The context

The Haut de Lièvre district with its two strip buildings – one of which was for a time the longest in Europe – and its buildings arranged in star patterns was designed in 1958 by Bernard Zehrfuss who produced the block plan for it (including the positioning of the church and the shopping centre). After going through various social changes and shifts in identity, the district is now on the outskirts of the city.

The commission

At the request of local residents on the one hand and social workers from the district on the other, the double commission entrusted to two painters will try to provide contemporary "images" of a living environment such as this. Some of the pictures should eventually form part of the collections of the city's Musée des Beaux-Arts, as a special testimony of the museum's history and prestige. While Kirsten Everberg and Sophie von Hellerman have both spent time living in the district, it is at her home in Los Angeles that Everberg painted her series of pictures while von Hellerman's large canvases were produced in a studio made available to her by the Nancy Ecole des Beaux-Arts.