Where if not in Venice, which dedicated a room to him during the Biennale of 1950, could such an ambitious exhibition take place: Henri Rousseau, the Archaic Candour? It is the result of the numerous tried and tested collaborations between MU VE and the Paris Musée d’Orsay. The exhibition throws a new light on a painter who had been ignored by the critics for a long time, being considered as a sort of an outsider, almost an idiot savant of painting, but very much loved by his “colleagues”.
The exhibition places Rousseau’s work in the wider movement of the historical avant-gardes of the early 1900. Do not be surprised then, if the 38 paintings by Rousseau relate to another 60 paintings by Gauguin, Valloton, Cézanne, Odilon Redon, Max Ernst, Seurat, Signac, Kandinskij, Klee, Morandi, Carrà like in a game of references and reflections. A repertoire of the key works of the early 1900, which share a dream with the work of “Le Douanier” (the customs officer): to find the lost innocence again, to paint like no one else has painted before, leaving any pictorial, figurative norm behind. Basic and primitivistic techniques that can reveal that lost “candour”, back to the origins.
Here we find the big portraits of dames and children, as flat as playing cards, the small basic paintings like some ex – voto works, still life and fairy tale landscapes, skies cut by planes and airships that look like toys, of bizarre and arbitrary colours.
You cannot miss the room, which hosts six of the famous jungles, botanical, exotic and dreamlike fantasies, with no perspective. Rousseau conceived his paintings not far from his house; he painted the lianas, agaves and ferns of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.
At the end of the exhibition, the visitors will relive the famous banquet Pablo Picasso organised in his honour in 1908 after he had bought his “Portrait of a Woman”. The painting by Rousseau is shown opposite “ La bouteille de Bass” (the bottle of bass) by Picasso, in a room where you can hear the echo of the verses of the poem Guillaume Apollinaire dedicated to Henri Rousseau during that famous banquet and the music of the waltz “Clemence” composed by Le Dounaier himself which was played for the occasion.
Henri Rousseau. The Archaic Candour
Doge’s Palace, Venice – Doge’s residence/apartment
06th March> 06th September 2015
Opening hours:
From Sunday to Thursday 09.00 / 19.00
Friday and Saturday 09.00 / 20.00
C.S.
