Monet in full light: Exhibition in Monaco

On the occasion of the 140th anniversary of Claude Monet's first stopover in Monte-Carlo and on the Riviera, the Grimaldi Forum Monaco will dedicate its major summer exhibition to him from July 8 to September 3, 2023.

Bringing together a hundred works from around the world in a space of 2,500 m², the exhibition will be one of the largest monographs devoted to Claude Monet of this decade, and undoubtedly the most audacious. It will retrace the work of Monet and will explore the artist's stays on the Riviera at a turning point in his life. The route, punctuated by paintings from all over the world, including many masterpieces rarely presented together - and an unpublished one - will offer a new approach to the work of the Master and will invite visitors to approach his work differently.
Around a section devoted to paintings made on the Riviera, more than twenty exceptional works, presented for the first time in France and very close to the sites still preserved where they were painted, the exhibition will put into perspective the work of Claude Monet with regard to his quest to capture light. Located at the crossroads of the chronological journey and the thematic bias, this exhibition - placed under the curatorship of Marianne Mathieu, Claude Monet specialist - will give the keys to better understand the quest for painter through an exceptional scenography in a museographic space offering total freedom of creation.

For Marianne Mathieu: "Monet's work is very coherent, from his youth in Le Havre to the last paintings at Giverny, he does not seek to paint a motif but rather a moment; Monet does not paint a landscape but an atmosphere. On the Riviera, between 1883 and 1888, it is the maturity, Monet discovers himself the painter of the series, it is also the starting point of his campaigns.

In Giverny, which he will hardly leave at the turn of the century, he evolves again, changes his point of view, and only paints the mirror of water. Monet abandons panoramic views in favor of a tight framing offering an almost abstract vision of water and its reflections. He does not paint his garden but the only elements which are water and light. It represents the image of a floating world".

Organized with the exceptional support of the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris, this exhibition also brings together more than thirty lenders: private collections including the collection of H.S.H. the Prince of Monaco and major international institutions including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Vonder Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal and the Fondation Beyeler in Basel...

"I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, the boat are located. The beauty of the air where they are and it is nothing else but the impossible. (...) The motif is something secondary, what I want to reproduce is what is between the motif and me". said Monet 

DATES : 8 july till 3rd of september 2023

HORAIRES :everyday from 10h00 to 20h00

NIGHT :ON THURSDAYS TILL 22h00

Where :Espace Ravel du Grimaldi Forum Monaco - 10, avenue Princesse Grace -98000 Monaco