Exhibition – 80 years of the UMAM

The Château-musée Grimaldi is hosting the exhibition ‘Les 80 de l'UMAM, Viallat, Charbonnel et 15 dessinateurs contemporains’ from 3 July 2025 to 16 February 2026.
To celebrate the UMAM's 80th anniversary, the Château-Musée Grimaldi is hosting an exceptional anniversary exhibition.
A seven-month exhibition organised by the UMAM and the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer to pay tribute to a living heritage, but also to extend it, question it, and confront it with the forms and artists of today.

Curated by Simone Dibo-Cohen, President of the UMAM, two major figures have been invited to embody this journey: Claude Viallat and Christophe Charbonnel.

The works of Claude Viallat have been carefully displayed on the second floor of this historic building, revealing their ability to interact with the architecture.

Claude Viallat, co-founder of the Supports/Surfaces movement, has been exploring the freedom of motif, fabric and rhythm since the 1970s. He paints on recycled fabrics such as military tarpaulins, old sheets, parasols and jute canvas.
These materials carry a history, a weight, a silent memory. The paint is inscribed on them, not to erase their marks, but to enter into a dialogue with them.

On the first floor, 15 artists share the space with monumental works by Christophe Charbonnel.
This artist brings figures of bronze and silence into the château. Fifteen works: archers, busts, sentinels - inhabited by the memory of myths and by a sculptural tension of rare intensity.
Born in 1967, Christophe Charbonnel trained in Paris, where he learned the demanding techniques of modelling and casting.
Very early on, he chose figurative sculpture. This choice reveals an artist's assertive stance: that of a sculptor who lays claim to the heritage of the masters, from Auguste Rodin to Antoine Bourdelle, and who forges his own language with respect for the body, volume and the sacred.

CHARBONNEL - Goliath
The exhibition focuses on a unifying theme: black and white drawing.
Fifteen contemporary artists from different generations and backgrounds explore the field of line, shadow and trace: Anne Bothuon, Sourac Chatterjje, Corinne De Battista, Claire Fanjul, Franta, Isabelle Jarousse, Agnès Jennepin, Bruno Mallart, Moya, Nasica, Jacques Placès, François Réau, Victor Soren, Candice Spruyt.
Black and white, far from being an absence, becomes here the space of the possible: a territory of exploration where the eye is stretched and concentrated.

Through this selection, we are taking up a challenge:
The challenge of restoring drawing to its central place in the contemporary artistic landscape, of allowing these artists to engage in dialogue with one another, and of allowing ourselves to be carried away by the questions reflected in their works: questions about the present, rooted in the past, echoed in the Château-Musée Grimaldi.