A summer of modern art

About Guillaume Morel's selection of exhibitions devoted this summer to the masters of modern art for Connaissance des arts.

This summer, the masters of modern art are invading museums: Connaissance des arts magazine has selected thirteen exhibitions that will add colour to your holidays! Want to know more? On the programme: Claude Monet (see elsewhere), Edouard Vuillard, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Germaine Richier, Auguste Renoir, Georges Braque, Richard Guino, Henri-Edmond Cross, the Fauves and Surrealist women.

- "Vuillard et l'art du Japon", until 29 October at the Fondation de l'Hermitage in Lausanne. Japanese art exploded in Paris at the end of the 19th century, and painters such as the Impressionists and the Nabis immediately took an interest in it. Edouard Vuillard, a collector of prints, was clearly inspired by it in his compositions, framing, synthesis of forms and taste for decoration. Other Nabis, such as Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton and Paul-Elie Ranson, were also interested in this aesthetic, enabling the Fondation de l'Hermitage to bring together over a hundred paintings and prints produced between 1890 and the First World War: landscapes, interior scenes, women in kimonos, and Japanese objects.

- Renoir à Guernesey, 1883", until 10 September at the Musée des Impressionistes in Giverny. The exhibition brings together a group of paintings by Auguste Renoir on his return to Paris after a five-week stay in Guernsey with Aline Charigot and a few friends in September 1883. There, he did a great many sketches and drawings from the bay of Moulin Huet, where he lived, taking in the crystal-clear waters, the landscapes, the vegetation, the steep paths and the local population, particularly the young women bathing naked in the rocks.

- Georges Braque, l'œuvre graphique", until 29 October at the Pierre André Benoît museum-library in Alès. To mark the 60th anniversary of his death, the attractive museum nestled in the Château Rochebelle, former residence of the bishops of Alès, is paying tribute to Georges Braque, inventor of Cubism with Pablo Picasso. It's amazing how moving the artists' drawings are, as if they were revealing the most intimate part of their work. Whether in charcoal or oil pastel, Braque's drawings are no exception. As are the lithographs, etchings, woodcuts and drypoint engravings...

- Monet en pleine lumière", until September 3 at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. Thanks to the support of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, some one hundred paintings by Claude Monet are on show in the two and a half thousand square metres of the Grimaldi Forum. The surprise comes in the form of around twenty works produced by the leading light of Impressionism on the Riviera during his two stays there... and which are being shown for the first time in France close to the sites that inspired him: Monte Carlo, Bordighera, Cap Martin...

- Guino-Renoir, la couleur de la sculpture", until 5 November at the Musée d'art Hyacinthe Rigaud in Perpignan. Richard Guino (1890-1973) may not be a household name on the art market, but this Catalan sculptor who was Aristide Maillol's assistant nevertheless developed his own research in parallel, experimenting with plaster as well as ceramics, metal and bronze. It was on the initiative of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard that he began to work as a duo with Auguste Renoir, and this exhibition finally pays tribute to his talent by presenting more than two hundred works created by four hands, which for a long time had been wrongly attributed solely to Renoir.

- Marquet en Normandie", until 24 September at the MuMA in Le Havre. Devoting an exhibition to Albert Marquet, who regularly came to Le Havre where he forged links with several collectors, and who is therefore already very present in the collections of the André Malraux Museum of Modern Art, was something of an obvious choice. This painter is instantly recognisable for his modern framing and subtle shades of blue and green, and his landscapes are soothingly gentle. The chronological tour takes us from La Percaillerie in 1903 to Dieppe in 1937, via Le Havre, Trouville, Fécamp, Honfleur and Rouen...

- Henri-Edmond Cross dans la lumière du Var", until 14 November at the Musée de l'Annonciade in Saint-Tropez, and "Henri-Edmond Cross, œuvres sur papier" until 30 September at the Villa Théo in Le Lavandou. He is not the best known of the Impressionists. Henri-Edmond Cross (1856-1910) shared a taste for pointillism with Georges Seurat, but quickly moved away from it to create paintings with freer brushstrokes, whose bright colours brought him closer to Paul Signac.

- Matisse années 1930 à travers Cahiers d'art", until September 24 at the Musée Matisse in Nice. The 1930s were a key period in Matisse's career. His forms became purer, he tackled the monumental project of La Danse, and he invented the principle of cut-out gouaches... After a great success at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, this exhibition is presented in a different, and no less interesting, configuration in Nice.

- Formes & métamorphoses: la création céramique de Picasso", until October 30, and "Picasso et l'orfèvrerie", until September 24, at the Musée Magnelli in Vallauris. These are just two of the events blossoming everywhere in this year of the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death. We know about his passion for ceramics after he met Suzanne and Georges Ramié in Golfe-Juan, who founded the Madoura workshop. Less well known is his production of jewellery and gold and silver dishes in collaboration with the François Hugo workshops, a goldsmith who also worked with Derain, Arp and Cocteau.

- The Fauve years", until 21 January 2024 at the Fondation Gianadda in Martigny (Switzerland). Produced in collaboration with the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the exhibition includes loans from the Centre Pompidou, the Musée Paul Dini, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux and private collections. In all, more than a hundred works of art are displayed here in the majesty of Fauvism, including paintings, sculptures and ceramics. We find Henri Marisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, whose works of art for sale sparked an outcry of protest at the famous Salon of 1905. And all the others who later went on to shock the art market with their dazzling colours: Henri Manguin, Othon Friesz, Albert Marquet, Raoul Dufy, Charles Camoin, Kees Van Dongen, Louis Valtat...

- Then there's "Max Ernst, mondes magiques, mondes libérés", on show at the Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence until October 8; "Germaine Richier" at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier until November 5; and "Surréalisme au féminin? at the Musée de Montmartre in Paris until September 10.

Illustrations :
- Édouard Vuillard, La Maison de Roussel à La Montagne (detail), ca. 1900
Graphic design: Balmer Hählen
- Prerre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Rocks of Guernsey with figures (Beach at Guernsey), 1883
Art for Guernsey Collection © Art for Guernsey
- Villas in Bordighera, 1884, Oil on canvas, 61x74 cm - Hasso Plattner Collection
- Albert MARQUET (1875-1947), Le Havre, le bassin, 1906, oil on wood, 61.4 x 50.3 cm. Le Havre, Musée d'art moderne André Malraux, purchased by the City with the help of the Fonds du Patrimoine, the Normandy Region Fonds régional d'acquisition des musées, AMAM, and the companies Helvetia, Chalus Chégaray et Cie, CRAM, CRIC, 2019. MuMa Le Havre / Charles Maslard
- Henri Matisse. La Grande Bleue et mimosas, 1937, juile on canvas, 92,7 x 73,3cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Mrs. John Wintersteen ©Succession H.Matisse | Photo ©PMA - Joseph Hu