Maeght Gallery for the first time.
The foundation was entirely funded by Aimé and Marguerite Maeght, ensuring its financial independence and enabling it to freely choose its program and exhibitions.
Recognized as a public utility, the foundation is authorized to receive donations, bequests, and sponsorships, allowing it to preserve and expand its collection, maintain its architectural heritage, and develop cultural activities.
The Maeght Foundation holds one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary paintings, sculptures, drawings, and graphic works in Europe, with over 13,000 items.
The collection also encompasses a substantial portion of Joan Miró’s work, with eight paintings, 140 sculptures, 75 drawings, around 100 collages and models, and over a thousand lithographs and engravings.
The building housing the foundation’s collections was designed by Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, recommended by Joan Miró.
Each building serves a unique function, such as the library, café, bookstore, office, exhibition halls, and engraving and ceramics workshops—much like a village.
The building’s rhythm is set by white claustra walls and glass facades, inviting visitors to view the woods, sea, patio, or the pool decorated by Braque.
Sert retained the natural slope of the land, arranging exhibition rooms, patios, and gardens on various terrace levels, which gives the building its distinctive character.
The chapel, dedicated to Saint Bernard, is a consecrated space housing a 12th-century Spanish Christ figure gifted by Cristóbal Balenciaga, as well as a slate-carved Stations of the Cross by Raoul Ubac.
Sert designed a space where light, natural ventilation, airflow, water, and plant shading were essential components, making it a pioneer of sustainable architecture.
They serve dual purposes: collecting rainwater to fill pools and providing coolness to the exhibition rooms through the shade they cast.
Painters and sculptors collaborated with Josep Lluís Sert on the architecture by creating works integrated into the building and nature: the Giacometti courtyard, the Miró Labyrinth filled with sculptures and ceramics, wall mosaics by Marc Chagall and Pierre Tal Coat, the pool and mosaic by Braque, the chapel's stained glass window based on the Birds theme created by Georges Braque for the ceiling of the Louvre museum,[12] and Pol Bury's animated fountain.
Alongside his childhood friend from Barcelona, Josep Llorens Artigas, Miró reinvented monumental sculpture, blending it with nature and architecture.
The main building’s brick wall supports The Personage, a brown ceramic face perched atop a tall iron rod.
Raoul Ubac created the north stained glass window of the Saint-Bernard chapel as well as the fourteen Stations of the Cross in sculpted slate in 1961.
