The Avant-garde at the Villa

Through the works of great artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Villa du Temps retrouvé celebrates the avant-garde movements which, from the Belle Époque onwards, profoundly transformed forms, colours and ways of perceiving the modern world.

Whilst Marcel Proust captured in his work the transformations of a society in the midst of radical change, these artists invented entirely new visual languages to express the upheavals of their time. Picasso (1881–1973) deconstructed space and fragmented forms to reveal a more complex and multifaceted reality; Van Dongen (1887–1968), through the intensity of his palette, celebrated the elegance, the social effervescence and the pleasures of an era fascinated by speed and spectacle; Finally, Kupka (1871–1957) paved the way for abstraction by making colour, rhythm and movement the true subjects of painting. From figurative art to nascent abstraction, their works bear witness to an extraordinary creative freedom and herald the great artistic revolutions of the 20th century.

Echoing the world of Proust, this exhibition evokes the intellectual and artistic effervescence of the Belle Époque, when writers, painters, musicians and thinkers came together to foster the emergence of a new sensibility.