Musée Jean Cocteau - Collection Severin Wunderman

Musée Jean Cocteau - Collection Severin Wunderman stands in Menton on the French Riviera, devoted to the life and work of Jean Cocteau. Rudy Ricciotti designed its modern building with a stark black-and-white interplay inspired by Cocteau’s artistic style. The jagged façade has been compared to teeth, alabaster forearms, and a spider. Wheelchair access, a café, a shop, and a documentation centre extend the museum beyond its galleries.

The collection divides almost one thousand graphic works into seven sections, with pencil, pastel, and watercolour pieces tracing Cocteau’s early avant-garde experiments. Films include excerpts from the Orphic Trilogy, while 240 original photographs by Lucien Clergue record the making of Testament of Orpheus. Severin Wunderman began collecting Cocteau at nineteen and offered his collection to Menton in 2005. Cocteau’s local connection reaches back to the 1950s, when he decorated Menton’s wedding hall and later worked on the Bastion near the harbour. Seven sections bring together drawings, films, photographs, books, journals, and monographs around one artist’s many forms.