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Go back Tribute to Marcel PUECH. The funeral of Mr Marcel PUECH took place on 5 September in Saint-Izère (Aveyron), his native village, 20km from Saint-Affrique, in the presence of the village’s inhabitants, members of his family and representatives from the Calvet Foundation. For the occasion, the Foundation’s Vice-President paid a last tribute to him, highlighting his great skill, his great generosity and his love for the arts, which gave meaning to his life and his work. Tribute to Marcel PUECH In the name of the Calvet Foundation and the municipality of Avignon, I would like to bear witness to the great grief caused by the death of Mr Marcel Puech. You, his family, fellow villagers, and friends, already know what an exceptional person he was. For us in Avignon, and for those who knew him in Paris, France and elsewhere in the world, he appeared, above all, as a great dealer, a lover of the arts and a great collector. He was a champion of the world of arts and letters. As a dealer, he had qualities of versatility and refinement. As an art lover, he had acute and reliable taste. As a collector, his culture was vast. In the subject areas he loved, he became an important art critic; he knew how to judge and he knew how to buy well. He built himself an important heritage, comparable to that of some of the most important antique dealers and collectors in France. His professional activities, his taste for art objects and his love of collections developed his very refined personality. He really loved objects, he loved looking at them, touching them and owning them. It is likely that from a very young age, with the help of his mother (to whom he was much attached), he succeeded in finding in them, the hand, the technique and the skill of the craftsman who had made them. Thus, he was able to commune with them and oppose his personality, without fear or aggressiveness, with that of the artist. In this act, he found a peaceful and subtle joy which he loved to communicate and which refined and enriched his taste to perfection. With time and with old age, this demand for quality led him to isolate himself, realising that, as his friends disappeared and his entourage diminished, there were very few people with whom he could share his feelings, his knowledge and his enthusiasm. He approached museums, seeking, among the curators, an attentive ear and a refuge for the objects which he considered to be the most valuable in his collections. The Calvet Foundation, a unique 200-year old institution, the owner of works in 7 museums, and having its own resources, appeared to him to have the right structure to receive and protect the objects which he cherished. Through four successive donations, he gave the majority of his huge collections to the Foundation. In a fifth donation, he left the townhouse in which he lived, the Hotel de FORBIN LA BARBIN, to the Foundation after his death. Situated near his home, he had been able to come and admire his objects and observe their effect on the public. I believe that he experienced some of his most satisfying last moments there. When everything was finished and his house was empty, he thought of his family, of his few remaining friends and then he grew silent. We soon learnt that one spring day, he had departed this world, alone, perhaps accompanied by his mother’s smile, who had come to awaken him for the other side of his reverie. The Foundation, which has known many important donors in the past, has just lost its most generous one. Today, once again, it feels very small in the face of the death of a great person. Nevertheless, for all art lovers and enlightened travellers who come from all over the world to visit its museums, it must continue its work and make known the name and the founding work of Marcel PUECH. One of the main rooms in the Hotel de Villeneuve, where the major works of the Calvet Museum are exhibited, will bear his name and a plaque will be placed on Hotel de FORBIN as a reminder of what he represented for the town. He wanted to share the transcendence which his artistic feelings inspired in him and ensure the continuation of what he had learnt. It is this ideal which, 200 years ago, Esprit CALVET, wanted to promote in order to elevate the spirit and taste of men, through the creation of the institution which, today, bears his name. We, the heirs of this illustrious founder, and for some of us, his executors, commit ourselves, before you, to carry on the name and the memory of the person in whose memory we are assembled here today for this last farewell. Bertrand LAPEYRE, Published on : 09/05/2001 |
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