Redon - Anemones and lilacs in a blue vase

A great artist of the inner world, Odilon Redon (1840-1916) evolved at a time when, artistically, what counted was the gaze directed towards the outside, notably impressionist research, while Redon opted from the outset for introspection. His art explores the aspects of thought, the dark and esoteric part of the human soul, marked by the mechanisms of dreams. His career is divided into two phases: the first is dark, negative, human fears are represented in threatening nightmares. The following phase, much more colorful, depicts mythological and natural motifs, the whole is both lively and abstract.

Astonished by the flower's colouring to the point of worry, astonished to the point of the most naive adoration of its form, this symbolic artist soon received the revelation that nothing is more mysterious than simple nature, and from then on he became absorbed in its clarity as if he had plunged into the labyrinth of his imagination. He painted flowers that we know and as we see them: here, mimosas and anemones, their splendid bearing, the bursting of their corollas, the sparkling of the nuances as if these flowers had just appeared to us...