An historic exhibition opened earlier this month at the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris, featuring seventy works on paper by some fifty artists active between the fifteenth century and today.
Le Papier à l’oeuvre – The Art of Paper opened June 9 and runs until September 5, 2011 & features works selected from the print and drawing collections of three museums in Paris — the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Centre Pompidou — as well as from a number of other French collections.
The artists represented use a variety of techniques and tools on all kinds of paper: white or colored, transparent or not, and either found, reused or carefully chosen. Paper may be marked, stamped, overlaid, assembled or cut out, pasted, stapled or even stuck with pins.
Drawings may be executed on fine art papers selected according to very precise criteria, or by using the first piece of paper that comes to hand. Artists may also tear, perforate or burn their paper, but always in order to better underscore particular aspects of the material, paying
tribute to this treasured medium.
By setting works of artists from different generations and different centuries against each other, the exhibition seeks to illustrate the ways in which paper plays an essential role in the art of drawing.
Organized into five sections, the exhibition aims to inspire comparisons between old masters and modern artists and to reveal the wide range of technical and aesthetic approaches used.
The link between Canson and the Louvre is not something new. Canson has been sponsoring the museum’s educational workshops since 2006. In 2010, a new step was reached. Driven by a common goal, the two partners have intensified their links to provide greater support to the creation of artwork on paper.
Musée du Louvre
Salle de la Chapelle, Sully Wing
• Exhibition open daily (except Tuesdays) from 9am – 6 pm and until 10pm on Wednesdays and Fridays.
• Access to the exhibition is included in the purchase of an admission to the museum’s permanent collections: €10.