ODILON REDON. AS IN A DREAM
Although Odilon Redon as a visual artist was one of the most important forerunners of modernism, and above all Surrealism, his work has not been seen in Germany for decades. This exhibition offers a survey of the French Symbolist's oeuvre with more than 200 drawings, lithographs, and pastels. During his early period, which was influenced by the contradictory movements of Romanticism and the Naturalism of the Barbizon school, he developed, in contrast to the Impressionists, a pictorial world that was predominantly black-and-white, deriving entirely from inner experience. Toward the end of the nineteenth century Redon turned to extensive use of color, and his figures and objects exude a mysterious, mystic aura. His coming to terms with the sciences, psychology, and literature of his time and an open conception of religion defined Odilon Redon's visual cosmos, and his work retains a suggestive power undiminished even today.
CATALOG
Edited by Margret Stuffmann and Max Hollein, with a preface by Max Hollein and texts by Markus Bernauer, Bernard Dieterle, Dario Gamboni, Ulrike Goeschen, Ursula Harter, Stefanie Heraeus, Barbara Larson, Norbert Miller, Ursula Perucchi-Petri, Ewald Rathke, Marie-Pierre Salé, Margret Stuffmann.