Courbet, Van Gogh, Monet, Léger.
From naturalist Landscape to the
Avant-gardes in the Carmen
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection

4 October 2013 - 20 April 2014
Claude Monet

Low Tide at Varengeville

1882 Oil on canvas, 60 x 81 cm © Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Low Tide at Varengeville
Eliseu Meifrèn i Roig

Valldemossa

1930 Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm © Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Valldemossa
Paul Gauguin

The Fire at the River

1886 Oil on canvas, 165 x 528 cm © Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
The Fire at the River

The impressionist Gaze

The rise of Impressionism in Paris encouraged the leading Spanish painters to look to the French capital, which was at that date the paradigm of modernity and an example to be imitated by new generations of artists. This was the case of Santiago Rusiñol, who during his time in Paris admired the work of Claude Monet (also present in this exhibition). In his landscapes Rusiñol thus began to cultivate a type of luminist painting closely linked to Impressionism but one that maintained its distinctive Symbolist connotations. Notably influenced by Rusiñol’s evolution, Eliseu Meifrèn focused his output on the depiction of gardens and in his late period produced works of enormous freedom of execution and a palette that reveals the influence of Impressionism, including the work of Alfred Sisley and Armand Guillaumin, both present in the exhibition.