A generation at the Villa

At nineteen, Jean Marc Lange was the youngest resident of the Villa — but he was not alone. Each year the Prix de Rome gathered the laureates of every discipline: painters, sculptors, architects, engravers and composers shared the same corridors, the same studios and the same dinners beneath the painted ceilings.

Among the painters of those years were Claude-Jean Guillemot, Gérard Barthélemy, Thierry Vaubourgoin and Joël Froment — the very last laureate of the competition, in 1968. Among the sculptors, Jacqueline Georges Deyme, and a young couple, Anne and Patrick Poirier, who would become one of the great duos of contemporary art.

The architects were not to be outdone: Jean-Pierre Poncabaré, of his own 1965 class, and Daniel Kahane, drew and surveyed the monuments of Rome. And through the salons sometimes echoed the music of Michel Merlet, Premier Grand Prix for composition in 1966.

These artists in their twenties formed the Roman universe of Jean Marc Lange: not masters, but companions in work and in youth. It was with them, in these places, that he lived the four years that would mark all his painting.

A salon of the director’s apartment, with fireplace and antique statue