Odilon Redon: Literature and Music

Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

NOW CLOSED

Head of a Martyr on a Dish (St John) (detail; 1877), Odilon Redon. Courtesy Kröller-Müller Museum

In ‘Odilon Redon: Literature and Music’, the Kröller-Müller Museum looks at the oeuvre of French artist Odilon Redon (1840–1916). With a large number of paintings, pastels, drawings and lithographs, the exhibition shows the important role that literature and music play in Redon’s life and work.

Redon was painter, pastelist, draughtsman and lithographer, but he also learned to play violin and piano and acquired a love of literature at an early age. He had close friendships with writers and composers, is himself active as a writer and gives music recitals. For him, music, literary themes and visual art were inextricably linked. In his own time, he was already highly praised for his unique way of combining these different expressive powers in his work, embodying the popular late 19th-century concept of synaesthesia: the idea that a more intense experience can be created by appealing to several senses simultaneously.

Find out more about the Odilon Redon exhibition from the Kröller-Müller’s website.

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