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Jean Claude Gandur
Jean Claude Gandur (born 18 February 1949) is a French-born Swiss businessman, philanthropist and art collector. Early life Jean Claude Gandur was born in Grasse, France in 1949. He spent his childhood in Alexandria, Egypt until the age of 12, when his family moved to Switzerland. Gandur studied law and political science at the University of Lausanne and history at Pantheon-Sorbonne University. Career In 1976 Gandur joined raw materials trader Philipp Brothers (later Phibro) and worked for the company's Zug subsidiary for eight years. In 1987, Gandur founded the Addax and Oryx Group (AOG) which focused on oil production in Africa, primarily Nigeria. He was chairman and CEO of Addax Petroleum until its takeover by Sinopec Group in August 2009 for US$7.3 billion. His new Toronto-listed oil company Oryx Petroleum held its IPO in 2013, and it is developing large oilfields in Iraqi Kurdistan. As of March 2015, his net worth was estimated at $2.1 billion. In July 2020, Gandur resigne ...
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Grasse
Grasse (; Provençal dialect, Provençal in classical norm or in Mistralian norm ; traditional ) is the only Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur Regions of France, region on the French Riviera. In 2017, the Communes of France, commune had a population of 50,396. Considered the world's capital of perfume, Grasse obtained two flowers in the ''Concours des villes et villages fleuris'' and was made ''Ville d'Art et d'Histoire'' (City of Art and History). Festivals There is an annual ''Fête du Jasmin'' or ''La Jasminade'', at the beginning of August. The first festival was on August 3–4, 1946. Decorated Float (parade), floats drive through the town, with young women in skimpy costumes on board, throwing flowers into the crowd. Garlands of jasmine decorate the town centre, and the fire department fills a fire truck with jasmine-infused water to spray on the crowds. There are fireworks, ...
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Roman Art
The art of Ancient Rome, and the territories of its Republic and later Empire, includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and glass are sometimes considered to be minor forms of Roman art, although they were not considered as such at the time. Sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also highly regarded. A very large body of sculpture has survived from about the 1st century BC onward, though very little from before, but very little painting remains, and probably nothing that a contemporary would have considered to be of the highest quality. Ancient Roman pottery was not a luxury product, but a vast production of "fine wares" in '' terra sigillata'' were decorated with reliefs that reflected the latest taste, and provided a large group in society with stylish objects at what was evidently an affordable price. Roman coins were an important means ...
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Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Gironde department. Its inhabitants are called "''Bordelais'' (masculine) or "''Bordelaises'' (feminine). The term "Bordelais" may also refer to the city and its surrounding region. The city of Bordeaux proper had a population of 259,809 in 2020 within its small municipal territory of , but together with its suburbs and exurbs the Bordeaux Functional area (France), metropolitan area had a population of 1,376,375 that same year (Jan. 2020 census), the sixth-most populated in France after Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, and Toulouse. Bordeaux and 27 suburban municipalities form the Bordeaux Métropole, Bordeaux Metropolis, an Indirect election, indirectly elected Métropole, metropolitan authority now in charge of wi ...
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The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821), are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. ''The Times'' was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as or , although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution. ''The Times'' had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, ''The Sunday Times'' had an average weekly circulation of 647,622. The two ...
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Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and ''Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union for architects. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (for the Institut du Monde Arabe which Nouvel designed), the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008. A number of museums and architectural centres have presented retrospectives of his work. Family and education Nouvel was born on 12 August 1945 in Fumel, France. He is the son of Renée and Roger Nouvel, who were teachers. When his father became the county's chief school superintendent, his family moved often. His parents encouraged Nouvel to study mathematics and language but when he was 16 years old he was captivated by art when a teacher taught him drawing. Although he later said he thought that hi ...
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Gérard Ernest Schneider
Gérard Ernest Schneider (1896 in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland – 1986 in Paris, France) was a Swiss painter. He was a key figure in lyrical abstraction movement and the School of Paris. Life Schneider was born in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland in 1896. At the age of 20, he moved to Paris to study at the École des Arts Décoratifs. In 1918, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts, joining the studio of Fernand Cormon, renowned for having taught artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Emile Bernard. In 1920, Schneider held his first solo exhibition at the Léopold Robert Gallery in Neuchâtel. By 1922, Schneider had permanently settled in France and from the mid-1920s onward, he actively took part in numerous group exhibitions. Until 1944, his artistic style evolved significantly, transitioning from surrealism to lyrical abstraction. He met Pablo Picasso in 1939 and participated in teaching Gurjieff between 1941 and 1943. In 1946, Schneider took part in ...
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Hans Hartung
Hans Hartung (21 September 1904 – 7 December 1989) was a German-French painter, known for his gestural abstract style. He was also a decorated World War II veteran of the Legion d'honneur. Life Hartung was born in Leipzig, Germany, into an artistic family. He developed an early appreciation of Rembrandt, German painters such as Lovis Corinth, and the Expressionists Oskar Kokoschka and Emil Nolde. In 1924, he enrolled in Leipzig University, where he studied philosophy and art history.Alley, Ronald, "Hans Hartung", Oxford Art Online He subsequently studied at the Fine Arts academy of Dresden, where he copied the paintings of the masters. The modern French and Spanish works he saw in 1926 at the Internationale Kunstausstellung in Dresden were a revelation to him, and he decided that he would leave his native country to prevent succumbing to provincialism. Consequently, after a bicycle trip through Italy, he moved to Paris. In Paris, Hartung had little contact with other ar ...
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Georges Mathieu
Georges Mathieu (27 January 1921 – 10 June 2012) was a French abstract painter, art theorist, and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is considered one of the fathers of European lyrical abstraction, a trend of informalism. Biography Early life and education Mathieu was born in 1921 in Boulogne-sur-Mer. His father, Adolphe Georges Mathieu, was employed as a bank manager at Barclays. His mother, Madeleine Durpé, taught him drawing as a child. The family lived near the ramparts of the city at 38 Boulevard du Prince Albert. In 1933 Mathieu's parents divorced and he was placed in the care of his aunt at Versailles. From 1927 to 1933, he attended a variety of schools in Boulogne-sur-Mer and later in Lycée Hoche in Versailles. Thereafter, he studied English and law at the university of Lille. Mathieu obtained a position as an English teacher in 1942 at the lycée of Douai in the north of France. During the ensuing years he held several jobs, serving as an inter ...
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Pierre Soulages
Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (; ; 24 December 1919 – 25 October 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, President François Hollande of France described him as "the world's greatest living artist." His works are held by leading museums of the world, and there is a museum dedicated to his art in his hometown of Rodez. Soulages is known as "the painter of black", owing to his interest in the colour "both as a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens a mental field all its own." He saw light as a work material; striations of the black surface of his paintings enable him to reflect light, allowing the black to come out of darkness and into brightness, thus becoming a luminous colour. Soulages produced 104 stained-glass windows for the Romanesque architecture of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques from 1987 to 1994. He received international awards, and the Louvre in Paris held a retrospe ...
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Montpellier
Montpellier (; ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Hérault. At the 2020 census, 299,096 people lived in the city proper, while its Functional area (France), metropolitan area had a population of 813,272. The inhabitants are called ''Montpelliérains''. In the Middle Ages, Montpellier was an important city of the Crown of Aragon (and was the birthplace of James I of Aragon, James I), and then of Kingdom of Majorca, Majorca, before its sale to France in 1349. Established in 1220, the University of Montpellier is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world and has the oldest medical school still in operation, with notable alumni such as Petrarch, Nostradamus and François Rabelais. Above the medieval city, the ancient citadel of Montpelli ...
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Musée Fabre
The Musée Fabre is a museum in the southern French city of Montpellier, capital of the Hérault ''département''. The museum was founded by François-Xavier Fabre, a Montpellier painter, in 1825. Beginning in 2003, the museum underwent a 61.2 million euro renovation, which was completed in January 2007. It is one of the main sights of Montpellier and close to the city's main square, the Place de la Comédie. The museum's national importance is recognised by it being classified as a '' Musée de France'' by the French Ministry of Culture. History The town of Montpellier was given thirty paintings in 1802 which formed the basis of a modest municipal museum under the Empire, moving between various temporary sites. In 1825, the town council accepted a large donation of works from Fabre and the museum was installed in the refurbished ''Hôtel de Massillian'', officially opened on 3 December 1828. Fabre's generosity led others to follow his example, notably Antoine Valedau who don ...
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Musée Rath
The Musée Rath is an art museum in Geneva, used exclusively for temporary exhibitions. Its building is the oldest purpose-built art museum in Switzerland, and the original home of Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (Geneva), Geneva's Musée d'Art et d'Histoire. It is located on Place Neuve, in front of the old city walls, next to the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Grand Théâtre and near the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, Conservatoire de Musique. History The museum was built between 1824 and 1826 by the architect Samuel Vaucher on behalf of the ''Société des arts''. It was partly paid for with funds that General Simon Rath (1766–1819) had bequeathed to his sisters, Jeanne-Françoise and Henriette Rath, for such a purpose; the remainder was paid by the state of Geneva. Vaucher designed the building as a temple of the muses, inspired by Ancient Greek temples. From 1826 to 1872, the school École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Genève was located in the basement of the Musée Rath ...
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