PRESS FILE El Modernismo De Sorolla à Picasso 1 880-1918 Du 28 janvier au 29 mai 2011 MARDI À DIMANCHE DE 10H À 18H JEUDI JUSQU’À 21H 2, ROUTE DU SIGNAL LAUSANNE WWW.FONDATION-HERMITAGE.CH Fondation de l’Hermitage Donation Famille Bugnion Joaquín Sorolla, María en costume de paysanne valencienne (détail), 1906, huile sur toile, 189 x 95 cm, collection privée © photo Gonzalo de la Serna Arenillas/Charlie Peel, Archives BPS, Madrid Graphisme Laurent Cocchi Photolitho Images 3 Impression PCL Press release p. 2 Practical information p. 3 Catalogue excerpt p. 4 Timeline p. 8 List of lenders p. 11 List of works p. 12 Biographical notes p. 16 Events p. 21 Illustrations p. 24 Press Contact : Emmanuelle Boss – [email protected] Fondation de l’Hermitage director : Juliane Cosandier 2, route du Signal, case postale 38 tel. +41 (0)21 320 50 01 CH - 1000 LAUSANNE 8 Bellevaux fax +41 (0)21 320 50 71 www.fondation-hermitage.ch e-mail [email protected] 1 El Modernismo PRESS RELEASE El Modernismo From Sorolla to Picasso, 1880-1918 27 JANUARY TO 29 MAY, 2011 In January 2011, the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne is organizing a major exhibition devoted to Spanish art at the dawn of the 20th century. Focusing on painters of “The Generation of 1898” who emerged from the severe upheavals endured by Spain throughout the 19th century, the exhibition highlights how these artists evolved. Oscillating between respect for Hispanic traditions and modernity, their works were part of the contemporary surge to broaden horizons that arose among the Spanish avant-garde. Although it is extraordinarily rich and varied, Spanish art at the dawning of the 20th century is still relatively little known outside Spain. And yet the years between Goya’s death and Picasso’s Cubist period span several fascinating decades which bore the first fruits of Spanish modern art. With this exhibition, the Fondation de l’Hermitage is offering its visitors the opportunity of discovering some of Spain’s hidden treasures, many of which will be seen in Switzerland for the first time. With some one hundred paintings, the event will be bringing together the most significant artists of the time (Anglada, Beruete, Casas, Mir, Picasso, Pinazo, Regoyos, Rusiñol, Sorolla, Zuloaga). The vast majority of works are from public Spanish museums (the Prado, the Sorolla Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Valencia Fine Arts Museum), as well as from private Spanish collections. Some major paintings from the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Rodin will complete this rigorous selection of exceptional works. Project Director: Juliane Cosandier, director of the Fondation de l’Hermitage Curator : William Hauptman, art historian and author of the catalogue raisonné on Charles Gleyre, who has curated several important exhibitions at the Fondation de l’Hermitage, such as L’âge d’or de l’aquarelle anglaise (1999), L’impressionnisme américain (2003), Impressions du Nord, La peinture scandinave (2005) and La Belgique dévoilée (2007). Catalogue : Published jointly with Editions 5 Continents in Milan, with a preface by Juliane Cosandier and colour reproductions of all the works displayed, the catalogue includes articles by William Hauptman and Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the great-granddaughter of the artist Joachín Sorolla. The catalogue also includes a biography of each artist and a bibliographical section on reference works. The exhibition and catalogue have so far been generously supported by and the Fondation pour L’Art et la Culture. 2 El Modernismo PRACTICAL INFORMATION PRACTICAL INFORMATION Title El Modernismo From Sorolla to Picasso, 1880-1918 Venue Fondation de l’Hermitage 2, route du Signal CH – 1000 Lausanne 8 Bellevaux tel. +41 (0)21 320 50 01 www.fondation-hermitage.ch [email protected] Director Juliane Cosandier Dates 28 January – 29 May, 2011 Exhibition hours Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 – 18.00, Thursday open till 21.00, closed on Monday Open on Easter Monday (25 April) 10.00 – 18.00 Admission fees adults : CHF 18.- Senior citizens : CHF 15.- Students and apprentices over 18, unemployed : CHF 7.- Disabled visitors (with AI card) : CHF 13.- Youngsters under 19 : free Reduced prices for groups of 10 or more Payment accepted in Euros Number of works 100 General Curator Juliane Cosandier, assisted by Florence Friedrich Curator William Hauptman Catalogue 160 pages, 22 x 27 cm, 100 full-page colour illustrations Publisher Fondation de l’Hermitage, joinly with Cinq Continents Editions, Milan Exhibition-related activities guided tours and events Art & Gastronomy evenings Art & Brunch Sundays Lectures and concert For children and schools Workshop-tours for children, workshop-tours for children and adults, Children’s quiz tours, educational file and special guided tour for teachers Café-restaurant L’Esquisse +41 (0)21 320 50 07 or www.lesquisse.ch Access by bus bus n° 3, 8, 22 or 60 : bus-stop Motte, or bus n° 16 : bus-stop Hermitage Access by car follow signs after motorway exits Lausanne-Blécherette (n° 9) or Lausanne-Vennes (n° 10), car park Place des Fêtes at Sauvabelin Next exhibition Van Gogh, Bonnard, Vallotton… The Arthur & Hedy Hahnloser Collection 24 June - 23 October, 2011 Press Contact person Emmanuelle Boss, [email protected] 3 El Modernismo CATALOGUE EXCERPT CATALOGUE EXCERPT Une certaine vision de l’Espagne « Un voyage en zigzag en Espagne serait un voyage de découvertes. » Victor Hugo, En voyage, Alpes et Pyrénées, 1890 More than most European countries, France has had an unusual interest in the exoticism and culture of its southern neighbor, but not always in the most affirmative light. During much of the time, the popular French belief was that Spain was an inscrutable country of strange disparities: while it had the traits of an idealistic, impractical, courtly Don Quixote, it also possessed the foolishness and ignorance of Sancho Panza. Despite the appeal of Spain as a curious foreign land, at once aristocratic and poor, mystic and terrestrial, much of the image of Spain in France—and perhaps the rest of Europe—before the middle of the 19th century was seen largely as a backward country far removed from the enlightening forces of the rest of Europe. Montesquieu thought it a country replete with idle noblemen, mass ignorance, ignoble cruelty, religious fanaticism, and social decay. Voltaire voiced the notion that the Spain of his time was the very symbol of the pre-Enlightenment world, a country that had ruthlessly and materialistically imposed its will and rule on the New World for its own immoral profit; it is little wonder that he pronounced that Spain “ne mérite pas la peine d’être connu.” For Victor Hugo, the inimitable contrasts of the country were at once attractive and bizarre: “O Espagne décrépite! O pays tout neuf! Grande histoire, grand passé, grand avenir! présent hideux et chétif! O misère! O merveilles! On est repoussé, on est attiré . c’est inexplicable.” Such ideas were frequently expressed without having visited the country situated beyond the Pyrenees, which determinedly preserved its autonomy and sometimes a self-imposed isolation from the rest of Europe. Even the Romantic writers, who frequently used Spanish lore and history as motifs for their works, rarely chose to go to Spain, although Hugo, Sand, and Stendhal are notable exceptions. In the absence of first-hand récits de voyage, what was generally thought about Spain was to be found in countless roguish contes of gypsies, brigands, colorful scoundrels, and other typecast figures that permeated the popular imagination. Only with Théophile Gautier’s Voyage en Espagne, published in full in 1843 after a Spanish sojourn three years earlier, did the French public have a reliable, if still romanticized notion, of its landscape, customs, and culture. Assured by the image of Spain already digested through Balzac, Hugo, de Musset, Vigny, Nodier, and others, Gautier was nevertheless apprehensive as he crossed the border into another European world, as he remembered Heinrich Heine’s question to him posed during a concert by Liszt: “Comment ferez-vous pour parler de l’Espagne quand vous y serez allé?” That Gautier did speak of Spain with poetry and ease is an indication of his descriptive prowess—he thought of his work as a “daguerréotype littéraire”—indeed providing his readers with an undeniably vivid, entertaining, and attractive picture of a country that was still barely known to the north. He also dispelled the clichéd idea of Spain that most Frenchmen had at the time: “Le type espagnol tel qu’on l’entend en France n’existe pas en Espagne.” Gautier’s account, picturesque to an extreme, would be followed by dozens of others as the century continued thus providing further impetus for additional voyagers curious to explore a country that for some hardly constituted a part of Europe, an echo of the adage that “l’Afrique commence aux Pyrénées.” But while Spain remained an uncharacteristic country for most Frenchmen, many of the fictional characters that formed the core of Spain’s cultural heritage had occupied a central place in French literature for centuries. Such proverbial heroes as Le Cid (Corneille, 1636-7), Don Juan (Molière, 1665), Don Quixote (in Lesage’s Gil Blas de Santillane, 1715-35), or Beaumarchais’ Figaro trilogy—Le Barbier de Seville (1775), La Folle journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), and La Mère coupable (1792)—were all icons of Spain’s literature which then became appropriated in French culture. Nevertheless, as enduring as these classics came to be in their diverse forms, it is not from such literary sources that most of us associate as the customary image of Spain. The most evident vehicle from which many of our impressions of the Hispanic spirit derive is in the form of “Spanish” music written by French composers.