they put artwork within the metropolis | EUROtoday

Steve Villa-Massone, the pianist from Place Masséna

HAS year-round, it delights vacationers and passers-by, captivated by the swirling melodies of its pink piano – presently underneath restore – so recognizable. “I receive a hundred smiles a day”, rejoices this 43-year-old from Nice, who attended town’s music conservatory. A avenue pianist at 19, he remembers his troublesome beginnings: “To be able to play, I had to push the family piano every day from my parents’ apartment, in the port district, to Place Masséna…” His instrument will subsequently be saved in eating places, constructing entrances, a storage and, lastly, his truck. “The city gave me a parking space in 2016,” confides the composer. Regularly dislodged by the police till a couple of years in the past, this troublemaker regardless of himself by no means needed to surrender on his dream. “Playing in the street allowed me to believe in my future as a musician,” he admits. A life that is still precarious, he admits, however stuffed with “magic”of ” freedom “.“I expertise uncommon and highly effective moments, like improvised duets, younger individuals who inform me that they took up the piano due to me… One day, a married couple got here to inform me that they’d met in m ‘listening to it whereas on trip in Nice’he relates. Between writing a e-book, his compositions, and performances for native occasions, Steve multiplies his initiatives. This nice delicate particular person additionally boasts his Nice DNA: “There is a lottery if you end up born, I hit the jackpot. » The key to happiness, briefly.

Benoît Barbagli, the brand new Ben

Childhood can nonetheless be learn in his sky blue eyes, with their mild nervousness. Benoît Barbagli is likely one of the rising artists on the native modern scene… and past. The thirty-year-old has somebody to take care of. His grandfather is none aside from Ben Vautier, who died final June; her mom, Eva Vautier, has been a famend Nice gallery proprietor since her arrival in 2013. However, Benoît grew up removed from openings and museums. “My parents were goatherds. I lived on a farm in the mountains, in the Estéron valley, until I was 15,” says this former pupil of Villa Arson, who went to philosophy college. 3 D sculptures generated from fractal arithmetic, natural work and images…

Benoît practices a number of artwork impressed by nature and the weather, all the time with an underlying ecological sensitivity. In his home on the heights of Saint-Pancrace, the place his workshop is positioned, the artist shows his poetic and dedicated universe: photographs of bare our bodies communing with the weather, canvases soaked in ink on which the passage of the ocean ​​water has drawn distinctive shapes. In his strategy, “nature takes precedence over art and creates its own works, underlines the visual artist. Where in my grandfather’s art started from a strong ego, in my practice, there is on the contrary an idea of ​​withdrawal. » Benoît enjoys growing recognition. The public was able to discover his “Underwater Symphony” photographs this summer time within the gardens of the Citadel, in Villefranche-sur-Mer. In November, he’ll discover the hyperlinks between synthetic intelligence, nature and artwork throughout his exhibition “Numera Natura” on the Charles-Nègre images museum.

Virginie Broquet, the queen of carnival

All town’s inhabitants know his artwork with out essentially figuring out his title. For twenty years, Virginie Broquet has been designing floats for the Nice carnival, which gifted carnival employees convey to life. The artist-illustrator was the primary girl to attract a “queen”, that of the 5 continents in 2013, then a “king”, in 2019, on the theme of cinema. “In one hundred and fifty years of carnival, this had never happened, it was great, especially as a Nice resident,” she enthuses. To his credit score additionally, the youngsters of the royal spouses: two “carnivalons” and the very first “carnavalone”. Virginie is a “cruncher” inveterate: “I always have a notebook with me, I take it out discreetly. » Colorful and mischievous, a bit childish, her style is just like her: inimitable.

It was on the pebbles that she learned to refine it when, at 18, she took onlookers on the beach as models. “From childhood, I told myself that I was lucky to live here,” reveals the fifty-year-old, whose grandmother was Henri Matisse’s nurse. The glowing artist, who studied on the Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg, is teeming with initiatives. When she just isn’t having fun with the stylish evenings of the Riviera palaces, we discover her in her workshop on the heights of Saint-Pancrace engaged on her new creations: a coloring e-book about Nice, an erotic Toile de Jouy model, comedian e-book characters… His artwork is usually exhibited in Nice, on the Villa Masséna, on the Museum of Asian Arts, on the Ferrero Gallery or on the International Museum of Naive Art, for which the late Ben requested him to create a fresco in 2023 An amazing traveler, this mom of a grown-up son additionally travels the world and brings again sketchbooks every time. One factor by no means modifications: “I’m always happy to come home. »

Stéphane Bolongaro, Totor’s father

It has become the mascot of Nice. At the station, on the Centenaire beach, Place du Commandant-Gérôme, at the entrance to the hotel school, Totor dresses the public space with his playfulness. If Ben has decorated the tram stations with his writing, Totor appears on a bicycle on Ligne d’Azur transport cards, when he is not wearing a t-shirt bearing the Fluxus artist’s logo. Between the Nice school and the father of this mischievous dog, the relationship goes back a long way. Son of an antiques dealer, grandson of the artistic director of the Monte-Carlo Opera, Stéphane Bolongaro knew Sosno and Arman at a very young age, to whom he went every weekend. “One day, seeing my drawings, Arman told me to go for it,” he says. Robots, work, sculptures, the artist touches all media with disconcerting ease and lots of humor. Inspired by his mom’s Jack Russell, Totor appeared for the primary time in 2017 on the Paillon promenade. “People posed subsequent to him, it was gone, however I’m nonetheless amazed at his success. The sculptures have by no means been broken. When folks see me strategy it to scrub it, they ask me what I’m doing. They defend him, like a appeal. »

Its success has gone far past the borders of Nice. Brigitte Macron and Queen Consort Camilla are loopy about it. Totor has even put in himself in Miami, Chicago, Detroit and in entrance of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library (Arkansas). Across the Atlantic, Stéphane Bolongaro can be relaunching his animated movie mission, suspended by Covid, with the Canadian studio Framestore, based mostly on a state of affairs by Élie Semoun, the place Totor finds an answer in opposition to local weather change and pursued by lobbies. In the meantime, the well-known Nice canine could be present in a 3rd comedian e-book album and within the Nice Étoile pop-up retailer, which the artist reopens on October 15.