Odilon Redon masterpieces

Decorative panel "Le jour" for the library at the Abbaye de Frontfroide
gorgeous decorative panel Le jour (1910) for the library at the Abbaye de Frontfroide

Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful - Emmanuel Kant

Odilon Redon's symbolism

I discovered this artist during an exhibition Années 1900 at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, located in the heart of Paris on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées (currently closed for renovations, temporarily relocate to the base of the Eiffel Tower, from September 2020 to Spring 2024: stay there until the end of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games).

I was really attracted by his paintings and colors, a little mysterious, especially his Yellow tree painted in 1900-1901, as well as his gorgeous decorative panel Le jour (1910) for the library at the Abbaye de Frontfroide, near Narbonne, in Southern France.
Also love some of his other artworks: charcoal drawings, in particular L'araignée souriante (The smiling spider, 1881), influenced by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), Redon's noirs feature monsters and hybrid creatures.

Odilon Redon (1840-1916), from Bordeaux (a city and region in southwest France, located close to the European Atlantic coast), is a French symbolist painter, printmaker and carver of considerable poetic sensitivity and imagination.
His carvings explore haunted, fantastic, often macabre themes and foreshadowed the Surrealist and Dadaist* movements.

He won the admiration of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and other painters as an outstanding colourist for his oils and pastels, chiefly still lifes with flowers.

In the 1860s, he met Camille Corot (1796-1875) and was deeply influenced by  his drawings of trees. He also met the printmaker Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1885) and learnt the craft of engraving and etching from him.  Then, he studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) and learnt the lithography under Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904).

In 1900, he worked with his friend Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898, one of my favourite poets) and exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel, a French art dealer (1831-1922).

He produced nearly 200 prints, including his 1st album of lithographs titled Dans le rêve (In the dream) in 1879.
Was also inspired by
  • authors like Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849, his works was successfully translated in French by Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-1867) whose unusual sensibilities were well suited to the artist's own

* relating to Dadaism, a style of early 20th-century art, literature, music, or film based on deliberate irrationality and negation of traditional artistic values; some characteristics of Dadaism: humour, whimsy, artistic freedom, emotional reaction, irrationalism, negation, absurdity, and spontaneity; launched in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara and others.

Yellow tree (1900-1901), Buddha (1905)
Yellow tree (1900-1901), Buddha (1905)


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