With forty-seven works by Renoir, coming from French, Austrian, Swiss, Italian, German, Danish, Dutch and Monaco museums, this interesting exhibition dedicated to the master of impressionism opens in Rovigo Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) one of the leading exponents of Impressionism.
The exhibition is the result of an enormous research effort made by the curator Paolo Bolpagni, whose essay, in the catalogue, is accompanied by those of Francesca Castellani, Giuseppe Di Natale, Francesco De Carolis, Michele Amedei and Francesco Parisi.
Also on display is the work personally owned by Prince Albert of Monaco, the “Baigneuse s'arrangeant les cheveux” from around 1890
But surprisingly last February 9, during the last stages of preparation for the exhibition, a problem arose regarding the loan of the bronze of Renoir's 1916 "Venus Victrix" due to the suspicion of its problematic provenance during the period of the Nazi occupation of the Second World War. In record time, however, the curator managed to obtain from the Hamburg Kunsthalle a perhaps even more important sculpture, namely the "Little Standing Venus" of 1913.
Appointment with cinephiles with the film shot by his son Jean
And in the last room it will be possible to see the film in a restored version - with Italian subtitles - of "A trip to the countryside" by his son Jean Renoir, shot in 1936.
This phase of Renoir's creative life is the best known to the general public, but it was characterized by a certain disparity of views with Monet, Pissarro and Degas. Renoir was tormented by dissatisfaction, by the need to find new inspiration. The journey he made to Italy in 1881-1882 was important in the renewal of his art: from here, from the light of Venice and the Mediterranean and inspired by Carpaccio, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Tiepolo, Ingres and from these reflections on pictorial technique, a kind of new classicism.
Alongside Renoir's works, other masterpieces by the great masters of the past who inspired him in the mature phase of his career are exhibited: Vittore Carpaccio, Tiziano, Romanino, Peter Paul Rubens, Giambattista Tiepolo, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , but also of his contemporaries such as the sculptor Aristide Maillol and the “italiens de Paris” Giovanni Boldini, Giuseppe De Nittis, Federico Zandomeneghi and Medardo Rosso and many others…
Cover work: Detail Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Baigneuse blonde, 1882. Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin
