Impressionists in Normandy, Exhibition Museum of the Innocents, Florence

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Impressionists in Normandy

From 21 November to 4 May 2025

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Museum of the Innocents

Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, 13, Florence

Open now from 10:00 to 19:00

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150 years have passed since that famous April of 1874 when 31 artists rejected by the world of academic and official art - including Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Cézanne - decided to organize a "revolutionary" exhibition for the time, in the gallery of the photographer Nadar in Paris.

At that moment, a new and grand artistic movement was born: Impressionism, named so by the derogatory comment of the journalist Louis Leroy who published an article fiercely critical on "Le Charivari," the title of which "Exhibition of the Impressionists" was then adopted by the emerging artistic movement, Impressionism, drawing inspiration precisely from the title of a painting by Monet, Impression, Sunrise of 1872.

Impressionists in Normandy is the exhibition with which from November 21st the Museum of the Innocents in Florence celebrates this anniversary, through a unique narrative that opens with an exceptional loan from the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome: the Pink Water Lilies by Claude Monet, an iconic work and part of the "first series" of 8 water lilies painted by the artist.
A fundamental work of Monet's artistic production, who between 1897 and 1899 approximately, dedicated himself to preliminary studies for the Water Lilies Decorations, a decorative project for the Orangerie in Paris, only to be forgotten in a storage room by the artist himself until 1914, when it became part of his collection in his first studio in Giverny.The work, acquired by the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in 1962, is undoubtedly one of the most emblematic images of Impressionism and embodies the research that Monet experienced in his garden in Giverny, where his en plein air painting evolved to become almost liquid and devoid of details, where the truth of a landscape is the impression that remains in the mind.

Alongside the Water Lilies, over 70 works tell the story of the Impressionist movement from its beginnings closely linked to Normandy, a land that - for its landscapes, light, and colors - became a reference point for numerous artists, a true laboratory in which to experiment with the suggestions and forms of a new painting.
Painters like Monet, Renoir, Delacroix, and Courbet - exhibited together with many others - captured the immediacy and vitality of the Norman landscape, imprinting on canvas the moods of the sky, the shimmer of the water, and the lush valleys of that stage of rare beauty that became, not by chance, the cradle of Impressionism.

The exhibition's path is accompanied by explanatory and educational panels that lead visitors of all ages to understand the characteristics, impressions, forms, and techniques that the Impressionist artists placed on canvas. Bold brushstrokes, undefined outlines, muted colors, vibrant lights, endless horizons, immense beaches and the sea, that Nordic sea where the changing ripples of waves and tides, where the gaze is lost and the horizon blurs and becomes infinite, are the elements described that bring to each of us the emotion and the same impression that had captured those great painters.

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monday	10:00 - 19:00
tuesday	10:00 - 19:00
wednesday	10:00 - 19:00
thursday	10:00 - 19:00
friday	10:00 - 19:00
saturday	10:00 - 19:00
sunday	10:00 - 19:00

Impressionists in Normandy

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