More than a hundred years, from around 1864 until 1971 the Impasse Ronsin in Paris was home to a warren of studios used by wide variety of artists with very different backgrounds and approaches. This curious cul-de-sac hidden away in Montparnasse served as home and atelier to some 220 artists, from academic sculptor Alfred Boucher to Argentine performance artist Marta Minujín. Amongst the best known were; Eva Aeppli, William Copley, André Almo Del Debbio, Max Ernst, Jasper Johns, Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, James Metcalf, Isamu Noguchi, Larry Rivers, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. If Constantin Brâncuși was its most famous resident – based there from 1916 until his death – it’s most infamous was Madame Steinheil, mistress and maybe murderer of the French President whose artist-husband also met a brutal end, turning the Impasse Ronsin into one of the most notorious crime scenes of the early 20th century.

Texts by Phyllida Barlow, Oscar Chelimsky, Iris Clert, Bill Copley, Adrian Dannatt, Christophe-Emmanuel del Debbio, Paul B. Franklin, Paul-Armand Gette, Jasper Johns, John Kasmin, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, Claude Lalanne, Liliane Lijn, Harry Mathews, Marta Minujín, Monique Alicia Moï-Orban, Karen Moller, Olivier Mosset, Jérôme Neutres, Elsa Noël-Guesnon, Isamu Noguchi, Andres Pardey, Reginald Pollack, Clarice Rivers, Larry Rivers, Philippe Roux, Niki de Saint Phalle, Luc Sante, Roy Skodnick, Daniel Spoerri, Haroun Tazieff, Calvin Tomkins, Phillys Tower, Roland Wetzel