Le Bateau-Lavoir was a squalid block of buildings in Montmartre, Paris situated at 13 Rue Ravignan (Place Emile Goudeau). The place is famous because at the turn of the 20th century a group of outstanding artists lived and rented artistic studios there. First artists started to settle at the Bateau-Lavoir in the 1890s but after 1914 they started to move elsewhere (mainly Montparnasse).
The name of the place means the laundry-boat because it resembled boats of laundry women. One of the most famous residents of the place was Pablo Picasso (1904-1909) where he lived with his dog Frika. He reputedly invented cubism there and painted one of his finest works Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
Other well-known artists who lived in the Bateau-Lavoir:
- Pablo Gargallo
- Juan Gris
- Max Jacob
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Pierre Reverdy (1912-1913)
- André Salmon
- Endre Rozsda
- Kees van Dongen
At that time the tenement house was a meeting place of a lot of prominent figures of artistic avant-garde, like Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein and others. According to his daughter, Jeanne, while living there Amedeo Modigliani one night in an alcoholic rage destroyed a number of his friends' paintings.
In 1908 a celebration banquet for Henri Rousseau was organized in Picasso's studio in the Bateau-Lavoir.
See also
- La Ruche, in Montparnasse, Paris.
External links
Coordinates: 48°53′09.24″N 2°20′16.88″E / 48.8859°N 2.3380222°E
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
