Three decades after the last of the one man exhibition of Gustave Courbet, Paris is once again presenting an impressive retrospective of the works made by one of the most important, original and controversial of the 19th century French artists. The main difference is that this time the curators have tried to present the works of Courbet in a new light, as an artist who played a key-role in the development of 19th century art.
The organisers have selected the most important examples of Courbet's work between 1840 - 1877, with a special accent on it's variety and complexity, as well as the social and political elements that reflect the important issues of his time. About 120 paintings, 30 graphic works and sixty photographs, both from the museum's collections and on loan from other institutions are on display. The center of the exhibition are without a doubt the large and complex hunting scenes, which Courbet treated as realistic, almost historical scenes. For Courbet the figure in the composition was a symbol of the man and his suffering.
The photographs chosen present the link between the mature works of Gustave Courbet and the first photographers, presenting side by side the values and ideals of the pictorial traditions and the new media.
2007-07-20
