Independent Collectors
Venet Foundation
Sculpture park in Bernar Venet’s native Provence
Since 2014, the Venet Foundation’s exhibitions are mounted in a unique location in the village of Le Muy (Var) in France.
Each year this unique property, set across some seventeen acres of the French countryside, offers visitors an original tour of a “total work of art” designed by one of the most famous French artists in the world, Bernar Venet, in collaboration with his wife Diane. The foundation is also an “exceptional mental studio” for Bernar and a unique setting for the monumental works in the collection by major artists of the last 50 years.
Created in 2014, the Venet Foundation aims to preserve the site in Le Muy, conserve its collection, and ensure that Bernar Venet’s work will continue to be presented in an ideal setting. The foundation is the culmination of sixty years of artistic creation and Bernar Venet’s encounters with an impressive roster of other major artists, French and foreign, who have become his friends; it is also the outcome of more than thirty years of intense work transforming the property at Le Muy into a “total work of art.”
Discovered in the artist’s native Provence, the property in Le Muy is both the inspiration and a beautiful setting for the Venet Foundation’s exhibitions. The project of a lifetime, this exceptional seventeen-acre site where nature is omnipresent blends old, industrial, and contemporary architecture, a sculpture park, historical and recent pieces by the artist, and an extensive collection that is emblematic of minimal and conceptual art. Bernar Venet and his wife Diane wish to share their passion with a broader public, one that is able to sense the magic of this unique place and the incredible concentration of creative energies in works by Bernar and the fellow artists in his collection.
This summer, the factory and its extension will play host to two sculptures by Bernar Venet – thus far unknown to the public. The first piece is a Straight Line of 17 meters in length, leaning on a large cube. The second work, composed of 18 arcs, each one 5 meters in diameter, is presented in the form of a very unstable stack. It may be similar to the disordered Collapse sculptures, but its precarious verticality gives the impression that it is being shown here as the stage preceding the fall of the arcs. A step that will certainly be proposed in the very near future.
Venet Foundation is featured in the BMW ART GUIDE by INDEPENDENT COLLECTORS.
For more information visit Venet Foundation.