Pont Aven Art Capital of Southern Brittany

Welcome to Pont-Aven, Southern Brittany's Art Capital

Pont Aven has more than sixty art galleries and museums. Wherever you go Pont Aven's artistic heritage is self evident. Driving through Pont Aven it can just look a town packed full of tourists poking about in arty shops.

Well, it’s all that and more. When we did stop we lost half a day there and will definitely go back. There are places the crowds don’t spread to ~ and they are some of the most picturesque

parts of the town.

The little town nestles in a hollow of the estuary that is endowed with rich natural beauty.

Pont-Aven centers around its pont, the bridge over the Aven River. There are pavement cafés on one side and the main square of the town on the other, which is the centre of most of the town's activity.

Pont-Aven is rich with tradition. In the 19th century, Pont-Aven was a centre of industry, known for its flour mills and its port. It still

retains its main economic activity, biscuit-making. Nearly two million boxes of Pont-Aven biscuits (galettes de Pont-Aven) are produced annually.

Pont Aven has always inspired artists, and American painters began arriving here in 1865, and life in the town changed radically.

Pont Aven is famous for its painters, thanks to the school of painting that bears its name. In 1886 Paul Gauguin stated,

"I love Brittany. Here I discover the wild, the savage. When my clogs fall upon its granite soil, I hear the dull, deafening and powerful sound I seek in my

painting."

Paul Gauguin and the Pont Aven School were an artistic revolution.

It was Paul Gauguin's strong personality, possibly at first more than his paintings, that held the group together. Their works from the "Pont Aven school," (also known as "cloisonisme" or "synthetisme)" were precursors of "fauvisme" and featured large colored surfaces themselves outlined in contrasting shades.

The group of painters came from all over the world to Pont Aven and the surrounding area of Southern Brittany that provided the catalyst for this explosion of creativity.

Today, Pont Aven remains a focal point for contemporary art in Brittany, full of art galleries whilst trying hard to remain quaint and unspoiled. A difficult balancing act, but one Pont Aven achieves extremely well.

Spirulina is even fed to ornamental fish as it improves their colours!

Spirulina puts the pink in pink flamingos!

I want to be in the pink too! Don’t you?

just fancy

that!