The boulevard de la Croisette in late July is, as ever, a study in controlled spectacle — the parasols, the pale stone, the Mediterranean light that flattens shadows and sharpens edges in equal measure. Step off that promenade at number 47, however, and the temperature of the afternoon changes entirely. La Malmaison, the Centre d'art contemporain tucked into the ground floor of a grand Belle Époque building, has a habit of offering precisely this: a quiet counterpoint to the boulevard's theatre.
On Thursday 23 July 2026 at 17:00, La Malmaison opens a one-hour guided tour of its summer exhibition dedicated to Hervé Di Rosa — one of the defining figures of figuration libre, the French painting movement that emerged in the early 1980s alongside artists such as Robert Combas and Rémi Blanchard. The tour is offered in the context of the show 'Mirages du monde, les peintures d'Hervé Di Rosa', which runs at La Malmaison from 17 July through 8 November 2026.
A Painter Who Travels to Learn How to Paint
Di Rosa's work is rooted in comics — their flat planes of colour, their cartoon outlines, their democratic disregard for the hierarchies of fine art. But that origin story is only the beginning. Over decades of travel across continents, Di Rosa has absorbed local craft traditions and pictorial techniques wherever he has landed, working with artisans in Mexico, Senegal, India, and beyond, letting each place reshape not just his subject matter but his actual method of making. The result is a body of work that reads as both intensely personal and genuinely plural — images that are immediately recognisable as his, yet built from a dozen different hands and histories.
The exhibition title, 'Mirages du monde' — loosely, 'mirages of the world' — carries that duality well. A mirage is something seen from a distance, coloured by desire and projection; it is also, in the right light, entirely real.
La Malmaison has presented major solo exhibitions since the 1990s, hosting work by artists including Arman, Ben, and César — figures for whom the boundary between art and everyday object was always porous.
What to Expect on the Tour
The guided visit lasts one hour and is led by a member of the centre's team. It is a structured encounter with Di Rosa's paintings — a chance to look slowly at work that rewards exactly that. The format suits visitors who want more than a solitary walk through the rooms: a frame for the images, a voice to articulate what the eye is already registering.
Admission is priced accessibly across several tiers:
- Full price: 8.50 €
- Reduced (ages 18–25, Cannes Pass Culture holders, Cannes Seniors Le Club members): 5.50 €
- Reduced (under 18, students, job-seekers, holders of a disability card and their companion): 2 €
La Malmaison sits at 47 boulevard de la Croisette, a short walk from the Palais des Festivals. The building itself — a former grand hotel annex dating to the early twentieth century — lends the exhibition rooms a particular quality of light: tall windows, high ceilings, proportions that were designed for lingering.
To arrive at five o'clock on a July evening, with the heat beginning to ease and the Croisette settling into its early-evening rhythm, is to find the city in one of its more generous moods. Di Rosa's paintings, vivid and restless and full of the world's accumulated strangeness, are a fitting companion for that hour.