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Michel Sima : Sima et ses amis In collaboration with Boogie Woogie Photography
and curated by Fabienne Martin
Exhibition from July 06, 2026- October 4, 2025
From July 06 to July 12:
Monday to Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Exception: Thursday, July 9, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
From July 15 to July 31:
Wednesday to Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
From August 19 to August 29:
Wednesday to Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
From September 2 to October 4:
Wednesday to Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
And by appointment.
This exhibition offers a rediscovery of a singular figure of artistic modernity, through the lens of friendship, which linked him to major twentieth-century artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, and many others.
Having arrived from his native Poland in the interwar period, Sima developed a practice at the crossroads of sculpture, photography, and ceramics, deeply marked by the historical upheavals and formal explorations of his century.
His portraits constitute a unique testimony to the artistic creation of his time. More than a simple documentary gaze, his images capture artists at work in the studio, where the artwork is still in the making.
The exhibition thus invites visitors to immerse themselves in a living space, where the tensions and metamorphoses of the world are inscribed.
Marcel DUCHAMP, Île-de-France, c. 1955 – © Estate Michel SIMA
Is there a moment when the world becomes so difficult that life within it is impossible? Does the creative act allow us to go on living and to save ourselves?
At the end of the 1940s, as the horrors of the Second World War were coming to an end, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno responded by declaring that artistic creation was impossible after such a civilizational rupture. Would Michel Smajewski, known as Sima, reveal the opposite?
Michel Smajewski returned to France in 1945 after spending three years in concentration camps. Welcomed by his friend Romuald Dor de la Souchère, curator of the Château d’Antibes, he gradually recovered his physical health, without being able to resume his practice of sculpture. He began photographing those around him, and his artist friends encouraged him: do photography and sculpture not come together? Do they not both reproduce reality while immortalising it?
Sima quickly became a privileged witness to the artistic effervescence of the post-war period, very close to the artists of the School of Paris. He produced singular portraits of his peers. It is for this reason, and on the suggestion of Paul Éluard, that he adopted the artist name “Sima”, an anagram of amis.
Sima seems to fade into the background in the presence of all the major figures of the twentieth-century Parisian scene, but a close reading of these photographs reveals an extraordinary power. Everything happens as if the subjects of his portraits were staged for the benefit of the photographer’s artistic purpose: here they are, giving themselves over to the play of the photographic exercise, or even to mise en abyme in living images.
The friendship between Sima and these artists is certainly the ferment that made it possible to create the portrait of a generation with both gentleness and strength, far from academic debates on art. After having gone through the worst, Sima gives us the testimony of his life force. He raises a resolutely contemporary question: the importance of the gaze upon the world of those who have confronted horror and who become our friends.
Note to Editors
About Galerie Huit Arles :
Founded in 2007 Galerie Huit Arles has acquired a solid reputation for the careful selection of its artists– both established and emerging – and the quality of its hangings and installations. Exhibitions are curated either independently or in collaboration. Partners have included: The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Factum Arte Madrid, The British Journal of Photography, Photo Doc Paris, and Galerie SIT DOWN, Paris.
About the Gallerist :
Julia de Bierre is an author, gallerist, and heritage activist, living and working between France and Malaysia, where she was born. She is an active member of Gallery Climate Coalition and analyses the carbon footprint of each exhibition. Her interest and expertise in photography was intially inspired by her close frienship with Helmut Newton and his wife June, who worked under
the name of Alice Springs.
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