Hervé di Rosa
Un air de famille. Hervé Di Rosa au Mucem
With total freedom, Hervé Di Rosa has chosen works from the Mucem‘s collections that appeal to his sensibility, to create a complementary piece around each of them.
From March 12 to September 1, 2025
ust as a ring is designed for a diamond, so a reliquary is built to highlight something sacred. The artist felt that there was a family resemblance between his works and the popular art objects at the Mucem.
An inventive and joyful itinerary was needed to present the beautiful and patient work of embedding the collections of the Mucem in the works of Hervé Di Rosa, made to measure by the artist,. Artistic director Jean Seisser, a long-time collaborator of Hervé Di Rosa, has imagined the exhibition as an archipelago made up of some fifteen islets. Each of these islands brings together some of the objects in the Mucem collections with a creation by Hervé Di Rosa. Each island tells its own story, freely interpretable by the visitor.
Three sculpted panels by Hervé Di Rosa, made in the Amadoua highlands in the Noun region of western Cameroon, stand alongside a fish-shaped merry-go-round. At the other end of the room, a ladder made of ox yokes collected in the regions of France by the museum’s ethnographers seems to escape (or give wings?) to a resin cow painted by the artist. A long (3.70 m!) hunting rifle, once used for waterfowl, is displayed among a myriad of wooden birds carved years ago by Marius Di Rosa. This collection of hunting decoys is all the more important as it is undoubtedly a founding element in the artist’s career, as his father, an SNCF employee, spent much of his spare time carving and colouring decoys for duck hunting. From an early age, Hervé Di Rosa watched his father work wood, sculpting and painting it. None of these sculptures were intended for the museum: created on the kitchen table, they were displayed on the water, in the ponds.
Curious about everything and driven by a strong desire to travel the world, immediately after leaving school he enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (t). Wherever and whenever he goes, Hervé Di Rosa works with local craftsmen – Those who, throughout the world, know how to update their know-how with each new generation, to create works for the places where they appear, and for the people who live there.
A large painting on canvas depicts the “Marseillais”, and their portraits also form the backdrop for the hanging claustras that line the exhibition.
Artistic director : Jean Seisser
Curated by Vincent Giovannoni, Head Curator, Head of the Performing Arts Department, Mucem
Scenography Gabrielle Laurin Mercury et Studio Mash
The artist
Born in 1959, Hervé Di Rosa lives and works between Lisbon, Paris and Sète.
A student at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Hervé Di Rosa began selling his paintings in 1979. At just 20 years old, he was already exhibiting in Paris, Amsterdam and New York. In 1981 he co-founded the art movement Figuration Libre, as named by the artist Ben. This group, which included Robert Combas, Rémi Blanchard and François Boisrond, echoed other marginalized forms of international expressions, from Neo-expressionism and New Fauves in Germany to the Transavantgarde in Italy and even Bad Painting in the United States.
A pioneer and champion of the concept of “Modest Art”, Di Rosa founded the Musée International des Arts Modestes (MIAM) in 2000 in Sète. The museum exhibits a wide range of artists from all over the world and creates shows that question the boundaries of contemporary art.
Hervé Di Rosa has been a member of the Académie des Beaux Arts since 2022.
