an immersion of light and color
Never as in these dark times, man needs art: where darkness could affect our ability to create, to design, art comes in little help to heal souls or, at least, to save us, even in time. little, from what outside goes in the opposite direction to how we would like.
The exhibition dedicated to Claude Monet, in Genoa, Palazzo Ducale, from 11 February to 22 May, is a dip in color and light, an all-encompassing experience in the world of the great painter, forefather of the Impressionists.
Fifty works, which represent a journey through the artist’s artistic and personal life, some of which were kept until his death in the beloved house of Giverny: the exhibition, from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, is a set of traditional set-up, united to technology and visual experience, that whatever makes the event usable at any level and at any age.
Under the direction of Marianne Mathieu, art historian and scientific director of the Marmottan Monet museum, an exhibition has been created in which the experiential factor of immersion takes the visitor right from the entrance: once you pass the passage, you are literally surrounded of light and colors, of sounds, of images that recall streams, the sound of nature, the rustle of leaves, the freshness of the water lilies, those that Monet portrayed in two hundred and fifty works, in the house of Giverny; here the visitor disconnects from the outside world, begins a journey, made up of emotions, sensations, pure enjoyment for the eyes and the spirit.
The first part of the exhibition is biographical, centered on the artist’s beginnings, the encounters that encouraged his debut as a disruptive and revolutionary painter: between his portrait, the one painted by Charles Giron, a Swiss painter, his great admirer, and those of his son. minor Michel, Monet’s autographed color palette stands out. The color in the Monet years, in turn undergoes a technical revolution: it is the moment of the tube, transportable, much more comfortable to mix and for this reason, the artists leave their studios, in search of light, “En plein air”, precisely.
In the exhibition, you can see everything that Monet’s genius was: the painter who made possible the perception on canvas of the wind, the sunlight, the London fog that envelops everything and to help the visitor to understand, walls panels that focus the attention on Monet’s painting technique, his “eye” that observes and reproduces what he sees, even when this view is missing and one arrives at the production contaminated by ocular disease, then recovered thanks to an operation: weeping willows, the Japanese bridge, the generous nature of Giverny that Monet paints as a blind man who regains his sight.
The last room, in the heart of the Ammunition Rooms, between the medieval columns, the explosion of colors of the floral paintings, from the famous Water Lilies to the branch of roses, painted between 1925 and 1926, shortly before his death: the purple-colored rosebuds that stand out against a blue sky, the sky of his Giverny.
Photo by Andrea Cosimini