ROME, ITALY.- The Palazzo Grassi presents "From Puvis de Chavannes to Matisse and Picasso. Towards modern art", on view through June 16, 2002. It aims to present a novel approach to the origins and development of 20th century art: modern art does not descend, as is commonly thought, from Manet and Impressionism, but from an artist who is himself at the origin of another tradition, the French painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898).



The author of monumental mural decorations in public buildings, such as the museums of Amiens, Lyons, Rouen, the Panthéon, the Sorbonne and the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, and the Boston Public Library, and of paintings among the most famous in their time, Le pauvre pêcheur [The Poor Fisherman], L'Espérance [Hope], Les jeunes filles au bord de la mer [Young girls by the sea], Puvis de Chavannes had a remarkable influence on his contemporaries in France and abroad, as well as on later generations of artists.



His large picture Doux Pays [Sweet Country], painted in 1882 for a private residence in Paris (today at the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne), shows idealised characters moving in an idyllic landscape that emanates a sense of perfect harmony, achieved through the horizontal positioning of the composition elements, the way the shapes relate to one another and the modulation of colours.



Puvis de Chavannes deeply influenced the work of Seurat, Gauguin, and Cézanne, who is indebted to him for the theme and organisation of his cycle "Bathers". Puvis de Chavannes is also at the origin of the art of the Nabis (Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton, Aristide Maillol) and of most European symbolists, as he left a mark on artists such as Ferdinand Hodler and Edvard Munch.



The influence of Puvis de Chavannes was also to shape the style and development of the careers of Matisse and Picasso, two artists who remained loyal to him throughout their lives. This exhibition aims to document, for the first time with such breadth and precision, this vision of the history of art by displaying over 200 paintings and sculptures on loan from collections all over the world.





Serge Lemoine, taken from exhibition press realeses