Through the Montparnasse that never goes out following the trail of its artists

The chronicles of the Parisian neighborhood of Montparnasse say that it was the Spanish artists together with the Latin Americans who discovered the many hours of sunshine enjoyed by the

de La Rotonde, the bistro run by Victor Libion ​​that at the beginning of the 20th century welcomed, for long hours without more consumption than a

to a whole battalion of penniless artists, poets and writers.

She never chided them for pecking hungrily at the pieces of bread from the bread bins.

There they used to alternate Pablo Picasso, the sculptor Pablo Gargallo and the painter María Blanchard.

Nor was it unusual to find the painter Diego Rivera, who only occasionally shared a table with his wife, the Russian painter Angelina Beloff.

It was more difficult to find the more restrained Juan Gris, who kept his studio on the right bank of Paris, in Montmartre, in the distant and mythical Bateau-Lavoir.

Together with Gino Severini, Moïse Kisling and Jacques Lipchitz, and a long etcetera, they formed a colony of expatriates that would shape one of the most revolutionary and golden periods in the history of art, where the first wave of artistic avant-garde was forged.

La Rotonde is still standing, and although its clientele and its prices have nothing to do with what they were, the setting allows the visitor to escape from the present to look back.

Going into the surroundings of the intersection between Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse and, just as Woody Allen proposed in

(2011), fantasize visiting establishments, corners and buildings behind whose windows not only widened the borders of art, but also that social habits were modified.

In that rich social exchange that had prevailed in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, artists found in it a laboratory of ideas, willing to be themselves in all facets of life.

They lived as they created and created as they lived.

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In those days anyone who wanted to spread a rumor, or brag about a change of lover, had only to go to Le Dôme Café.

Already in the twenties of the last century his legend had crossed the Atlantic, and as soon as the Americans set foot in the French capital they dreamed of being part of his entertaining clientele.

Just a couple of minutes' walk away is La Coupole, which continues to maintain its characteristic

.

Opened in 1925, Le Select was open all night.

However, its owners never had much interest in the artistic life of the neighborhood and consequently —and despite being one of the favorite places of the author of

, Ernest Hemingway—never achieved the intellectual aura of La Closerie des Lilas, where weekly gatherings were held around the poet Paul Fort.

This was the first café to grant an artistic reputation to the neighborhood.

This was helped by its proximity to the late Bal Bullier, on Avenue de l'Observatoire, where costume balls were regularly organized to raise money for artists.

Interior of the famous "brasserie" La Coupole, in "art deco" style, in Paris.Hemis / Alamy

A plate of pasta in exchange for drawings

Rue Campagne Première is one of the most emblematic streets of Montparnasse.

At number 9 was Chez Rosalie, where her owner fed pasta to her best customer, Modigliani, who often paid with her drawings.

Disbelieving, she took the works to the back room where legend has it that they ended up devoured by rats.

Very close, at number 17, the photographer Eugène Atget revealed the images of a Paris on the verge of disappearing under the radical urban redevelopment of the Haussmann plan, and several portals below, in the impressive building at 31 bis, Man Ray rediscovered together with Lee Miller, then his assistant and lover, the photographic process called solarization, elevating his experimental photography to the category of art.

On the same sidewalk, the Japanese painter Fujita had his studio,

and in the next building the Hotel Istria remains open, where a plaque commemorates Picabia, Duchamp, also Kisling and the composer Erik Satie among its clients.

"What shines never goes out," the surrealist poet Louis Aragon wrote from one of his rooms to his wife Elsa Triolet.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Tristan Tzara, Vladimir Mayakovski and the happiest in the neighbourhood, the model and singer, who also wanted to be a painter, Kiki de Montparnasse, a symbol of that era, also spent the night in its rooms.

At the end of the fifties, the painter Yves Klein established his residence in the mythical street, a few meters from where Michel Poiccard, the character created by Jean-Luc Godard and played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, fell dead.

also Kisling and the composer Erik Satie among his clients.

"What shines never goes out," the surrealist poet Louis Aragon wrote from one of his rooms to his wife Elsa Triolet.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Tristan Tzara, Vladimir Mayakovski and the happiest in the neighborhood, the model and singer, who also wanted to be a painter, Kiki de Montparnasse, a symbol of that era, also stayed in her rooms.

At the end of the fifties, the painter Yves Klein established his residence in the mythical street, a few meters from where Michel Poiccard fell dead, the character created by Jean-Luc Godard and played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in

also Kisling and the composer Erik Satie among his clients.

"What shines never goes out," the surrealist poet Louis Aragon wrote from one of his rooms to his wife Elsa Triolet.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Tristan Tzara, Vladimir Mayakovski and the happiest in the neighborhood, the model and singer, who also wanted to be a painter, Kiki de Montparnasse, a symbol of that era, also stayed in her rooms.

At the end of the fifties, the painter Yves Klein established his residence in the mythical street, a few meters from where Michel Poiccard, the character created by Jean-Luc Godard and played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, fell dead.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Tristan Tzara, Vladimir Mayakovski and the most cheerful of the neighbourhood, the model and singer, who also wanted to be a painter, Kiki de Montparnasse, a true symbol of that era, also spent the night in its rooms.

At the end of the fifties, the painter Yves Klein established his residence in the mythical street, a few meters from where Michel Poiccard fell dead, the character created by Jean-Luc Godard and played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in

Rainer Maria Rilke, Tristan Tzara, Vladimir Mayakovski and the most cheerful of the neighbourhood, the model and singer, who also wanted to be a painter, Kiki de Montparnasse, a true symbol of that era, also spent the night in its rooms.

At the end of the fifties, the painter Yves Klein established his residence in the mythical street, a few meters from where Michel Poiccard fell dead, the character created by Jean-Luc Godard and played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in

, icon of cinematographic modernity.

Model and artist Alice Pin, better known as 'Kiki de Montparnasse', in a photo taken at the Café du Dôme in Paris in 1929. ullstein bild / Getty Images

Almost opposite the headquarters of the Cartier Foundation, at 242 Boulevard Raspail, is the

Nicolas Poussin, where Picasso had his studio in 1912. It was there that his

until, two years later, it moved to 5bis Rue Victor Schoelcher.

In that studio he became the envy of his neighborhood colleagues: he was the only one with a bathtub.

The elegant building is still preserved and its large windows overlook the Montparnasse Cemetery (where Charles Baudelaire, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Man Ray, Samuel Beckett and Susan Sontag rest among many others).

“A strange option for someone who is notoriously superstitious”, qualified John Richardson, biographer of the painter from Malaga.

It was precisely after the death of the artist's second partner and muse, Eva Gouel, in 1915, when the views began to alter the painter's mood.

However, he lived there until 1918, when he entered the more bourgeois and select environment of Rue La Boétie, on the other side of the Seine,

Recreation of the studio of the Italian sculptor Alberto Giacometti at the Giacometti Institute in the French capital.

Sabine Glaubitz (picture alliance / Getty Images)

At number 5 Rue Victor Schoelcher is currently the headquarters of the Giacometti Institute.

There the Swiss sculptor's studio has been rebuilt and exhibitions and other temporary activities are organized, to which one can sign up by prior reservation.

The famous artist's real studio was not far from there, at 46 Rue Hippolyte Maindron.

The Montparnasse-Maine urban redevelopment operation, carried out during the 1970s of the 20th century and culminating in the Montparnasse Tower, were many artists' studios.

Where the controversial skyscraper is, with its 60 floors it is the second tallest in the city, was the studio of Blanchard, Rivera and also Mondrian.

However, at 21 Avenue du Maine, what is known today as Villa Vassilieff has survived, one of the few

of artists who remain, hardly altered, in the neighborhood, and in which Blanchard also lived.

In the quiet alley was the canteen run by the Russian painter Marie Vassilieff, who was said to have included Trotsky among her lovers.

During World War I, many artists came to eat there, and since it was not subject to a curfew, it filled up every night.

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On the way to the Luxembourg gardens, and already in the VI district, following this route of artistic airs, one should not miss a stop at 100 bis Rue d'Assas, where the Russian sculptor Ossip once had his studio. Zadkine.

Converted into the Zadkine Museum, today it shows his works together with those of his wife Valentine Prax.

The small garden retains all its charm populated by sculptures where the hawthorns, hydrangeas and cyclamen that the artist liked so much were planted again.

Zadkine Museum at 100 bis Rue d'Assas in Paris, where Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine once had his studio.Hemis / Alamy

Bordering the gardens and about twenty minutes walk you reach the banks of the Seine.

There is the luxurious Lapérouse restaurant, where one of the biggest splits of the cubist group took place after the Mexican Diego Rivera was about to punch the critic Pierre Reverdy.

A good place to finish suspecting, or confirm, what the poet John Ashbery said and the writer Enrique Vila-Matas reaffirmed: "After living in Paris, one is unable to live anywhere, including Paris."

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