Series - Pianos in Art

I'm 7 years old in this photo from the summer where I play the piano with Duke Ellington, it gives me the idea for a series on pianos.

Excerpt from my book The Maeght Saga, chapter "The Minotaur watches over us".
"Miró and I are walking on the path that leads to the Foundation. Grandpa is there, among jazz musicians installed on a terrace with their instruments and our large Steinway which has been taken out. A black giant is playing chords. Grandpa introduces me and here I am sitting next to Duke Ellington, playing with four hands. Then the Duke improvises a memorable "Blues for Miró". Miró listens attentively, I stay at his side. At the end of the piece, Miró explains to me. although the notes are so few in number, like the colors, their combinations are infinite So that I understand even better - I am only seven years old - he evokes Prévert who, with the same words as everyone else, as me,. brings unique poems to life. This discussion will forever change my life. The source is simple, genius is everything."

Nicolas Poussin, “Saint Cecilia”, 1627.

One of my favorite painters, there are always several stories, several readings in his works. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, “The Music Lesson”, 1770.

Emile Antoine Bourdelle, "Isadora Duncan with Walter Rummel at the piano" 1909.
After witnessing her interpretation of Iphigénie en Tauride by Gluck, Antoine Bourdelle became passionate about the art of Isadora Duncan. He undertook a cycle of drawings celebrating dance and music, respectively represented by Isadora Duncan and the German pianist Walter Rummel (1887-1953). Established in Paris since 1908, Rummel is one of the most important promoters of Debussy's music; between 1918 and 1920, he formed a sentimental and artistic relationship with Isadora under the sign of a profound aesthetic exaltation.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1915, "Franz Botho Graef", this archaeologist and historian of classical art (1857-1917) inspired many portraits of Kirchner. Friend of the artist's father, he was among the defenders of modern art. He taught at the University of Jena from 1904 to 1917. The Kunstverein (art association) in Jena received more than 250 prints by Kirchner in memory of Botho Graef (1857-1917).

William Chase, "The keynote" by William Chase, 1915. Chase was born in Indiana, he set up his own school in New York, "Chase school" (now Parsons), after teaching for a few years at the Art Students League .

Henri Matisse, in 1917, produced “The Music Lesson”. On this canvas are Matisse's children: Pierre at the piano next to Marguerite, and Jean in the armchair. In the garden sits Amélie Matisse (née Parayre), mother of Pierre and Jean. What freedom for Matisse to return to the subject, to color... It is exactly the same composition as the previous painting, this one is in the collections of the Barnes Foundation.

“Little girl at the piano”, by Georges Valmier, 1920.

Salvador Dali, "Pharmacist lifting with extreme caution the lid of a grand piano", 1936.
Totally surreal, and I admit it's a magnificent painting, I'm not a fan of Dali's paintings, even though I love what he wrote, his interviews, his eccentricity and especially his intelligence. Salvador Dali was curious about everything and one of his interests was the scientific world. His library has around a hundred works - annotated in the margins and commented by his hand - on different scientific aspects: physics, quantum mechanics, origin of life, evolution, mathematics... The 1930s are marked by double images and optical illusions, a passion that will never leave Dali's work, just like the immense, empty landscapes that evoke dreams.

Norman Rockwell, "The Piano Tuner", 1947.
Rockwell is best known for his cover illustrations for "The Saturday Evening Post" magazine, a highly influential publication aimed at the American middle class. It was founded in 1821.
Rockwell contributed to The Post for some fifty years, his illustrations reflecting the social and technological changes of the time.
“The Piano Tuner” depicts a young boy fascinated by an elderly piano tuner. Rockwell hired an eight-year-old boy (Andrew Brinkerhoff Smith) for the painting for which he received $5. However, on New Year's Eve 1947, Rockwell gave the painting to Smith's parents.

Nicolas de Staël, “The Piano”, 1955.

Nicolas de Staël, “The Grand Concert, The Orchestra”, 1955.
One of the artist's most intense and immense canvases - 350 x 600 cm, painted in Antibes, where the painter has experienced, since the fall of 1954, a period of hyperactivity, creating 147 canvases and sketching a multitude of drawings.
Musical instruments, in particular, with ballpoint pen or felt-tip pen, showing his permanent research... "The more you understand that the explosion is everything for me, like opening a window, the more you will understand that I "I can't stop it by finishing things more," he wrote on February 17, 1955, to the Parisian gallery owner Jacques Dubourg, sponsor of an exhibition.
In his house along the ramparts, 40-year-old de Staël is actually preparing three exhibitions. For Dubourg, for England and for the Antibes Museum, planned for the summer of 1955.
"I'm slow, I'm not Picasso." Staël made this confidence to his friend René Char in one of countless letters. “Behind life,” as Char describes it, he’s exhausted. On March 16, he wrote to Jacques Dubourg: "I do not have the strength to complete my paintings." The following night, he threw himself from his terrace.

Pablo Picasso, “The Piano”, after Velazquez, 1957.
It would not surprise me if Javier Mariscal saw this painting in the Barcelona Museum, as he seems to have been very influenced in his creations by the dog in this painting.

My grandfather, as elegant as ever, alongside Duke Ellington, in the gardens of the Maeght Foundation, one summer day in 1966.

Robert Combas, “The Pianist” 1989.

An exceptional object of art, designed by Aki Kuroda for Pleyel.

The book La Saga Maeght by Yoyo Maeght, with dedication. Link here