By Catherine Bennett 

It was supposedly because of the light. At the end of the 19th century, painters began to flock to the sun-drenched Côte d’Azur. Claude Monet famously wrote that the South of France was ‘so bright, so luminous. One swims in blue air.’ It’s still a draw for artists and art lovers today, with the stretch of coast from Menton to Marseille forming a vibrant artistic ecosystem of foundations, contemporary art galleries, and historical museums.  

The summer of 1905 marked a turning point for the painter André Derain. While with Henri Matisse in the South of France, he began exploring a more radical use of color, calling it ‘sticks of dynamite […] primed to discharge light.’ More than a century later, the Riviera remains charged with that same intensity. Begin your journey in Monaco, where terracotta walls, deep blue water, and brilliant summer light make clear why this coastline has inspired artists for generations. After exploring the postage-stamp-sized principality, continue east towards Nice, where another artist would find his own signature hue. 

Yves Klein dreamed up International Klein Blue, his signature ultramarine shade, when he was lying on the beach in Nice staring up at the Mediterranean sky. But long before him, another artist was inspired by the city. Matisse discovered Nice at the age of 48 and was so captivated by the light that he never left. A claret-colored villa set in an olive grove on a hill above the town center houses a collection of his works and personal objects. This summer the exhibition ‘Henri Matisse – Yves Saint Laurent: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness’ at the Musée Matisse Nice will explore the parallel experimentation with lines and movement in the work of the artist and fashion designer.

From Nice, head to Saint-Paul-de-Vence, a small medieval village that punches well above its weight in its importance in art history. Marc Chagall is one of its most famous former residents, but it also drew Amedeo Modigliani, Raoul Dufy, and Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon. Your first stop here is the Fondation Maeght, France’s first private art institution. A roaring chorus of cicadas greets you in high summer as you walk around the site-specific sculptures in the foundation’s exterior spaces. This summer, inside the Josep Lluís Sert-designed building, with its distinctive white roofs like a nun’s cornette, there will be a major solo show of works by Ellsworth Kelly. For lunch or dinner in the area, visit the restaurant La Colombe d’Or. The owner used to accept paintings in lieu of payment from cash-strapped artists – a canny business decision that means that customers can now eat face-to-face with an Alexander Calder mobile or a Joan Miró painting.

These artists didn’t just leave paintings behind – they also left their mark on the local architecture. Take a trip to nearby Vence to visit the Chapelle du Rosaire, entirely designed by Matisse and considered by the artist to be his final masterpiece, as well as a colorful and intricate Chagall mosaic inside the town’s cathedral.

Antibes is your next stop. It’s known for its colorful markets, a coastal path notched into the craggy rocks overlooking the sea, beautiful sandy beaches, and Pablo Picasso, who spent two months in 1946 working in the Château Grimaldi, a Roman fort overlooking the water that is now a museum dedicated to the artist. Further off the beaten track is the Fondation Hartung Bergman, a squat white villa in the hills above Antibes, which celebrates the under-appreciated work of Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman, a radical artist couple at the center of Europe’s abstraction movement.  

From here, you can head inland towards Grasse, passing fragrant lavender fields to reach the city of perfume. En route, the Provençal village of Mouans-Sartoux is easy to overlook, but it’s worth a pitstop for the Espace de l’Art Concret alone – an unexpectedly boundary-pushing contemporary arts hub and residency center that houses the Albers-Honegger collection of abstract art. Then it’s a return to the senses with a visit to the Musée du Parfum Fragonard in Grasse, which collaborated with the Centre Pompidou and the Grimaldi Forum Monaco to create olfactory sense baths for the 2025 ‘Couleurs!’ show.  

Fittingly for Provence, a wine estate has established itself as one of the key destinations for contemporary art in the area. Philippe Austruy who began collecting art in the 1980s acquired the Commanderie de Peyrassol in 2001, and has since turned it into an open-air museum that includes works by Daniel Buren, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Ugo Rondinone. This summer a special exhibition celebrates 25 years at the Commanderie de Peyrassol. Visitors can now visit three different spaces across the estate: the sculpture park, the art center, and the storage, where pieces rarely shown to the public will be on display.  

A more recent addition to the Riviera’s modern and contemporary art scene is the Musée du Niel on the Giens peninsula. With its bold, modernist architecture jutting towards the sea, it bills itself as a new port of call for non-figurative art of the second half of the 20th century. This summer a show highlighting the relationship between abstraction and color in Postwar art will spotlight artists such as Simon Hantaï and Fabienne Verdier. 

The final stop on this art-filled itinerary is visible from the Musée du Niel’s balconies. Lodged in the middle of the horizon between sea and sky, Porquerolles is the largest of the islands off Hyères and forms part of a national nature reserve. Beautiful unspoilt beaches, arcades of pine trees and turquoise waters are its hallmarks – along with the Villa Carmignac, a 15-hectare garden with site-specific works and a 2000 m2 art space that visitors pad around barefoot. It’s an unexpected paradise for contemporary art, nestled entirely within a natural one.