Alexis Gritchenko, the wandering painter between Ukraine and the Mediterranean: a major exhibition at the Château-musée Grimaldi

From 7 March to 15 June 2026, the Château-musée Grimaldi opens its galleries to Alexis Gritchenko, un peintre vagabond, an exhibition honouring one of the most distinctive and cosmopolitan figures of twentieth-century European art: Alexis Gritchenko. Painter, theorist and tireless traveller, Gritchenko forged a unique artistic path shaped by movement and cultural exchange, ultimately finding a lasting source of inspiration on the Mediterranean coast, in Cagnes-sur-Mer.

Born in 1883 in Krovoletz, Ukraine, the artist settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1927 with his wife, Lilas de Maubeuge. After years of constant travel across Europe, the village on the French Riviera became their permanent home, where Gritchenko lived and worked until 1960. Far from the Ukrainian steppes of his childhood, yet deeply connected to their memory, he developed a highly personal visual language.

Describing himself as “a man from the steppes”, Gritchenko regarded the Mediterranean as his “true homeland.” For more than thirty years, Cagnes-sur-Mer fuelled his artistic research. Doors, gardens, architectural details and landscapes recur throughout his paintings, shaped by an intense exploration of light, colour and spatial rhythm, where memories of his origins blend with a sense of newly found belonging.

The exhibition holds particular symbolic value, as it takes place within the very walls that welcomed the artist during his lifetime, reaffirming his role in the cultural history of the town. The works on display come from private collections, two French museums and, exceptionally, the Musée national d’Art d’Ukraine, offering visitors a broad and nuanced overview of his oeuvre.

Through landscapes and compositions deeply connected to lived places, the exhibition invites audiences to rediscover an artist whose human and creative journey—from the Ukrainian steppes to the Mediterranean shores—forms an integral part of Cagnes-sur-Mer’s cultural narrative.

A painterly and biographical journey, where art becomes a reflection on exile, identity and rootedness, and where place and memory converge in the work of a great wandering master of the twentieth century.