Venice, Museo Correr
18 March – 4 June 2017

_

On display at Museo Correr is an outstanding nucleus of 110 highly refined drawings from one of the most important private French collections: the Louis-Antoine and Véronique Prat Collection, which includes all the great masters from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, from Poussin and Callot to Seurat and Cézanne.

After the great exhibition “The Poetry of Light” (December 2014 – March 2015), which presented a selection of extraordinary Venetian drawings from the Washington National Gallery collections, once again Museo Correr is proud to present more great masterpieces on paper.

Started over forty years ago, without a doubt the Prat Collection is one of the most important private European collections of ancient drawings. The underlying aim is to illustrate the development of French drawing over a period of time that spans more than three centuries, from Poussin to Cézanne, with a selection of around 230 sheets, 110 of which are on display in the exhibition.

From the perspective of art history studies, drawing is thus confirmed as one of the highest expressions that an artist can leave behind as testimony of his work.

Clear, incisive, full of detail or, vice versa, rapid, impulsive and without inspection or second thoughts, it is the artist’s most intimate ‘diary’, which, thanks to the freedom allowed by this technique, offers the most authentic moods of its creative inspiration owing to its immediacy.

The exhibition was prepared with the collaboration of Fondation Bemberg of Tolosa, the support of Alliance Française-Venezia and curated by Pierre Rosenberg, former director of the Louvre and the greatest expert in the field of French drawings of that period. It will first be presented at Museo Correr in Venice before travelling to Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse. It is testimony to the vitality of the collection that, in recent years has been enriched with around twenty pieces, on display here for the first time.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue edited by Magonza (Arezzo, 2017), edited by Pierre Rosenberg, with essays by Gabriella Belli, Philippe Cros, Louis-Antoine Prat and Pierre Rosenberg.

Find out more 

_

Curated by Pierre Rosenberg
Show co-organised by Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse
and with the support of Alliance Française, Venice