Maurice Jardot
Maurice Jardot (Évette, France, 1911 – Valdoie, France, 2002) performed a number of roles in the sphere of monumental and artistic heritage in France’s Ministry of Culture. With close ties to Pablo Picasso, Jardot participated in the arrangements for the Picasso exhibition in São Paulo in 1953 and curated the show on the artist staged in the Musée des Arts décoratifs in 1955 in Paris. The following year he was named deputy director of the Louise Leiris gallery, before becoming its general director in 1988, thus continuing the legacy of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in the art market.
Maurice Jardot embarked upon his studies in 1929 at the École national supérieure des Arts décortifs in Paris, where he established and developed a passion for drawing that would never leave him. After a brief period as a lecturer in this discipline, in 1930 he was employed as an inspector of historical monuments, before holding different posts in public office. In 1944 he took charge of Cultural Affairs at the Delegation of the French military government in Germany, and in 1949 he was named director of Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites (the National Centre of Historical Monuments). Shortly after, he began working as a curator and historian, organising exhibitions on Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger, and publishing the book Léger. Dessins in 1953. He was also a big admirer of Le Corbusier and studied his work, and was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fondation Le Corbusier in the 1970s and 1980s.
Jardot’s first contact with the work of Le Corbusier came about at the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques, in Paris in 1937, an event where undoubtedly he would have seen Picasso’s Guernica in the Spanish Pavilion. He would reencounter Picasso - and his painting - throughout his career and the two developed a close friendship. A close associate of Kahnweiler, in 1953 Jardot was entrusted with the loan arrangements of Picasso’s work for the exhibition devoted to him at the second edition of the São Paulo Biennial; furthermore, he was assigned with the organisation of the great Picasso retrospective at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in 1955. Both exhibitions featured Guernica as they paid tribute to the artist. In addition to collaborating in the major retrospective held at London’s Tate Modern in 1960, he organised an array of Picasso exhibitions at the Louise Leiris gallery.
In 1997 Maurice Jardot donated a large part of his collection to the Musée d’Art modern in Belfort, his homeland. The donation comprised over one hundred works, including drawings, sculptures and paintings, primarily Cubist and Surrealist, by Pablo Picasso, André Masson, Juan Gris, Georges Braque and Fernand Léger, among other artists. The collection was unveiled as an homage to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and was completed upon Jardot’s death in 2002.
