BURGOS.- The exhibition, which comes from the Petit Palais in Geneva, has the purpose of showing how life was lived in Paris one Century ago, coinciding with the opening of Cajacirculo in the city. The show offers the possibility to citizens of Burgos, who have not had the opportunity to get to know the French capital. The exhibition will also have guides that will show visitors to understand life in Paris in those times. “Paris 100 Years Ago” shows the taste collector Oscar Ghez had through paintings made by Degas, Renoir, Picabia and Picasso among others. This way the whole city is not presented but a selection from the collector’s point of view. At that moment Paris suffered two revolutions, one artistic and the other architectonic according to curator Maria Dolores Jimenez.

Oscar Ghez de Castelnuovo, an industrialist with a passion for painting, is at the origin of this museum which displays works of great quality from its own collection and organises temporary exhibitions. From impressionism to surrealism and its extensions to abstract art, avant-garde art is prominent here. It is impossible to mention all the artists represented: Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Caillebotte, Sérusier, Gauguin, Vuillard, Marquet, Van Dongen, Vlaminck, Derain, Dufy, Chagall, Picasso, Foujita and Soutine are here, among others. Several rooms are devoted respectively to Louis Valtat, a fauvist painter, Moïse Kisling and Nicolas Tarkhoff, representatives of the Paris school, and to the sculptor Zadkine.

Oscar Gehz was born in Tunisia. The family moved to Marseille when he was young. After graduating from university, he joined his brother to establish a succesful technology Co in Italy. As a jew, he had problems with the rise of Mussolini. The brothers exchanged factories with the Pirelli company, and relocated to Lyon. When the German occupation created difficulties in the South of France the brothers emigrated to USA. Immediately after the war, they succesfully re-established the business. In 1950 Ghez suffered the death of many relatives, and expanded his art collection.

In 1963, the business was sold, and Gehz moved to Geneva. In 1968 he established a private museum to display his art collection. He died in 1998 with an art collection of several works. He was particularly interested in the development of the impressionists and paintings from artists who suffered in the holocaust.

Oscar Ghez (1905-1998) amassed more than 5000 works from the beginning of the 1950s until his death in 1998.