Museum of Contemporary Sacred Art

Museum

Eglise de Saint-Hugues-de-Chartreuse
17 place Arcabas
38380 Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse

Conceived, designed and created by the artist Arcabas over a period of more than thirty years, this collection of one hundred and eleven paintings, stained glass windows, sculptures and furniture is one of the most accomplished examples of twentieth-century sacred art.

Located in an exceptional setting in the heart of the Chartreuse Regional Nature Park, the museum offers visitors a unique experience of encounter with the world of the painter and sculptor Arcabas.
Nowadays, it's rare to see a building whose interior volume is so vigorously possessed by color. Subordinate to the initial volume, but deliberate in the development of its expression, it takes root on the structure of the vault and blossoms in symmetry around the perimeter of the central vessel.
You have to enter this small mountain church, built in 1860, far from the world, to get the shock of this colorful mass, solemnly ordered, becoming a fiery speech, which goes from exordium to narration to end in the conversation of sacred texts. Small in construction, it suddenly becomes large, thanks to a unity of tone that absorbs and includes the entire chromatic scale, and all the diversity of plastic proposals.
Intended, conceived and realized by a single artist, abandoned and then revived over the course of more than thirty years, this unique ensemble ranks as one of the most ardent and accomplished achievements of contemporary sacred art.
After several years spent searching for church walls to paint, where he could express himself and his faith through painting, Arcabas finally came across the modest church of Saint Hugues and its parish priest, Raymond Truffot, in February 1952. The church was undergoing roof and floor repairs. The mayor, confident in his priest, agreed to an artistic intervention inside the church, graciously offered by this unknown painter. It was the beginning of an adventure, but also of a friendship between an artist and a priest, who placed his unwavering trust in the twenty-five-year-old until his death. But little does anyone know that the adventure itself will last thirty-four years.