I love visiting art museums and I found a gem. It is the annex of the main art museum in Aix-en-Provence which is to Marseille (second largest city in France) what Healdsburg is to San Francisco. The main museum is amazing with unbroken marble busts going back to Roman times that have come from private collections. Aix was founded by Romans because of its plentiful water including hot springs. It is a city full of fountains.

Granet XXeme is the “annex” and is a repurposed church built in 1649 for the “white Carmelite” brotherhood. The vaulted ceiling creates a lot of space over walls scrubbed clean after the building was used by the city for hay storage. Many religious buildings were forcefully decommissioned during the French Revolution.

Jean Planque worked in a Swiss art gallery which enabled him to meet and befriend up-and-coming artists. He had a wonderful eye but not much money. In the 50’s and 60s he struck up a friendship with Picasso and eventually received five of his paintings from that era. Here are two. There are photos in the exhibition of how Jean Planque’s collection looked hanging in his modest house, including Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Braque and Dubuffet works.

Jean Planque died about 10 years ago and a foundation was formed to try to keep his collection together for exhibition as a whole. For me, it really works because I can feel his point-of-view on what makes a painting great. There was a coherence to this show that I rarely experience.
https://www.museegranet-aixenprovence.fr/en/collections/collections/granet-xxth-jean-planque-collection

Jean said he learned a lot from Dubuffet and his collection includes paintings by him that look like something, some that sorta look like something, and a few striking ones that look like squid-ink spaghetti. Here’s a link to 3 of the works:
https://www.museegranet-aixenprovence.fr/collections/les-collections/granet-xxe-collection-jean-planque/les-oeuvres/dubuffet-et-lart-brut

Picasso Man & Woman