La Vie en Rose. Brueghel, Monet, Twombly
La Vie en Rose. Brueghel, Monet, Twombly
Opening : May 4, 2023. It runs through October 22, 2023
Museum Brandhorst, Munich
Cy Twombly, Untitled (Roses), Gaeta, 2008
From the press release
Museum Brandhorst is participating in Munich’s Flower Power Festival with an exhibition inspired by Cy Twombly’s rose paintings. Taking Twombly’s poetic examination of subjects including death, freedom, isolation, and eroticism as a basis, “La vie en rose. Brueghel, Monet, Twombly” brings together works by further artists including Jennifer Packer, Ellsworth Kelly, Georgia O’Keeffe, Gabriele Münter, and not least Claude Monet, represented by his famous Water Lilies (1915). This bouquet of works from the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and external loans reveals the complex, even contradictory motives of numerous artists over the centuries in engaging with floral subjects.
At the center of the exhibition is Cy Twombly's rose cycle, created in 2008. Twombly created the series Untitled (Roses) specifically for a gallery in the museum, where it has been on show since its opening in 2009. In six monumental paintings, the artist plays through some themes of the classical flower symbolism and provides them with fragments of poems: memory and longing (blue roses), death and grief (purple roses), sensuality and eroticism (pink roses), joie de vivre and salvation (red-green roses), freedom and loneliness (yellow roses). These paintings and themes are accompanied by historical and contemporary loans from the Alte and Neue Pinakothek, the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau München, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, the Neues Museum – Staatliches Museum für Kunst und Design Nürnberg as well as private lenders who take up, vary and interpret the themes.
“La vie en rose” is an exhibition of the Bavarian State Painting Collections. It takes place on the occasion of Flower Power Festival Munich, which celebrates nature in the city in many exhibitions and events.
Curated by Achim Hochdörfer, Giampaolo Bianconi with Estelle Vallender.
For further information:
Museum Brandhorst, Munich
museum-brandhorst.de
