ART OF THE MATTER
VILLEPIN
“We have to bring art back to what it really is,” says Arthur de Villepin, the Washington-born, New Dehli-raised founder of the Art de Vivre Group, “which is not just something entertaining but is here to ask questions far more needed in society than we think.”
In March, amid the global coronavirus pandemic, Arthur and his father, the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, raised the curtain on their 2,500sqft, three-storey Villepin gallery on Hollywood Road with an inaugural exhibition of late Chinese painter Zao Wou-Ki’s works. Shaped around their shared passion for art and lifelong relationships with collectors in Asia – “which is becoming the real art centre of the world” – Villepin’s opening was a gutsy feat that not only invigorated the
