2019 - Advertising poster - Échappées Pyrénéennes - Musée des Beaux Arts de Pau - France
Description:
With more 70 visits, the Pyrenean city of Pau is the most frequented place in race history. The great hours of the Tour de France retraced in this exhibition "Echappées pyrénéennes, des vélos et des hommes" (Pyrenean escapes, bicycles and men) visible at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Pau, from June 29th to September 8th 2019. With the participants Emile Arbes and Marc Lebreton both collectors.
Boulevard des Pyrénées, the Hôtel Continental or "Conti", where Jacques Godet and Félix Levitan used to have their regular haunts, was an obligatory stopping-off point for the Tour riders, heralding some high-flying stages in the Pyrenees! Pau... if ever a city epitomised the Tour de France, this is it!
1930
On the first of the Tour’s 70 visits to Pau, Alfredo Binda won a bunch sprint.
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On the occasion of the passage of the Tour de France and the 100 years of the Yellow Jersey in Pau, the Fine Arts Museum displays an original exhibition on the bike and the riders.
Pau loves the Tour de France, which has been returning the favor since 1930, and the city wants to let it be known this summer at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, which is offering an original exhibition on bicycles called "échappées pyrénéennes".
Another way to welcome the Great Loop and the 100 years of the yellow jersey (July 19), before the Vuelta (September 3) which has a small room dedicated.
"It started as a joke," says Patrick Segura, a discreet documentalist at the museum and a fan of the Tour de France before the 1980s. "I launched the idea in the air, during a work meeting", confides the Béarnais who remembers his childhood in Mourenx from where he followed the race, especially the year 1969 when a certain Eddy Merckx, yellow jersey, had marked the 17th stage between Luchon and Mourenx, with its four passes to be crossed.
A gourmet and vintage variety
We crossed our fingers until the official announcement of the Tour's passage through Pau," says the Béarnais, "then we hurried to collect the pieces. The documentalist is a great help since he regularly attends specialized exhibitions in France, Spain and Italy, and knows collectors who will lend their objects of passion to the museum in Pau.
The result is a gourmet variety that will attract fans of the Tour, its riders and their bikes (two of Merckx and Bernard Hinault are on display) and yellow jerseys, and fans of archive images who will recognize the finishes in Pau and the Pyrenean breakaways at the Aubisque, Soulor and Tourmalet passes. But also the lovers of cycles and their mechanics, the amateurs of vintage posters and goodies of another time of the caravan...
We will linger on the works of the Spanish self-taught artist Miguel Soro (in demonstration on July 20). The former professional cyclist, from Valencia, started painting 6 years ago, and from photo, immortalizes the riders who make him dream, using newspaper clippings that speak of water. His paintings have traveled to cycling events in Spain, Italy, California, Canada and the Paris-Roubaix.
The collectors in the spotlight
Above all, we will not miss the old cycles of Marc Lebreton which return on the invention of the bicycle: the reproduction of a draisienne of 1817, the Grand-bi of race of Bigourdan Omen Pujo de Lafitolle of 1885, a triplette of track of 1898 which was used to involve the racers in its aspiration, a bicycle with collar of gooseneck with its side-car of 1930... We will admire their mechanics: chains, pedals, brakes and lights.
Lovers of racing bikes will enjoy the collection of Emile Arbes. The former amateur racer from Buzès owns some 170 bicycles, bought at garage sales or auctions, which he dreams of exhibiting in a dedicated museum. To the museum, he lent "a sample that traces a century of the history of the Tour. They are usually originals, but the older ones have undergone modifications, so we have to find original parts to reconstruct them." With each bike, he displays the corresponding jersey and its water bottle (not always easy to find).
Description:
Avec plus de 70 visites, la ville pyrénéenne de Pau est le lieu le plus fréquenté de l'histoire de la course. Les grandes heures du Tour de France retracées dans cette exposition "Echappées pyrénéennes, des vélos et des hommes" visible au Musée des Beaux-arts de Pau, du 29 juin au 8 septembre 2019. Avec les participants Emile Arbes et Marc Lebreton tous deux collectionneurs.
Boulevard des Pyrénées, l’hôtel Continental ou "Conti" où Jacques Godet et Félix Levitan avaient leurs habitudes, Fausto Coppi y a dormi, un lieu de passage obligé pour les coureurs du Tour annonçant des étapes pyrénéennes de haut vol! Pau…si une ville devait incarner le Tour de France, ce serait bien celle-là!