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The celebrated marbler, Jules Cantini, bought this fine house (built in 1694) in 1888, gifting it to the city in 1916 as a museum of contemporary art. The museum now houses one of the finest public collections in France of art from the period 1900-1960, works from later years being exhibited principally at the MAC (Musée d'art contemporain de Marseille).
Architecture

The Collections

NEO-IMPRESSIONISM, FAUVISM, AND EARLY CUBISM	THE SURREALISM OF MARSEILLE	POST-WAR AND 1950-60
THE 1960S TO THE 1980S	DRAWINGS

The collection, centered on the period 1900 - 1960, contains some remarkable groups of works, representative of the movements which have marked the history of modern art: Fauvism (Derain, Camoin, Matisse, Chabaud), Cubism (Dufy, Laurens, Gleizes), geometric abstraction from the 1930s (Kandinsky, Hélion, Gonzalez, Villon, Magnelli), Surrealism (Ernst, Masson, Arp, Brauner, Picabia), the post-war period and the 1950s (Fernandez, Picasso, Bryen, Hantai, Riopelle), the 1960s (Debré, Estève, Asse, Tal Coat, Ubac). The great individuals who marked the history of art during that century, defying any inclusion in a group or trend (Kokoschka, Artaud, Giacometti, Bacon, Balthus, Dubuffet, Tapies) have also been the subject of some major acquisitions by the museum. Finally, mention must be made of the remarkable collection of photographic works, with the series based on the Pont Transbordeur in Marseille (Krull, Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Bayer, Kollar, Florence Henri) as its highlight.