The roads of the imagination

"Linking the road and art, two worlds where travel beckons."

Founded in the early 1990s at the initiative of Alain Dupont, Colas Group Chairman and Chief Executive between 1987 and 2007, the Colas Foundation seeks to promote works of art in the fields of painting and music.

Contemporary painting is the main focus of the Foundation's patronage 

Every year, fifteen contemporary painters from all over the world are selected and commissioned to produce a painting on the theme of the road.
“The idea is to imagine the roads of today and tomorrow and to paint them,” explains Alain Dupont.

The finished paintings are then exhibited at a private view held at the company's head office before being hung in the Group's offices and reception areas in France and other countries.

The Colas Foundation today owns more than 200 canvases, reflecting current trends in pictorial art and the place of the road in the contemporary world.

Synonymous with dreams, liberty, and exchange, roads link people together, helping to generate economic and cultural wealth. Thanks to the Colas Foundation, roads also inspire artistic creation.

Each year since it was created, the Colas Foundation has published a catalogue of its latest acquisitions. A dedicated text presents each work and its artist.
In 2001, during an exhibition of the Colas collection at the Paris Palais des Congrès convention center, a book was published to present the Foundation’s acquisitions from 1991-2001.

> To order the Foundation’s publications

The Foundation is also a patron of musical events

The Colas Foundation also provides support for prestigious musical performances, such as:

• Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, and at the Aix-en-Provence International Lyric Art Festival (2000)
• Handel's Messiah at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris (2002)
• Richard Strauss' Capriccio at the Paris Opéra (2004)
• Mozart's Marriage of Figaro at the Paris Opéra (2006)
• The Beethoven Symphony Cycle at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris (2006)
• Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at the Paris Opéra (2007)
• Stravinsky's The  Rake's Progress at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris (2007)
• Verdi's Luisa Miller at the Opéra Bastille, Paris (2008)

For the past ten years, the Foundation has also been an official sponsor of the Jazz in Marciac Festival, an unmissable event for jazz musicians and fans from all around the world.