Landerneau is a small town (population 15,000) in the French provinces, located in the former Pays du Léon in North Finistère. The river Elorn runs through the town, linking it to the harbour at Brest. In the heart of the town, not far from the beautiful houses dating from the 16th to 19th centuries and the famous old Rohan bridge, you can discover the FHEL – the Fonds Hélène et Edouard Leclerc – a private French endowment fund that for the last two decades has financed exhibitions of modern and contemporary art that are intended to be accessible to all.
This whole Breton family and artistic adventure began with a certain Mr Edouard Leclerc, who set up his first local grocery shop in 1948. Over the decades, the E. Leclerc has grown into a co-operative of retailers and a large-scale, predominantly food retail chain that today employs around 250,000 people. In 2023, E. Leclerc was the leader in its sector in France, with a 22.7% market share and sales of 43.9 billion euros.
On the strength of its economic development, popular success and national reputation, Edouard Leclerc and his wife Hélène decided in 2011 to create a space dedicated to contemporary art, which was inaugurated in 2012 and will be chaired by their son Michel-Edouard Leclerc. ‘Since we already had this commercial and family space in Landerneau, I took up my pilgrim’s staff to seek out contemporary artists’, explains the son and chairman of the FHEL.
Located on the site of the former Capuchin convent, dating from the 17th century and listed as a historic monument, this beautiful group of buildings made of blonde Logonna stone houses a magnificent 1,200 m2 exhibition space. Yesterday it housed the warehouse for the first Leclerc shop from 1949 to 1986, and today it has been the hub of this lively, festive Finistère town for over twenty years.
‘Even though we were selling peas, we were also interested in art and we wanted to make the most of this former Landerneau landmark,’ says Hélène Leclerc, who has been with her husband Edouard in the Leclerc supermarket adventure from the start.
Every season for more than two decades, a major exhibition has been held to showcase the work of famous and lesser-known artists, making the centre the most popular cultural venue in Western France.
‘While Leclerc centres are already major distributors of cultural products, number 2 after FNAC, culture is commercially a territory that we follow’, says Michel-Edouard Leclerc, stressing that the chain is also a “major sponsor” of associative and cultural activities throughout France and particularly in Brittany.
Here are some of the most notable examples: Gérard Fromager, which started in 2012; then the mythical names of art history in succession, with Miro in 2013, Dubuffet in 2014, Giacometti in 2015, Chagall in 2016 and Picasso in 2017; but also Carnets de curiosités in 2019, Ernest Pignon-Ernest in 2023 and Henri Cartier-Bresson still in progress.
‘Henri Cartier-Bresson in Landerneau this summer is a major first: the first retrospective of the artist in Brittany and the first exhibition dedicated to photography at the Fonds Leclerc! That’s why we’ve decided to take on this project and invite you to meet the man who was nicknamed ‘the eye of the century’. Through his eyes, all the continents and societies he travelled through come into view. It’s historic, and still strikingly relevant today’, says Michel-Edouard Leclerc.
The famous expression ‘ça va faire du bruit à Landerneau’ (it’s going to be noisy in Landerneau) dates back to the 18th century, when it was used to refer to the hullabaloo made to mock widows who remarried too quickly. It inspired the name of a famous music festival that has become a landmark in the Brittany region, La fête du bruit. Since 2009, at the height of summer, the city centre has been transformed for three days into a festival ground, packed with international headliners and the most exciting new acts of the moment, ranging from rock and pop to rap, with over 50,000 spectators in attendance. Since its inception, and now in its fifteenth year, more than 300 artists and 500,000 festival-goers have taken to the Jardins de la Palud, a green setting in the heart of Landerneau.
It goes to show that selling food and consumer products can lead to anything, even artistic creation, and even in Brittany. So, between art and music, Landerneau has not finished making noise.
Text by Christine Cibert.
