Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec at Palazzo Roverella

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is the protagonist of the annual spring event at Palazzo Roverella featuring international art.

The major exhibition of 2024 is dedicated to the French artist, one of the most representative figures of late nineteenth-century Paris, and can be admired at Roverella from February 23rd to June 30th, 2024. Promoted by the Cassa di Risparmio Foundation of Padua and Rovigo in collaboration with the Municipality of Rovigo and the Accademia dei Concordi, with the support of Intesa Sanpaolo, the exhibition, produced by Dario Cimorelli Editore, is curated by Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, Francesco Parisi, and Fanny Girard (director of the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi), with the collaboration of Nicholas Zmelty (Posters and Engravings section).

Going beyond the often simplistic approach that reduces Toulouse-Lautrec to a one-dimensional figure, sometimes even relegating him solely to the role of poster artist, this exhibition focuses on his activity as a painter. It showcases paintings and pastels from major American, European, and French museums, in relation to the Parisian environment in which he worked, juxtaposing the artist with realists, impressionists, and symbolists with whom he shared experiences and moments of daily life.

The exhibition naturally does not overlook Toulouse-Lautrec's activity in the field of poster art. In addition to the famous Affiches, paintings and preparatory drawings of the artist are exhibited, dialectically paired with works by numerous artists who were active contemporaneously in the same milieu, often tackling similar themes. This meticulous reconstruction of Toulouse-Lautrec's entire oeuvre (60 works by the artist out of more than 200 works displayed in total) aims to evoke, in a broader and more organic manner, the vivacity of the Parisian art scene, transcending the simplistic notion of the Belle Époque.

The exhibition is enriched by numerous focuses to better describe the Parisian artistic environment in which the artist operated: "Paris 1885-1900"; "Le Chat Noir"; "Toulouse-Lautrec and his artist friends"; "The renewal of graphics," and above all, a previously unseen section dedicated to the French artistic movement "Les Arts Incohérents" (curated by Johan Naldi), a precursor to many techniques adopted by the avant-gardes of the twentieth century such as Dadaism. All the works of the group, considered lost for over a century, were rediscovered in 2018, and some of them bear, on the reverse, the label of one of their exhibitions accompanied by the catalog published by the editions of the famous venue Chat Noir. The Rovigo exhibition is the first opportunity to admire them again.... read the rest of the article»