KULTURA / CULTURE
Grejs Keli Grace Kelly
Salvador Dali
T he small stretch of Mediterra- nean coastline known as the French Riviera has seen the paths of painters, fashion de- signers, actors, directors, mu- sicians and writers cross. They didn’t vis- it together, nor for the same reasons, but almost all of them left richer in terms of ideas, colours, new shots, melodies or al- tered worldviews. For Pablo Picasso, the place was Anti- bes. When he arrived on the Côte d’Azur in 1946, he was already considered one of the greatest artists of the time. It was in this resort town that he began one of his most fruitful creative periods. The works marking his Mediterranean period were created at the Château Grimaldi and included the mas- terpiece La Joie de vivre (The Joy of Life). This same chateau today houses the Picas- so Museum, which offers views of the same sea that the artist himself once observed. For Grace Kelly, the Côte d’Azur wasn’t just a filmset, but a place where her life changed forever. She arrived on the French Riviera to attend the 1955 Cannes Film Fes- tival, after having filmed Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief there the year before. It was then that she met Prince Rainier III of Mo- naco. By the very next year, this Hollywood diva had become a princess of Monaco and its most recognisable symbol. That same year also changed the fate of Saint-Tropez. Brigitte Bardot arrived in the village to shoot the film And God Created Woman. What had been a quiet, sleepy fish- ing village transformed overnight to become synonymous with glamour. Three years lat- er, she bought the seafront villa La Mad- rague, located not far from Canebiers beach.
INSPIRATION & GLAMOUR WHERE MASTERPIECES OF THE 20 TH
CENTURY EMERGED
The Côte d’Azur has never been a mere destination. It has simultaneously served as an artist’s atelier, a film studio, a fashion catwalk, a source of literary inspiration and a concert hall
And that property soon became one of the most famous addresses on the Côte d’Azur. American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald found his story in Cap d’Antibes. Follow- ing the success of his novel The Great Gats- by, together with his wife Zelda, he stayed at a villa that is today the Hotel Belles Rives, where he wrote a large part of the novel
Tender is the Night, a masterpiece that is considered by many as the most beauti- ful literary portrait of the French Riviera. Even music artists weren’t immune to the charms of the Côte d’Azur. In the early 1970s, prompted by excessively high tax- es in the UK, the Rolling Stones relocated to a villa near Nice. It was in its basement that the band created a large part of the al- bum Exile on Main St., which is considered one of the all-time best rock albums, with hit songs like Tumbling Dice and Happy. And the story didn’t end there. Salva- dor Dalí was one of the most famous reg- ular guests of Nice’s Hotel La Negresco for years. It was also on the Côte d’Azur that Coco Chanel showed how simple elegance can be, while Christian Dior found inspi- ration in the colours of the Mediterrane- an, and that’s without even mentioning all the painters...
F. Skot Ficdžerald F. Scott Fitzgerald
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