The need to create 5

John Rewald portrait with Mont Ste. Victoire Pionteki Kehrlein


Coutelle's house in Ménerbes was a three story building which started it's days as a post relay station and auberge just under the "Citadelle" occupied by John Rewald, an art historian who wrote "The History of Impressionism", a Cezanne scholar, John had lived at the Chateau Noir in the 1920's! We had an intense relationship(I was the same age as his son who had died years earlier), talking for hours about art but also about life, as if I was his son. His home, the "Citadelle" was a small fortress dominating the village, full of art he had collected over his life.




Dora Maar seated Picasso




Next door to me lived Dora Maar in a house she had shared with Picasso in the 1930's who gave it to her at the end of their relationship. In her house were drawings by Picasso on the wall, I was extatic!


Ménerbes Nicolas de Staël 1953


Nicolas de Staël lived in the Chateau de Castellet at the end of the village until 1953.




Colombe Pionteki Kehrlein

My studio was was large and faced north, there were limestone quarries all over the countryside, I was in heaven. Besides sculpting literally tons of the local stone, I recuperated a block of Carrara marble I had left at Chateau Noir which became "Origine de Monde", (first exhibited in the Salon des Realities Nouvelles,Grand Palais, Paris, now at the Musée Campredon,L'Isle sur Sorgue,France). It was during this time I sculpted my first "Colombe" which I have done many variations of, in different stones and in bronze, over the years.