Thanks to the teams at Media Minuit for filming this rare interview.
Once upon a time
Once upon a time, there was a little boy in a very small town in the South of France. He was the son of a taxi driver. But not just any little boy. He was a combative, visionary young man, though he did not yet know it. A boy drawn to a radical new kind of art that had not quite come into being, though he did not yet know that either. This is Yvon Lambert.He was born in Vence, a town that has long attracted artists of every kind.
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Matisse, Chagall,Picasso
It was there, for example, that Matisse transformed a chapel into something extraordinary: the Chapelle du Rosaire. It was there, too, that Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Jean Dubuffet liked to spend time. They say the air is good there. It was there again that this local boy would open an art gallery. The first six months’ rent on the space that served as his venue for selling modern paintings were paid by his mother.
Robert Ryman and Cy Twombly
From that moment on, Yvon Lambert saw only one solution: to go where things were really happening — Paris.
He tells us about his arrival there, and about exhibiting, as early as 1969, artists in total rupture with the past who would go on to become giants of contemporary creation, among them Robert Ryman and Cy Twombly. Yvon Lambert understood quickly. He had a thirst for discovery. He encountered his elders, from the Surrealist theorist André Breton to the great Pop art dealer Ileana Sonnabend.
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Anselm Kiefer
Later, artists as celebrated as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Anselm Kiefer would also join his stable.
The little boy from Provence was now operating without borders. For a time, he even opened a gallery in London and another in New York. Quietly, but effectively, he built an exemplary career. Until the moment when the new realities of the art market — huge sums of money at stake, stratospheric prices, the hyper-financialization of the business — no longer suited him. He then decided to close his large gallery in the Marais, now occupied in Paris by David Zwirner.
donating more than 500 works
Yvon Lambert has an exemplary vision. He championed the artists who would go on to make history. And he made his exit with panache, donating more than 500 works to the French state. Today, a collection bearing his name is housed in Avignon. Yet he still goes every day, with unfailing dedication, to his art bookshop, where he recently celebrated his 90th birthday.
He generously agreed to take part in “How It All Began.” The interview took place in his relatively small office, which explains why the filming quality is not the best.
