Everything seems to have been said and written about Simone Veil (1927-2017), a key figure of the post-war French right, both a survivor of the Shoah and an icon of the fight for the right to abortion and a convinced European.
It is a more intimate side of this exceptional woman and her husband, Antoine, that Christie’s auction house will reveal on December 4 in Paris. Seven years after their mother’s death, her two sons, Jean and Pierre-François Veil, decided to part with part of the collection that their parents had accumulated during their long life together. When we examine the sixty lots valued between 2 and 3 million euros, a very French, classic, not to say bourgeois, taste emerges.
In his autobiography, titled a life (Stock, 2007), Simone Veil says that, since the 1970s, when she was Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, she escaped on Saturday mornings to visit the galleries on the Left Bank, in the company of a friend. He then had his habits forged with personalities through hard experiences, such as Karl Flinker, an excellent scholar originally from Austria who ran a shop on the rue de Tournon and whose mother had died during deportation. Or Claude Bernard, a dandy of crazy elegance, the first French dealer to exhibit Francis Bacon, rue des Beaux-Arts.
Starting in the 80s, Simone Veil also formed a great bond with Catherine Thieck. This scholar left the Museum of Modern Art in Paris to retrain in the art business and took charge of the Galerie de France, rue de la Verrerie. At home, Simone Veil meets a much-loved artist, Gilles Aillaud, known for his animal allegories and criticisms of both the prison world and capitalism. “She had already bought his works from Flinker and was seduced by their visual delicacy, despite the underlying violence. “He had a tender relationship with painting.” Catherine Thieck reports.
The Seine Street Merchant
In 1987, Simone Veil stopped at the Galerie de France in front of an immense beach landscape at low tide, the work of Gilles Aillaud. However, the size is too large for his apartment on Place Vauban, opposite the Invalides dome. No matter, the artist will paint another, smaller version, estimated by Christie’s between 50,000 and 70,000 euros.
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