Claude Monet, the particular light of the Ligurian Riviera di Ponente and the Côte d’Azur, his inspiration: in the Principality of Monaco, one hundred paintings on display

In the Principality of Monaco, a stone’s throw from the Ligurian Riviera, an exhibition dedicated to the impressionist Claude Monet will be inaugurated on 8 July, with around a hundred masterpieces. The exhibition, entitled “Monet en pleine lumière”, “Monet in full light”, can be visited at the Grimaldi Forum until 3 September and it is the second event dedicated to Monet ever organized, after an important Parisian exhibition, and brings together paintings from all over the world, essential for the artist, which will allow us to retrace his long journey. We celebrate the 140th anniversary of Monet’s first visit to Monaco and the Riviera. The exhibition is curated by Marianne Mathieu. Partners of the exhibition the Marzocco Group, Cbm Monaco and Sothey’s.

Above all, the focus is on paintings dedicated to the Côte d’Azur and the Ligurian Riviera di Ponente: landscapes with a characteristic light, which enchanted Monet and which will contribute in a fundamental way to creating his style, his way of painting and of seeing nature and the world.

Marianne Mathieu, a scholar specializing in Monet’s work, explains the artist’s evolution and the importance of travel in the south of France. “Monet’s work is very consistent. From his youth in Le Havre to his last paintings in Giverny the painter never tries to paint a theme but rather a moment. Monet does not paint a landscape, but an atmosphere. On the Riviera, between 1883 and 1888, he reaches maturity. In Giverny, from which he rarely left at the end of the century, the painter evolved further, changed his point of view and concentrated exclusively on the body of water. Monet abandoned panoramic views for a closer shot, creating almost abstract visions of water and its reflections. He doesn’t paint his garden, but the elements of water and light. He paints a picture of a floating world.’ The aquatic element becomes a constant in Monet’s late production: it may have been the Riviera that inspired him in this way, starting from 1883.

The canvases on display at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco come from the Marmottan Museum in Paris, the Orsay Museum, the Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Barberini in Posdam, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel and some are also in loan from the princes of Monaco, from the private family collection.