DP MJCCSW 4.10_EN - copie - Maison de la France

Severin Wunderman, collector and benefactor
Born in 1938 in Belgium and forced during the Second World
War to seek exile in the United States, Severin Wunderman rose
from his beginnings as an apprentice watchmaker to become a
leading figure in the Swiss luxury watchmaking industry.
An art lover from his youth, with a particular interest in the
works of Cocteau, he was only 19 when on a whim he acquired
the first piece in his collection – an original drawing of a scene
from the writer’s novel Les Enfants Terribles (The Holy Terrors)
– spending nearly all of his first salary payment as an apprentice
watchmaker.
He would continue to build up his collection over the years,
founding a museum in Irvine, California to display these works in
1985. But his fervent wish was that a large number of the pieces
in his collection would return to France one day, where a
museum might give them a permanent home.
Smitten with Menton, a town of great symbolic importance for any admirer of Cocteau, Severin
Wunderman arranged to meet deputy mayor Jean-­‐Claude Guibal, who helped him to bring this
project to fruition.
On 27 June 2005, following Wunderman’s exceptional gift, the town of Menton, with the backing
of France’s Ministry of Culture and Communication, entered into a commitment to build a public
museum to house his collection. The foundation stone was laid on 29 December 2008, at a
ceremony which Wunderman was regrettably not able to attend as he had passed away just a
few months earlier.
In September 2005, the Ministry of Culture and Communication had approved the registration
of the Severin Wunderman collection as part of the holdings of the Musée Jean Cocteau in
Menton, which has held the status of a “Musée de France”, alongside such institutions as the
Louvre and the Palace of Versailles, since 2003.
Brief biographies
Séverin Wunderman
© Ville de Menton
Jean-­‐Claude Guibal, Deputy Mayor, Menton
The shimmering light of his native Corsica and the potent identity of the peoples of the
Mediterranean have left their indelible mark on Jean-­‐Claude Guibal, born in Ajaccio on 13
January 1941. It was therefore quite natural that, after pursuing higher studies at a number of
France’s most prestigious institutions – earning diplomas at HEC in 1963, the Institut d’Etudes
Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in 1965, the ENA in 1967 and named a reserve officer by the
Ecole d’Application de l’Arme Blindée Cavalerie in Saumur (the training school for the armoured
cavalry branch of the French Army) in 1966 – and following several positions in both the public
and private sectors, Guibal then launched his political career in Menton, becoming the town’s
mayor in 1989, before being elected as its representative to the French National Assembly in
1997.
In this body, where he serves as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, his passion for the
Mare Nostrum has led, among other distinctions, to his appointment as France’s representative
to the Parliamentary Assembly for the Mediterranean.
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