Spring is rising with new exhibitions in Paris. Find below our favorites:
The idea for this
exhibition came from reading the book 21 rue La Boétie (Grasset) by Anne Sinclair, in which
the author tells the story of her grandfather, Paul Rosenberg (1881-1959), one of the great
art dealers of the first half of the last century.
The career of this
exceptional man, a successful businessman and knowledgeable art lover, the
friend and agent of Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Léger, Marie Laurencin, to name
but some of the most well-known artists, serves as the guiding theme through a
much wider history than his own, one in which he was both actor and victim. In
other words, an exhibition on art and civilization, with the legendary gallery
of Paul Rosenberg serving as the pivot to 20th century period paintings that
combines the history of art, social and political history and the history of
mentalities as these unfolded in France, Europe and the United States.
A significant
portion of these works are linked directly to Paul Rosenberg, having transited through his
galleries in Paris or New York. Rosenberg was an emblematic witness to a crucial turning point in
the history of art: the shift of the centre of artistic gravity from one side
of the Atlantic to the other, due of course to the
upheavals caused by the Second World War.
Through
comparisons with the works of other artists of the Golden Age - among them
Gerrit Dou, Gerard ter
Borch, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch, Gabriel Metsu, Caspar Netscher, and Frans van Mieris —
the exhibition brings to light Vermeer’s membership of a network of painters
specializing in the depiction of everyday life while admiring, inspiring, and
vying with each other.
Although they were painting in different cities of the Republic of the Seven United
Netherlands, their pictures show marked similarities of style, subject,
composition and technique.
This dynamic
rivalry played its part in the remarkable quality of their respective works; in
this context we might be tempted to think of Vermeer as just one painter among
others, but in point of fact this reciprocal contact tended to render his temperament
sharper and more individual. Rather than a stylistic innovator, he emerges as an
agent of metamorphosis.
The Marmottan
Monet Museum presents the first monographic
exhibition Camille Pissarro in Paris for 36 years. Some seventy-five of his masterpieces,
paintings and temperas, from major museums worldwide and prestigious private
collections, tracing the work of Camille Pissarro, from his youth in the Danish
West Indies to large
series urban of Paris, Rouen and Le Havre at the end of his life. Considered by Cézanne as ” the
first Impressionist ” Pissarro was one of the founders of this
group.
It is also the
only one to participate in their eight exhibitions. Companion and faithful
friend of Monet, master of Cézanne and Gauguin, Seurat inspirer, supporter of
Signac, Pissarro is a major and
essential artist. Polyglot intellectual, committed and militant, listening to
the younger
generation, his work, powerful and evolving, offers a unique view of the
research that has animated
the Impressionists and Post-circles of the second half of the nineteenth century.
