Archipelago Hervé Di Rosa
Works from MIAM – Musée International des Arts Modestes

Drawing a parallel with the voyages narrated by Jules Verne, the exhibition Archipelago Hervé Di Rosa is an invitation to explore and discover new worlds; a journey led by Hervé Di Rosa and his museum, the MIAM, Musée international des Arts Modestes in Sète (France) over more than forty years.

Through a wide selection of works from MIAM’s collection, Hervé Di Rosa invites us to discover ways of creation that have been sidelined from art acknowledged by museums, critics, and history. In the Oval Gallery, the artist draws a new map of the limits of art: Comics, Traditional Art, Naïve Art, Raw Art, Psychedelic Art, Cinema, Commercial Art, among ohers.

On the ground, you will be able to figure out sea and islands, featuring an art world map. Several pieces will be suspended, among which visitors will be able to distinguish some of the protagonists of the stories painted by the artist. A set of pyramids, produced for the exhibition, and a caravan, present a vast panorama of the collections of MIAM – Musée International des Arts Modestes, founded by Hervé Di Rosa and Bernard Belluc and opened in 2000 in partnership with the city of Sète. At the entrance, Tous en bateaux, 1988, a large-scale work by Di Rosa himself, will welcome the public.

Hervé Di Rosa (Sète, 1959), a student at the National School of Decorative Arts, began his career as a painter in 1979. At the age of 20, he exhibited in Paris, Amsterdam, and New York. In 1981, he co-founded Figuration Libre, which Robert Combas, François Boisrond, and Rémi Blanchard joined. In 2000, he also founded, with Bernard Belluc, the MIAM – Musée International des Arts Modestes (International Museum of Modest Arts). Located in a former cellar by a canal in Sète, the museum presented over fifty exhibitions, exploring the peripheries of art and mapping its modest territories. Neither a concept nor a movement, modest art is a way of renewing the definition of art and extending its field to little or not yet considered marginal forms and practices. Di Rosa is the author of numerous art books and other publications and, since 1981, his work has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions and is represented in numerous international public and private collections.

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