QUOTIDIANOMIME

“Henri Rousseau. The archaic whiteness” is the exhibition, curated by Laurence des Cars and Claire Bernardi, you can visit at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice from March 6 to July 5.

The hundred masterpieces on display, 40 of Rousseau and 60 from other painters, from major international collections, tell the inimitable magic realism and poetry of the Customs Officer (nick name of Russeau) in a comparison with his contemporaries, which shows the undeniable influence of his art on representatives of the historical avant-garde of the world, from Frida Kahlo, Picasso, Kandinsky to Morandi and Carra.

“It’s the first time Italy is organizing an event of this size dedicated to this unique artist,” says the director of the Foundation Venice Museums (Muve) Gabriella Belli, creator of the initiative along with Guy Cogeval. This is an artist ‘original’ eccentric, true outsider of French painting, which is abnormal, although it was the first to restore the use of the design after the revolution.

Fabulous jungles, dreamlike landscapes, still lifes, portraits, where the construction is not always perfect, widely open a window on exotic worlds and archaic.

Writes the critic and collector Wilhelm Uhde Germanic in 1911: “In the face of nature Rousseau is like a child: for him, every day is a new event which ignores the laws; in his eyes, behind the phenomena exists something invisible that is, so to speak, the essential. The nature has kept all its veils, for him, his religious feeling and imagination are stimulated, hence, the mystical note of his paintings. “

The “naivete” of Rousseau is not the only carrier of the exposure of the Palazzo Ducale, this show correctly points out the significant influence of the artistic movements of the time by this painter despised by academics, who judged his style to be “less “.