Paris at that time embraced “la Dolce Vita”, lightness and gaiety. Optimism was rife since the success of the International Exhibition of 1889, for which the Eiffel Tower was constructed. National pride also took expression in the constitution of a new colonial empire which offered – so it was believed – every perspective. Paris was thus the world`s creative capital, of the fashionable plastic arts, not forgetting theatre and cinema. Artists from the whole world, often later naturalised, installed themselves. Writers such as Ionesco, Cioran, Kessel, Troyat, Julian Green, and also painters and sculptors such as Modigliani, Picasso, Dali, Miro, Chagall, Soustine, de Stael, Mondrian, Giacometti, Foujita, and Brancusi…They found themselves alongside French artists such as Bonnard, Braque, Léger, Matisse and Utrillo…