Ferrara, upcoming major Gustave Courbet exhibition at Palazzo dei Diamanti

Gustave Courbet (Ornans, 1819 - La Tour-de-Peilz, 1877) is the protagonist of the major exhibition scheduled in Ferrara, at the Palazzo dei Diamanti, from September 22, 2018 to January 6, 2019. The exhibition, entitled Courbet and Nature, will focus precisely on the relationship between Courbet and nature: an important landscape painter, Courbet considered nature his main source of inspiration, and as many as two-thirds of his paintings are panoramas, views, foreshortenings, and horizons where the natural element is the protagonist. The Ferrara exhibition will be the first in Italy dedicated to Courbet in fifty years, and will consist of about fifty canvases on loan from several international museums. A great innovator, among the fathers of realist painting, of which he was the main exponent, Courbet abandoned traditional classicist painting, moved away from Romanticism and was one of the most controversial artists of his time: many of his works aroused scandal, but after him art would undergo profound transformations (the Impressionists, for example, were fascinated by his lesson).

The Palazzo dei Diamanti exhibition, the presentation promises, “will take the visitor on an exciting journey: from the views of his native Franche-Comté painted in his youth, to the spectacular seascapes often shaken by the storm, from the mysterious caves from which springs gush to the karst cavities that burst into streams, from the sensual nudes immersed in lush vegetation to the evocative hunting scenes, to the powerful realist masterpieces of his maturity.” Nature paintings were always Courbet’s favorite, despite the fact that the French artist was also famous for his social paintings, which made him famous. Views of the places he frequented, beginning with Ornans, the village of his birth, or Paris, the city where he worked, to the coasts of Normandy and the Mediterranean and glimpses of Switzerland and Germany-Courbet’s landscapes themselves are important essays of his realist painting. More information about the exhibition will follow.

Image: Gustave Courbet, The Wave (1869; Frankfurt, Städel Museum). © Städel Museum / Artothek

Ferrara, upcoming major Gustave Courbet exhibition at Palazzo dei Diamanti

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