LE CANNET.- Over summer 2013, the Bonnard Museum is hosting an original exhibition of work Gauguin to Bonnard, presenting the symbolic, or even iconic impact of nude art on art history from 1880 to the 1950s.

Since the very beginning of easel painting, the story of Eve has haunted painters from Masaccio to Rubens, including Michelangelo, Bosch and Breughel. In the XXth century, Eve appears as the unifying thread of the formal and symbolic reinterpretation of the feminine nude through the image of the first woman. The first woman or unique woman in an artist’s universe. One that, as Marthe for Bonnard, is the intrinsic representation of the naked body.

As did Gauguin with his exotic Eve and Bonnard with Marthe-Eve, many artists have succumbed to this representation of a guilty or ideal nudity, that is primitive in itself. Gauguin, Bonnard, Rodin, Brancusi, Derain, Matisse, Maurice Denis, Chagall, Redon, Sérusier, Picasso, etc... they all produced one or several versions of a modern Eve.

From Symbolists to Nabis, including Fauves and Cubists, they renew their vision of the body through this image of the origins and of the earthly Paradise. Eve becomes the standard for the feminine nude and its representation in the XXth century.

Exhibition curator: Véronique Serrano, curator of the Bonnard Museum