Fondation Louis-Vuitton: the colossal collection of modern art from the Morozov dynasty – Télérama.fr

After that of Shchoukine four years ago, the Louis-Vuitton Foundation is hosting another essential Russian collection until February 22: that of the Morozov brothers, wealthy industrialists and enlightened amateurs of Western art. An exhibition-event that brings together more than two hundred masterpieces.

White sun, purple shadows, sea below. In the rooms of the Fondation Louis-Vuitton, The Mediterranean, monumental triptych by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) representing children playing under the trees, radiates throughout the space, divinely surrounded by nine other paintings by the artist, just as vibrant. If Bonnard’s enchanting lights and colors delight immediately, they also generate an elusive feeling of nostalgia, similar to the idea one has, a little cliché, of the “Slavic soul”. Before leaving, the Russian Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) he lost himself one last time in contemplation on the main staircase of his former Moscow palace, whose marble colonnades framed these paintings commissioned from the painter in 1910? Was he able to gaze at the seventeen works (all present in Paris) by his favorite artist, Paul Cézanne, including The Pipe Smoker (1891-1892) so melancholy?

Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin …

In April 1919, a year and a half after the Bolshevik revolution, the ex-captain of the Russian textile industry, whose property had been nationalized, left his former residence on Prechistenka Street, transformed by the new regime into a museum of the ‘Modern Western art, where he had been granted modest official accommodation and a position to work … on his own looted collection. He crosses the Finnish border clandestinely with his family, without luggage, leaving behind him all his life and all of his paintings, sculptures and works of art collected with passion for twenty years. That’s nearly four hundred and fifty works of Russian art and over three hundred Western art – about a third of which made the trip this fall for the back-to-school exhibition event.