The Douanier Rousseau. Archaic Candour Exhibition

Event Description

The Musée d’Orsay presents a landmark exhibition on French artist Henri Rousseau, a unique figure in the history of European Art. The show will draw comparisons of Rousseau’s works with sources of inspiration for the artist, which consist of academic paintings, new paintings and avant-garde works by seminal artists such as Seurat, Delaunay, Kandinsky and Picasso as well as other lesser-known artists. These comparisons will evoke the wealth of interconnections woven around the Douanier Rousseau, the catalyst who stimulated an original way of exploring modernity.

Placing an emphasis on his role in asserting the Parisian and international avant-garde, the exhibition showcases Rousseau’s radical transformations of traditional genres through 45 of the artist’s most important and influential works, including his landscapes, portraits, still lifes, allegories, and famous exotic jungle scenes. These works will create a critical investigation of Rousseau’s works based on the notion of archaism, and question Rousseau as a product of the 19th century or an exponent of 20th century art.