Toulouse Lautrec. La Belle Époque

Paris, end of the 19th century; la vie bohémienne, the artists of Montmartre, the Moulin Rouge, the brothels, the theatres and the prostitutes. This was the life Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) led and depicted, becoming its most famous exponent. Toulouse-Lautrec was only 4 feet 8 inches tall – he had a form of dwarfism – and died at the age of 36 from the ravages of syphilis and alcoholism, but he became famous, above all, for his advertising posters and portraits of personalities of the day. His images of the dancers at the Moulin Rouge, Aristide Bruant and the scantily-clad prostitutes in the maisons closes, where he had his atelier, are fixed in the collective imagination.

From 1 April a major exhibition at AMO-Palazzo Forti celebrates Toulouse-Lautrec’s artistic trajectory with 170 works from the Herakleidon Museum in Athens. Posters, lithographs, drawings, illustrations, watercolours, as well as videos, and photographs and furnishings of the period take the visitor back in time by reconstructing life in bohemian Paris. The most famous works on display include coloured lithographs like Jane Avril, 1893, advertising posters like The Passenger in Cabin 54,1895, and Aristide Bruant in his Cabaret,1893, pencil and pen and ink drawings, promotional graphics and magazine illustrations as in La Revue Blanche,1895, that have become the emblem of an era inextricably connected with the images of Count Henri de T oulouse-Lautrec.

The exhibition is curated by Stefano Zuffi, is under the patronage of the Verona City Council and produced and organized by Gruppo Arthemisia.

[ph: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, La Troupe de Mademoiselle Églantine, 1896, Color Lithography, 61,7×80,4 cm © Herakleidon Museum, Athens Greece]