Renoir: intimacy

In collaboration with the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (07/02/17-15/05/17)

 

Renoir: intimacy brings together more than 60 works by the French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Limoges, 1841 – Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1919), loaned from museums and private collections around the world. They have been selected by Guillermo Solana, artistic director of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, with the aim of revealing the importance of tactile values in Renoir's work. Referring to that aspect of the artist, his son Jean Renoir wrote: "He looked at flowers, women, clouds in the sky as other men touch and caress."

In contrast to purely visual Impressionism, Renoir's canvases emphasise tactile sensations, a characteristic evident throughout his career and in all the genres he encompassed, from portraits to nudes, group scenes, landscapes and still lifes.

Visitors to the exhibition will thus be able to appreciate how Renoir used the tactile qualities of volume, material and texture in order to depict intimate scenes, not only erotic intimacy but also in social connections, friendship and family ties. The exhibition also emphasises how the unique atmosphere and delicate sensuality of Renoir's brushstroke function to establish a connection between the viewer and the work.

 

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Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

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