They waited Friday for the inauguration of the works she had carried out for the new season of art in the domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire. But Agnès Varda is never coming. The director died in the previous night. “It is a national treasure that we have lost,” said Chantal Colleu-Dumond, director of the domain and curator of the exhibition. To pay homage to him, the manager of the venue asked not a minute of silence but a minute of applause for this “grande dame”.

” READ ALSO – the Death of Agnes Varda: the tributes Isabelle Adjani, Claude Lelouch, Emma de Caunes, JR…

Her pussy Nini, is represented, carved in bronze on a tree, resembling himself in his home in Paris. © Eric Sander / Domaine Chaumont sur Loire

Chantal Colleu-Dumond had no idea, the previous week, she saw Agnès Varda for the last time. “She came a first time to the area three years ago and had loved the gardens and the atmosphere poetic that it emitted,” explains the responsible. Last summer, she shared her desire to create works to exhibit in our galleries.” The exhibited works are the fruit of this collaboration between the two women. “She was very inventive and was always coming up with new ideas, it was fantastic to work with it. His works were evolving constantly.”, she says.

” READ ALSO – Agnès Varda: 90 years of art and cinema in ten key dates

2.519 meters of film to his film “Happiness” were used to build his cabin, presented for the first time in may 2018 at the galerie Nathalie Obadia. © Eric Sander / Domaine Chaumont sur Loire

The artist of the 90-year-old has three facilities, two of which are original reflections of his passions: the cinema, the sculpture and, his first love, photography. The first is none other than the Greenhouse of Happiness where to grow sunflowers, “summer flowers and happiness” as she liked to call them. This log cabin, the third built by Agnès Varda, is built with 2519 meters of film dropped from his film Happiness . “Visitors will enter the cabin and see it more closely, the images of the film transparency. It is surrounded by the duration of the movie and by the images of a time past,” explained the filmmaker about his work.

The second, two hands , is a series of photos reflecting the hands twined together “couples who love each other really”, surrounded by its vegetable favorite, the modest potato. Among these, we found, in particular, those of his daughter Rosalie Varda and her husband. “She would always say: we must dare to be romantic, he should dare to love”, explains the director of the domain. The last work, The Tree of Nini , is designed in memory of his cat, which liked to sit on an old spruce in the yard of his house in the rue Daguerre in Paris. On the trunk stands the cat.

“we need to dare to be romantic,” explained Agnès Varda for her work “two hands”. Domain Chaumont

“The area has hosted many world during the inauguration, and it was very moving for us,” says Chantal Colleu-Dumond. His works, mixing her admiration of nature and its passions, will remain in the galleries of the Field until the 3rd of November, next to those of the chinese artist Gao Xingjian, or the Ghanaian El Anatsui. “She was very happy to be exposed in a place, and alongside artists that she liked. On Friday, we felt that she was with us, adds the responsible. “Agnes was a young woman at the age of 90 years. It was a marvel absolute extremely kind, curious, open, cultured and deeply open, which has retained all its lucidity and its wonder until the end.”

” READ ALSO – Agnès Varda, the high priestess of the New Wave, has died at the age of 90.

Tuesday at 14h, the pioneer of the New Wave will join Jacques Demy, the love of his life, in the Montparnasse cemetery after a last tribute to the Cinémathèque française at 11am. In Sète (Hérault) where is tour the Peak Short , several of his films will be screened all day, until the dawn” to the four corners of the city. The mayor François Commeinhes had to the opportunity shared in the daily newspaper of the region, a moving tribute to say goodbye to “the sete of the heart” who has turned off her camera forever.