Redon Odilon - French painter, graphic artist, art critic, considered one of the founders of symbolism as a trend in art. A native of an aristocratic family, Redon was born on April 22, 1840 in Bordeaux.
Odilon Redon: biography
Redon was fond of drawing from childhood. The work of a 10-year-old master brought him fame in his immediate circle, and at the age of 15, the young man began to study drawing professionally (master the technique of watercolor and copy English engravings), under the guidance of local artist Stanislav Goren. Then he studied for some time in the workshop of Jerome in Paris.
Redon Odilon was an extremely suspicious person, did not believe in his own talent, which contributed to his weak popularity. There was a case when in 1868 one of his paintings was approved by the commission of the Paris Salon, but at the last moment the artist was frightened of something and took the work away.
In Paris
In a positive way, Redon Odilon was influenced by military service (1870) and participation in the Franco-Prussian war: a lack of confidence appeared in the character of the young man. The work of Leonardo da Vinci, Eugene Delacroix, Francisco Goya and Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, as well as acquaintance and communication with the famous schedule Rodolfo Breden, had a huge impact on the further definition of the life of the Frenchman. After the war, Odilon Redon permanently moved to Paris, where he began to engage in coal drawings and lithography.
These black and white works (“blacks” - as the painter himself called them) were published in small series: “The Apocalypse of St. John”, “In a Dream”, “Origins”, “Edgar Allan Poe”, “Night”, “Gustave Flaubert” , “Flowers of Evil”, “In Honor of Goya”, “Dreams”, “Temptations” (1879-1896).
The fantastic world of Odilon
Friendship with the botanist Armano Clavo, who studied the connection of animals and plants, had a great influence on Redon Odilon's work. The French painter was furiously carried away by the idea of animating all nature and the sensitivity of plants. Mostly a dreamer, who embodied phantasmagoric and spiritual images in painting and graphics, Redon Odilon painted and painted a lot from nature. First of all, the works of the talented master reflected the creatures of his imagination: a player with a huge dice on his shoulders, or a plant with a human eye and head. The artist’s graphics depicted images of world evil, the most striking of which was the image of a spider with a human, maliciously smiling face.
At the same time, the author draws strict and bright images of children, old people and young women, through which she conveys such elusive things as purity and spirituality, wisdom and nobility of old age, and chastity of childhood.
Odilon Redon: paintings
Since the 1890s, the artist increasingly turned to color, oil paints and pastels, painted the walls of monasteries and villas with glue paint, made cardboard for tapestries and decorated screens. His work is centered around the central motifs of the ghostly world, whether it be an eye, a boat, a flower that has become a “face” of a human face. Or the motive for the origin of living beings, with the advent of which the world is filled with suffering, anger, envy, greed and death.
Among the characteristic works can be distinguished work "Cyclops" (1898), "Black Vase with Flowers" (1909), "A Woman Among the Flowers" (1909), "The Birth of Venus" (1910). His paintings of 1900-1910 are mostly characterized by images of bouquets in vases and women among flowers. Redon Odilon saturates his works with light, makes colors burn and glow, seeks to find a form of artistic expression that can awaken in the viewer a desire to think and analyze.
The artist turned to antique plots. The birth of Venus on the canvas of the same name seems to be happening in front of the viewer: like a surge of life-giving energy, the goddess appears from the sea foam.
Odilon Redon quite often acted as a critic in print, blaming the Impressionists and late romantics for portraying what is happening inside the person himself. He believed that inner fantasies would be convincing only if they followed the "laws of life."
The largest exhibition in his entire career, the French artist arranged in 1913, as part of the New York Armory Show in New York.
The famous painter died on July 6, 1916, at the age of 76.