Catalogue Gustave Courbet

This is the french edition catalogue relating about the exhibition Courbet to Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris until 28 january 2008.

The exhibition will be an opportunity for a new generation to discover the work of a painter who was a major figure in the history of nineteenth-century art in all its breadth and diversity.
This retrospective brings out the complexity of Courbet’s work and its sometimes paradoxical links with the representation of reality and the pictorial tradition. It reassesses his place in his time and analyses his links with other art forms, particularly photography. The exhibition therefore gives the keys to understanding a many-facetted oeuvre, the manifesto of realism in 1848-1855 and its consequences for art history. This approach provokes thought about the nature of Courbet's realism and the role of Romanticism in his work. It sheds light on an influence which was decisive for the adepts of “New Painting” in the 1860s and the beginnings of Impressionism.