29-06-2025
Pontus Hultén, the Swede who created Paris's Centre Pompidou
Pontus Hultén "had the soul of an artist rather than that of a museum director," proclaimed the sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle. The visual artist knew it better than anyone: Her life, like that of her great love, Jean Tinguely, also a sculptor, would have been entirely different if their paths had not crossed that of the extraordinary Swede, who transformed the museum landscape of the 20 th century. The New York Times, upon his death in 2006, hailed him as "a restless champion of contemporary art," noting that he had founded no fewer than eight museums around the world, from Venice to Basel.
Yet the man who built the Centre Pompidou against all odds, then reigned there with a series of spectacular exhibitions from 1977 to 1981, remains unknown to many. For those who loved or worked with him, he was a one-of-a-kind director who invented for Paris an institution like no other. "A Prometheus who brings fire to humankind, but suffers for it," as his friend de Saint Phalle described him. Opening on June 20 at the Grand Palais and running for more than six months, a new exhibition explores the explosive collaboration between de Saint Phalle, Tinguely and Hultén.
There he is, in archival photographs, a strapping, mustachioed figure bustling about, hauling things and spraying paint at the construction site of Hon – en katedral ("She – a Cathedral") at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. This wild project was dreamed up in 1966 by de Saint Phalle: a "great pagan goddess," an XXL version (25 meters long) of her voluptuous Nanas, which were just beginning to bring her fame.
Giant vulva
