Fighting in exile. Artists and France 1939-1945 from 26th February to 22nd June 2025 at Musée de l’Armée (Paris)

129, rue de Grenelle
75007 Paris

At the Musée de l’Armée, exhibition curators Vincent Giraudier and Sylvie Le Ray-Burimi invite us to focus on cultural resistance or – as the preface of the catalog reminds us – the “French spirit” dear to General de Gaulle. This is carried around the world by artists in exile between 1939 and 1945.

The exhibition refers to the Air-Bel villa (Marseille) where Varian Fry welcomed artists and intellectuals. A few collective drawings created between 1940 and 1941 by six members of the surrealist group are presented, including one by Jacqueline Lamba (see the exhibition catalog, p. 21).

This exhibition is also the inauguration of future projects by the Musée de l’Armée, which announces dedicating its new spaces “to contemporary military engagements, the post-1945 period and the Cold War, as well as decolonization.”

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