The first major exhibition on Orientalism to be presented in Canada, this unusual retrospective presents an acclaimed painter of the Belle Époque, Benjamin-Constant. Visitors will discover his dazzling colour palette, influenced by his trips to Moorish Spain and the Morocco of the cherifas. His huge, spectacular canvases, which are travelling for the first time, conjure up fantasies of a dreamlike Orient, viewed through the prism of folklore, ethnographic pretext and the erotic imagination.
Between seductive mirages and masked realities, this major exhibition also exposes the lies of a republic of colonies, put into perspective with paintings by artists of Benjamin-Constant’s time, from Delacroix to Gérôme, and reactions by contemporary artists.
An exhibition organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse.
