Michelle Sim. Geniuses in the workshops. The backstage of the Paris art scene. 16+

The Erart Museum presents an exhibition of Michel Sim - an outstanding French sculptor and photographer who shot the artistic and literary elite of Paris of the XX century.

• Portraits of artists, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and other legendary faces.
• Pictures are not so much a photographer as a close friend of the heroes.
• Works eloquently telling about the phenomenon of the Paris School.

Michel Sim’s real name was Michal Zmaevsky. Sima primarily considered himself a sculptor. Photography was more of a hobby for him than a profession, but it was she who brought him world fame. For ten years, he created portraits of his fellow artists, among whom were Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, Osip Zadkin, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Andre Derain, Le Corbusier, Marc Chagall, Juan )Joan) Miro and many others. He owes his friendship with artists to his own name. His pseudonym is an anagram whose idea was suggested by Paul Eluard: SIMA is an inverted word AMIS (friends).

Michal Zmayevsky was born in 1912 in the town of Slonim in southeastern Poland (now the territory of Belarus) in a Jewish family. At the age of 17 he persuaded his parents to let him go to Paris, where he entered the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and began to study as a sculptor. He spent only a year at the academy, deciding that it was better to study, working directly in the workshops of sculptors. This was a fateful decision, as the work of the sculptors allowed him to get to know and make friends with artists and writers. Sima was a student of Osip Zadkine, one of the most famous sculptors of that time. In the workshop of Zadkine, Jean Cocteau drew attention to him. Through him, Sima met with Paul Eluard and Francis Picabia, to whom he soon began to come to Sunday meetings, where all the color of literary and artistic Paris was going to.

During these years, Sima began taking photographs. He did photo stories for press agencies, occasionally receiving orders for portraits, but did not feel like a photographer. He saw himself as a sculptor and it was in this capacity that he tried to find his place in the world of art. In Paris, he shared a workshop with artist René Besset on Impasse Ronsin. His neighbor was Konstantin Brancusi, for whom Sima also worked for a while. Soon he made friends with the stars of the Parisian art world - Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst.

Paris was the heart of the art world of pre-war Europe. At this time, a unique phenomenon arose, called the “Paris School”. Michel Sima was a full member of this movement. He received orders as a sculptor and took part in group exhibitions. When the war began, due to the persecution of the Jews, Sima left Paris and moved to Golf-Juan to Picabia, in a free, unoccupied zone, but even there he was unable to avoid arrest. In August 1942, the French authorities detained him and extradited him to the Germans, who deported Sim to Auschwitz. Freed from the concentration camp, broken mentally and physically, Sima returned to the Cote d’Azur in the hope of meeting with friends. At Golf Juan, he again met Picasso, who literally brought Sim back to life.

After the war, Pablo Picasso, having settled in the castle of Grimaldi, in Antibes, worked on “La joie de vivre” (“Joy of Life”), proving to everyone around that the war could not destroy the joys of being, a presentiment of happiness and creative freedom in the new world. Picasso suggested that Sim daily document the process of working on a picture using a camera. Already in the first hours of work, Sima expanded the task, believing that the presence of the artist himself cannot be excluded from this process, because the work lives on the energy of the person who created it. The result of the work was the album "Picasso in Antibes" (1948), which fully corresponded to the ideas of Sim that the artist and his work are a single whole.

Sima with great pleasure began to photograph friends again, because almost all of his pre-war acquaintances returned after the war to Paris. For several years, he created portraits of sixty artists gradually revived after the war, "Paris School". He compiled a photo chronicle of the "melting pot of arts", a unique historical document. In 1958, Nathan published his photo album Faces of Twenty-One Artist, which included portraits of Jean Cocteau, Francis Picabia, Osip Zadkin, Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp, Dora Maar, Fernand Leger, Max Ernst, Auguste Erben, Vifredo Lam Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Andre Derain, Kes van Dongen, Le Corbusier, Juan (Joan) Miro and others. Michel Sim’s photographs reveal to us a huge variety of styles and movements that existed in parallel in Paris, the interaction of different generations of artists.

Sim’s hobby for photography ended at the moment when he picked up the photo album “Faces of twenty-one artists”. Disappointment with print quality was immeasurable. Sima decided never to publish a single photograph again and devoted himself to the work of a sculptor until his death in 1987.

The career of a Sim photographer lasted only ten years. But over this decade, he managed an incredible amount.

Curators: Kuno Fisher, Alice Labas
Project presented by Kuno Fischer, Fischer Gallery, Switzerland

The exposition uses texts by Erica Billeter

Organizers of the exhibition: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Moscow House of Photography Museum, Erarta Museum of Modern Art