“We all paint in Delacroix’s language” (Paul Cézanne)
Eugène Delacroix, irreducible rebel, enigmatic and extravagant. Few artists have had over him such a deep and lasting influence on his contemporaries and on future artist’s generations. This is the dominant theme that this event aims deepen. Delacroix was the flame that ignited a revolution the influenced the art of French painting of the IXX century.
His work is credited with having liberated the color palette and technique from traditional dogmas and practices, opening the way for new painting styles, such as Impressionism and, thereafter, for artists who have found inspiration in his art, including Manet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir, Matisse and Kandinsky.
His inspiring paintings of biblical scenes, real and imaginary journeys to North Africa and colonial reports, but also the scenes influenced by English literature and painting (Delacroix went to England in 1825 where he visited the studio of Richard Parkes Bonington), vibrated of all the pentagram of the human passions: love stories, lust, violence, war. “The first merit of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes”, said the painter in his old age.
Delacroix, called “Poet of painting” by Charles Baudelaire, is one of the most exciting artists for the intensity of drama, the unrestrained fantasy, the violence, the sex and the sensuality represented on the canvas throughout his life. “I do not like the rational painting“.
Eugène Delacroix from the world
The exhibition brings together on this occasion more than 60 works from 30 major public and private collections around the world, including the Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and the Petit Palais (Paris); the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles); the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); the National Gallery of Art (Washington); and the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam). Delacroix paintings are exhibited alongside the works of his famous contemporaries artists and subsequent followers who over time have followed in his footsteps till the extreme abstraction of Kandinsky.
Le tele sono illustrate a tema per approfondire l’opera di Delacroix e per indagare la forte orma del suo ascendente nel rinnovare l’arte della pittura francese nel IXX secolo. I temi esaminati contemplano: Orientalismo; narrazioni religiose, letterarie e storiche; e gli animali, fiori e estetismo.
The canvases are shown by theme, in order to deepen the work of Delacroix, and to investigate the strong footprint of his influence in renewing the art of French painting in the IXX century. The themes examined contemplate: Orientalism; religious, literary and historical narratives; animals, flowers and aestheticism. Official link
Eugène Delacroix. The Boat of Dante, 1822. Oil on canvas, cm. 189 x 246. Louvre museum, Paris
Richard Parkes Bonington. A Knight and Page, 1826 ca. Oil on canvas, cm. 46,4 X 38,1. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
Eugène Delacroix. The Death of Sardanapalus 1827. Oil on canvas, cm. 395 x 425. Louvre Museum, Paris
Théodore Chassériau. Woman and Little Girl of Constantine with a Gazelle, 1849. Oil On Wood, cm. 29.4 x 37.1. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Museum purchase with funds provided by the Agnes Cullen Arnold Endowment Fund
Eugène Delacroix. Christ calming the storm, 1853 ca. Oil on canvas, cm. 50,8 X 61. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Frédéric Bazill. Young Woman with Peonies, 1870 Oil on canvas, cm. 60 × 75. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1983. Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees
