"Visions of Nature from Le Petit Palais in Paris"
2001-05-18 until 2001-08-26
Bergen Art Museum
Bergen, , NO Norway

Bergen Art Museum hosts Visions of Nature from Le Petit Palais in Paris, an exhibit of exceedingly high international standard. The exhibition consists of 74 masterpieces by Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, and is the second most expensive art exhibition ever shown in Norway with its insurance value of $87 million (800 million NOK). Jean-Pierre Soula from the French Embassy in Oslo is opening the exhibition.

The exhibition will take the visitor on a journey through some of the most outstanding pieces of European landscape painting from the seventeenth through the beginning of the twentieth century. The viewer will have an unique opportunity to take a closer look at panting technique and choice of motif of the painters who worked in these very important years of European art history - the periods of Realism, Impressionism and the Post-impressionistic period.

Petit Palais was completed for the World exhibition in 1900 and was considered to be the jewel of the exhibition. It has since then been a public art museum in Paris and through the years has acquired an impressive collection.

The exhibition Vision of Nature is curated by Petit Palais with two different aspects in mind. One of them is that Norwegian painters are know to portray nature in an outstanding manner and the exhibition will add new dimensions to this understanding. The other reason, and maybe the more important one, is that we have now been aware of that nature is perishable and that it can be ruined. Through this exhibition we will have the opportunity to take a retrospective look at the former generations view of the nature. The exhibition is presented through five different themes: To paint the nature, The journey to Italy, The Nature as the Mirror of the Soul, The Nature in its different guises and The Light.

IMAGE:
Claude Monet
Solnedgang ved Seinen,
Lavacourt,
Winter, 1880

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Norway

Other Important Exhibitions in Norway