The Reattu Museum in Arles

The Reattu Museum in Arles, installed on the banks of the Rhône in the former Grand Priory of the Order of Malta, presents old works (17th-19th centuries), drawings and paintings by  

Picasso and contemporary art.

At the junction of the Rhône and the cardo (the main north/south road of the Roman city), the spot owes its artistic vocation to Jacques Réattu, a painter from Arles, Grand  

Prix de Rome in 1790, who bought the building to live and work in. His dream was to house artists in residence here, to give them the intensity of his landscape, 60 years  

before Vincent Van Gogh's idea for the "Atelier du Midi". From this never realized dream the museum has inherited the buildings and all the painter's works.

The Musee Reattu owes the continuation of its history to encounters with artists.

In 1965, they created the photography collection, the first in a French museum. In 1971, Picasso made the exceptional donation of a suite of 57 drawings. And in 1980, with  

Toni Grand, a commission policy was initiated, inviting sculptors and photographers to create works in tune with the city's heritage.

Today, architecture, the main thread in the museum's policy, constitutes a key in the reading of modern and contemporary art. It favors a cross-disciplinary approach to the  

collections and the bridges between art and daily life ; it gives the musee Reattu this function of "laboratory" in the heart of which the artists occupy an essential place.