Beloved impressionist master
Claude Mone stars in one of the most anxiously awaited shows of
the Italian museum season as Turin's Modern Art Gallery (GAM)
opens its doors Friday to an exhibition displaying 40 of the
artist's most famous works, seven of which have never been shown
in Italy.
The works are on loan from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and
include such famous titles as Les Dindons (The Turkeys),
L'Eglise de Vetheuil (The Church at Vetheuil), Les Villas a
Bordighera (Villas at Bordighera), and La Cathedrale de Rouen
(The Rouen Cathedral).
Also in the exhibition is the famed 1865 work Le Dejeuner
sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), Monet's tribute to the
eponymous work by Manet.
That work will also be featured in a GAM exhibition on
Monet in 2016, in partnership with the Orsay museum.
This show on impressionism follows two others previously
held at GAM, one dedicated to Degas in 2012 and another to
Renoir in 2013.
"It especially pleases me to make the people of Turin and
of Italy happy by loaning our works," said Guy Cogeval,
president of Musée d'Orsay.
"This show is especially dear to me, as Monet is perhaps
the artist that I love the most, and the one I deal with the
most," Cogeval said.
Turin Mayor Piero Fassino also praised the collaboration
between the cities' museums.
"The partnership with the Orsay is a great one, in the name
of culture and spreading art to a wide public," Fassino said,
adding that the Renoir exhibition attracted 260,000 visitors.
"Turin is showing it believes in culture as a vehicle of
development and a tool against the economic crisis," he said.
"We are investing 100 million euros per year, between
public and private funding," Fassino said.
The exhibition was sponsored by Unipol financial services
company and Fiat Chysler Automobiles (FCA).
Seven hundred groups have already booked visits to the
Monet exhibition.
"We all love Monet," said curator Xavier Ray.
"Looking at his works gives a great sense of freedom and
joy. It touches within, arriving deep into our soul, giving us
moments, minutes of happiness," Ray said.
"Often I'll see people stopping for dozens and dozens of
minutes in front of his paintings, as if they were in ecstasy,"
he said.
This is the same effect that the Turin exhibition is aiming
for with Monet's canvases on the study of water, as well as
those that depict the snow, such as La Pie (The Magpie), La
Charrette. Route sous la neige à Honfleur
(The Cart. Snow-covered road at Honfleur), and one of his most
universally recognized masterpieces - the 1886 oil on canvas
painting Study of a Figure Outdoors: Woman with a Sunshade
Turned to the Right.
The exhibition runs through January 31, 2016.
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