Emile Bernard, the Venetian, Portrait oil on cardboard, 34 x 39 cm, 1929, Private collection
In that exhibition the works of Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne, Sisley, Monet, Morisot, Renoir literally shocked the public generating dismay and partly horror, while one of the exhibited paintings, Print, rising sun by Monet, was quoted by the critic of the time, Louis Leroy, who, paraphrasing its title, created the term “impressionist” painting.
The great names of that movement and the representative works of all the artists who participated in the following eight impressionist exhibitions, between 1874 and 1886, will be at the center of an exhibition welcomed at the National Museum of Artillery Mastio della Cittadella in Turin from 11 March to June 4th.
Gustave Courbet, Coucher de Soleil en forêt, Oil on canvas, 73 x 59 cm, From the former Giovanni Testori Collection; Former Alain Toubas Collection Private collection
In the middle of the path Impressionists between dream and colour there will be about 300 works by over one hundred masters of painting.
Produced by Navigare srl in collaboration with AICS and Artbookweb, with the patronage of the Municipality of Turin and the Piedmont Region, the exhibition traces the origins and history of the revolutionary artistic movement born in France in the mid-nineteenth century, through oil paintings, graphics, preparatory studies, culture, ceramics.
Starting from the classicism of Ingres, crossing the realism of Courbet and the lesson of the Barbizon school – a landscape current of realism connected to the town of Barbizon in France, which led to the birth of Impressionism and its legacy – the exhibition, curated by by Vincenzo Sanfo, is divided into three sections.
Dedicated to the so-called pre-impressionists, the first stage of this journey, From David to the École de Barbizon, the ferment of Impressionismembraces sixteen works by 40 masters, including the study for The death of Sardanapalus by Delacroix, three masterpieces by Courbet, and again the tapestry The seeders by Jean-François Millet, as well as a rare series of glass clichés by Corot and Daubigny.
Félix Bracquemond, Series of decorated plates, ceramic, diameter 22.5 cm
The ferment that whipped up the Parisian art world at the end of the 19th century – caged in an academic vision and rigidly controlled by the mechanism of the Salons – born thanks to artists such as Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Corot and others who, leaving the ateliers, rushed into the streets, in the fields, in the real world, to tell the transformations taking place, in a society that was heading towards the dawn of a new century – explodes in the second section entitled Impressionism. Here the visitor will appreciate 150 works by about 50 artists (16 paintings) protagonists of the movement with greater or lesser success. Paintings, etchings, drawings by Degas, Pissarro, Cézanne, will alternate with woodcuts and sculptures by Gauguin, they will dialogue with the painting Vase of flowers by Manet and with a portrait of Berthe Morisot, with painted ceramic plates by Bracquemond and Renoir’s etching of the famous painting The stagewhile the public will be able to admire The Saone flowing into the arms of the Rhône by Renoir.
The third and final section of this journey will instead look at the legacy of Impressionism, enclosed in the works of 30 artists, from Bonnard to Toulouse-Lautrec, from Ѐmile Bernard to Maurice de Vlaminck.
The exhibition Impressionists between dream and colour will be open all day every day: from Monday to Friday from 9.30 to 19.30, Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 9.30 to 20.30.
Pierre Auguste Renoir, La loge, 1874, etching/aquatint 38 x 53, 1874 cm
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