Odilon Redon

(French, 1840 - 1916)

Attributed to

Odillon Redon was one of the leading exponents of nineteenth-century French symbolism. He trained on the artists exhibiting at the official Salons and on ancient art but starting from the end of the 1960s he approached the style of the artists of the Barbizon school. His symbolist streak emerges following his participation in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and his meeting with Gustave Moreau. From here the artist elaborates the link between art and dreams as a fantastic space. In his works there are demons, monsters, severed heads and mysterious figures. He rejects the chromatism of the Impressionist painters and prefers dark colors. Among the painters who influenced the artist were the gloomy Francisco Goya and the post-impressionist Paul Gauguin.