In January 1910, the Catalan sculptor Manolo Hugué convinced the painter Frank Burty Haviland and the composer Déodat de Séverac to settle in Céret, a small Catalan village of the Pyrénées-Orientales near the border with Spain. They invited their friends from Montmartre to move in, and from 1911 to 1913, in the midst of Cubism.
Pablo Picasso discovered Céret in the summer of 1911 and invited his model and lover Fernande Olivier, and Georges Braque, also a friend of Manolo Hugué, to join him. In 1913, 1914 and 1915 his new lover Eva Gouel also stayed with Picasso and modelled for him in Céret.
In 1919, Pierre Brune invited his former neighbour in the Cité Falguière, Chaïm Soutine, to settle in Céret. Soutine, who was struggling to make an income in Paris where foreigners were stared aggressively, accepted with enthusiasm. Léopold Zborowski, the art dealer of his friend Modigliani decided to support him, and paid for the trip.
Michel Kikoine came to visit him for some months. In January 1920, he learned of the death of Modigliani and the subsequent suicide of his pregnant girlfriend Jeanne Hébuterne. Shaken by the death of his friend, he stopped drinking and observed the recommendations of doctors to heal. However, it was too late for his ulcer. Soutine was hurt, angry and wild, and lived outside the arts community. For nearly two years, he painted enormously. In the summer 1920, Zborowski picked nearly two hundred paintings. Then, Soutine made frequent trips between Céret and Cagnes-sur-Mer until 1922.
Fleeing the Nazis in Céret
A third wave of artists fleeing the Nazis during the Second World War took refuge in the city, such as Tristan Tzara, Jean Dubuffet and Marc Chagall. Pierre Brune, Pinkus Kremegne and Frank Burty Haviland settled permanently in the city.
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