Le communiqué de presse de Kiki, Reine de Montparnasse : 
communique_de_presse_kiki_reine_de_montparnasse_-_tresor_de_vix.pdf
Exposition
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Communiqué de presse
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Nu (Kiki de Montparnasse) - Maurice Mendjisky - Musée Villa la Fleur en Pologne
Une muse... et une artiste
Kiki performed as a singer and a dancer in famous parisian cabarets such as the Jockey, the Boeuf sur le Toit or the Concert Mayol. She even opened her own cabaret called Babel Chez Kiki. She was also a painter, a writer and an actor. Her memoirs (Souvenirs, 1929), prefaced by Ernest Hemningway, reflects her full awareness of her role in the cultural production of the Roaring twenties. Crowned “Queen of Montparnasse,” she embodied a new female visibility in which bodily freedom, artistic assertion, and social transgression redefined women’s place in the public sphere. Kiki represents a new way of portraying women : free, modern, and liberated from social and moral constraints.
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Kiki assise - Man Ray - © MAN RAY 2015 TRUST ADAGP – 2026, image Telimage, Paris
Kiki de Montparnasse
Born into a modest background in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Alice Ernestine Prin moved to Paris in her adolescence and quickly became a well-known personality in the artistic Montparnasse of the 1920s.
A muse and model for Kisling, Foujita, Soutine, Mendjisky, Gargallo, and Man Ray, she embodied the creative effervescence of a generation.
Her immortalization in Le Violon d’Ingres by Man Ray (1924) propelled her to the status of a universal icon of Surrealism.
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Fille au chapeau - Maurice Mendjisky - Collection Aldona et Wojciech Olejnik
Exceptional loans of artworks
As part of the Châtillon-sur-Seine, Cradle of Icons project, this exhibition reconnects the legacy of Kiki de Montparnasse with her hometown and invites visitors to rediscover a key figure in women’s emancipation and 20th-century cultural history.
Exceptional loans from around the world:
- Musée Villa La Fleur – Poland
- Musée des Années Trente – Boulogne-Billancourt
- Musée Goya – Castres
- Écomusée de la Bresse
- Cinémathèque Française
Featuring works by remarkable artists:
Man Ray, Pablo Gargallo, Tsuguharu Foujita, Moïse Kisling, Maurice Mendjisky, Zaliouk, and Kiki herself. -
Exhibition of National Interest
Muse to Man Ray, Maurice Mendjisky, Moïse Kisling, Tsuguharu Foujita and Chaïm Soutine, Kiki was immortalized in the iconic photograph Le Violon d'Ingres (1924). She embodied a new image of womanhood: free, audacious, and liberated from social conventions. A cabaret singer, painter, writer, and actress, she shaped her own legend and actively participated in the cultural life of the Roaring Twenties.
This “Exhibition of National Interest” presented by the Musée du Pays Châtillonnais – Trésor de Vix offers an immersive and accessible journey, bringing together photographs, paintings, drawings, archives, and Kiki’s own works.
Discover Kiki’s universe from April 1 to December 30, 2026.
