Exposure Nymphea: the American abstraction and the last Monet

The Museum of the Orangery in Paris presents a beautiful exposure on the attraction of the American impressionist artists to the presentation of the last Monet.

The artist Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), discovers the panels in 1952 the Nymphea at the time of a retrospective devoted to Monet in Zurich. Intrigued by these abstract works with the exceptional formats, he makes a request with the heirs to Monet who invite it to Giverny. The vision of the large panels in the workshop leaves him a great impression, because he had never seen tables like that, of the plain compositions representing of water with water lilies, without horizon. These great decorations remained in the workshop of Giverny start to attract the interest of the collectors and the museums.

One often thinks that the Nymphea are one table, they are in fact a series of approximately 250 paintings carried out by Claude Monet during the thirty last years of his life.

The tables representing the Nymphea in the ponds of Giverny, are the reflection of the sky and the vegetation in water, which are the most emblematic tables of the career of Monet, painter founder of the impressionist movement.

Exposure until August 20th, 2018
Museum of the Orangery
Tuileries Gardens
75001 Paris

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Claudine BESSOU

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