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About this talk

Join curator Ann Dumas as she explains how the dazzling light and sapphire seas of the Côte d'Azur became a potent force in the emergence of modern art. To Claude Monet, the French Riviera was like swimming in blue air. To André Derain, its colours were sticks of dynamite primed to discharge light. To Yves Klein, its cerulean skies were nothing less than the infinite made visible. From the 1870s, artists, writers, intellectuals and aristocrats escaped the drab and crowded industrial cities of northern Europe for the French Riviera. Among them were some of the greatest painters of the modern age — Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard. The Riviera's luminous landscape transformed giants of art, literature, cinema and fashion, who in turn helped define the carefree glamour and eternal romance of the Côte d'Azur. Drawing on works in the exhibition Painting the French Riviera, Dumas will discuss how this Mediterranean paradise so captivated the modern imagination, and how its light, colour and beauty propelled successive generations of artists to new creative heights.

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