What a wonderful exhibition has just begun in the musée Granet! One half of ‘L’Atelier du Midi’, the other being in Marseille, ‘De Cézanne a Matisse’ is one of the major shows for the MP2013 Year of Culture.
Its theme is the South of France and the impact it had on painters. It starts with Cézanne who of course was born here in Aix and then shows us interpretations by artists who streamed down from the north, attracted by the light and the beauty of the Mediterranean coast.
I was fascinated to see this painting by Maurice Denis, ‘Visite a Cézanne’, which illustrates the painter on his favourite hillside – the Terrain des Peintres, the view from which, as I blogged recently, is under threat. It was painted in 1906 when Denis visited the artist before visiting Renoir.
The first groups clearly show the influence of Cézanne both in terms of style and also in subject matter. There are several ‘bathers’ – a particularly dynamic one by Cézanne (lots of free lines), to the blossomy ladies painted by Renoir. Loved the one by Manguin, new to me.
On we go, through cubism and fauvism, then up to the top floor for even more delights. My very
favourite Monet, the lonely pine tree at Antibes from the Courtauld in London is here, and how interesting to be able to compare it with other paintings of these very distinctive trees. Matisse’s work is shown in this gallery alongside works by Camoin and Marquet who also worked in Algeria and Morocco. Matisse later said, ‘My influence came from Cézanne and the Orientals’.
The exhibition takes us all the way via Picasso to abstraction and finishes with 3 fascinating little films of 3 artists at work: Picasso drawing, Matisse cutting his shapes and most moving, Renoir a very old man, trying to paint with severely arthritic hands – but hanging on to his cigarette all the while.
This is a fantastic exhibition, bringing together some beautiful and/or stimulating paintings, well curated. I now want to go back again – and look forward to seeing the second part in Marseille.
At the musée Granet until 13th October.
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