Entitled Pierre Bonnard, the colours of light, The Grenoble museum in partnership with the Orsay Museum presents a major exhibition dedicated to the artist. Including more than 75 paintings and approximately 40 paper based artworks (drawings, posters, photographs), the show takes visitors on a unique journey encompassing the entirety of the artist’s oeuvre, with the theme of light at its heart and the different colours and nuances it took according to the places he stayed during the course of his life.
Having featured in the museum of Grenoble’s collections since the early days, particularly with one of his masterpieces, the 1932 Intérieur blanc, Bonnard spent every holiday of his youth in a small village of the Isère region called Le Grand- Lemps, where his family on his father’s side originates. Nevertheless, the museum had so far never put together a show devoted to one of the major figures of 20th century art. This event, which furthermore received an exceptional loan from the Pompidou Centre/National museum of modern art and several other loans from French museums, enables the bridging of this particular gap.
The show is organised around six sections, each of them depicting a specific theme of the painter’s different periods of creation. Additionally two rooms are inserted in this arrangement: the first one is dedicated to photography which the artist mainly practised in the family circle from the 1890s to the 1910s, and the second one to graphic arts and feature a very fine set of drawings which evidence the energy and precision of his stroke.The exhibition ends on a contemporary counterpoint with a series of unreleased photographs by Bernard Plossu, made recently in the painter’s House at Le Cannet.
