Garden of Luxembourg

This large painting has a very special meaning for me in a double sense, since it is the only work executed by Milos in which I was able to assist in its creation, and since I remember its inspiration. It was on a sunny Sunday morning somewhere in May 1997 that I had decided to visit Milos and, I really do not know exactly why, to bring my stepfather’s video camera with me. After a typical morning coffee, Milos suddenly rose and left without a word for his atelier in his salon and started to prepare a large framed canvas of 122 x 182 cm to be painted.

I grabbed my camera and very discreetly tried everything to make myself invisible since I sensed that I would experience something unique.

Milos had never or only very rarely painted during the morning, as far as I know; being a « night owl » and often going to bed only when the sun already rose, he usually painted at night. For this reason I was so tremendously surprised to see him prepare to paint a work seemingly undisturbed by my presence on this sunny morning. He worked continuously and in a very concentrated way on the canvas, adding colour directly out of the tubes, sometimes even painting lines with the colour tubes. Nobody spoke a word during the entire creative process and I filmed everything as discretely as I could in order not to disturb his artistic outburst.

In the years before, we had been in Paris several times together with Michèle and we were all three regular visitors of the « Jardin du Luxembourg » and the « Jardin des plantes ». I remember very well, during our last visit, the joyful atmosphere of children playing and running around and the architectural details of the Senate House within the garden, a scene which Milos now drew without hesitation or referring to any of his various sketches (Sketchbook no 16) he had made at the time.

Two hours later the painting was finished and we were both exhausted for different reasons, eventually toasting this surprising event with a glass of wine.

– WN