Art in Provence

Images by Eugene Fidler

Above: Marine (1978) Right: Le Couple (1982)

I bought these postcards at the Musee Picasso in Paris. Done in the Picasso style, I naturally assumed that Picasso was the artist. Imagine my surprise when organizing my souvenirs several weeks later that I discovered they were not by Picasso at all! The artist was Eugene Fidler. And imagine my surprise this very minute when googling Eugene Fidler to provide you with a link to identify him that I discovered he and his wife, Edith, were Jewish and lived in Provence under assumed names and with false identity papers during World War II! This is not the story I was expecting to find; I thought I would simply find an explanation that Fidler was a friend of Picasso's and part of a group of artists that painted in the Cubist style. I knew he lived in Provence near Rousillion and I knew he had a wife named Edith. How I knew that is what tomorrow's blog is all about. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.