Paula Padani. Plage de Tel Aviv, vers 1942
Paula Padani. Migrant dance: Hamburg, Tel Aviv, Paris
From 14 November 2024 to 16 November 2025
The exhibition retraces the little-known career of dancer Paula Padani (1913-2001) through over 250 photographs, posters, documents and costumes. With her vision of movement as a force for life, and her ability to bounce between different countries and cultures, she blazed new trails for her art and played a pioneering role in the emergence of Israeli contemporary dance.
Born in Hamburg and trained in modern dance, Paula Padani drew on her art as the driving force behind a life that was marked from childhood by the death of her parents, and then by exile.
The last Jewish student at the Wigman School in Dresden, one of the centres of choreographic modernity in Europe, she left for Mandate Palestine clandestinely in 1936 via Switzerland, Italy and Greece. Discovering the landscapes and cultures of the Middle East stimulated a fertile creative vein in her.
She opened a dance school in Tel Aviv and created a repertoire of highly expressive solos inspired by the music of Béla Bartók, Marc Lavry and Alexander Uriyah Boskovich. Along with other exiled dancers, she took part in the development of the modern theatre scene in Israel.
In 1946, after ten years of intense life in the heart of ‘Palestinian’ bohemia, she chose to move to the diaspora with her husband, the painter, designer and theatre decorator Michael Gottlieb, known as Aram. Choosing Paris, the couple occupied several successive studios and pursued their artistic quest. Aram devoted himself entirely to painting and forged friendships with many of the artists of the École de Paris, while Paula pursued a stage career in Europe and New York that was acclaimed by a wide audience.
Between 1947 and 1948, at the invitation of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, she toured the camps for displaced persons in the American occupation zone in Germany, supporting Jewish survivors.
From the 1950s onwards, she devoted herself to teaching, focusing on improvisation and the development of individual creativity, in line with the avant-gardes of the Weimar Republic.
Paula Padani died in Paris in 2001, shortly after the death of her husband.
The exhibition brings this committed artist back to life with documents donated by Gabrielle Gottlieb de Gail, daughter of the painter Aram and Paula Padani.
Curatorship: Laure Guilbert et Nicolas Feuillie
See also
Location
Auditorium foyer
Rates and reservation
> Full rate: 10 €
> Reduced rate: 7 € (18-25 year non European Union residents)
> Free access: Friends of the mahJ, under 18, 18-25 year European Union residents. See more
Online booking is recommended, including for free ticket holders, Paris Museum Pass holders and Friends of the mahJ.
Free for all on the first Saturday of the month from October to June.
Purchase your entrance ticket:
Online ticketing*
> On site, at the ticketdesk, during museum opening hours
By phone, (33)1 53 01 86 57 (Tuesday and Wednesday from 10.30 am to 1 pm)
* Secured payment by credit card with a surcharge of €0.50 per ticket.