Alberto Giacometti, Ata Kando, Re Soupault, Robert Capa, Emile Muller, Bernard Matussiere … It is with this word so just that one day, Henri Cartier-Bresson saluted in writing the work of memory of the latter: “to Bernard, another « habité » of the rue Froidevaux and in memory of Capa. Best regards, Henri. ” Why ? The 37 is an island in the middle of an ocean of creation. Located in the heart of Montparnasse, the artistic village of the XIVth arrondissement developed around the Great War, before and after, thanks to the painters of the prestigious “School of Paris” with its residents of the Ruche (a little further, street of Danzig in the fifteenth century); School that attracted like flies the students of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière from all over the world to join “The City of Light” (so called since the 17th century, because of its public lighting … not its intellectuals!). It is these artists who have become tenants in the workshops of this neighborhood of choice, who will attract writers, sculptors, engravers, models, milliners, architects, composers, musicians, singers, filmmakers, publishers, poets, journalists … and photographers under the auspices Art Deco (International Exhibition of Paris of 1925). At this golden age of artists, everyone was crowded at night on the terraces of the big breweries on the boulevard du Montparnasse – the authentic phalansteries and “distilleries of the spirit” of this village, from the Dome to the Select, from the Coupole to the Rotonde through La Closerie des Lilas.
