Drawn Blank in Provence - Bob Dylan

Château La Coste in Provence has been chosen as the venue for Bob Dylan’s first monumental sculpture placement in France. Rail Car, the new site-specific ironwork sculpture, has been created by the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter, musician and artist to be installed in the Château’s outdoor art estate. The permanent installation will be unveiled in May.

The unveiling of Rail Car will coincide with an exhibition featuring 24 of Dylan’s paintings, entitled Drawn Blank in Provence, running from 9 May to 15 August in Château La Coste’s Renzo Piano-designed art gallery. Another first – Dylan’s first painting exhibition in France – Drawn Blank in Provence presents the artist’s work in a new context, highlighting novel aspects of Dylan’s artistic practice. The unseen canvases are based on drawings Dylan originally made whilst on tours of Europe and America between 1989 and 1991.

Alongside Dylan’s paintings will be works by artists including Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall, masters of twentieth-century art whose practice was greatly influenced by their time in the South of France. The exhibition, which will be accompanied by commentary from leading art historian, theoretician, educator, and director of the Hunter College Galleries, Joachim Pissarro, reveals the influence of these pioneering artists on Dylan’s The Drawn Blank Series (2008–2013).

There will also be a focus display of a large-scale triptych, created by Dylan in 2021, installed in the Richard Rogers drawing gallery from 9 May to 5 June, to run alongside the unveiling of Rail Car.