Viewing Room

Eternal Seasons: Part I 春華秋實

Opening 25 March 2021
2021年3月25日

Ground Floor, 2 Ice House Street, Central, Hong Kong
香港中環雪廠街 2 號聖佐治大廈地舖

#EternalSeasons

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Lévy Gorvy is pleased to present Eternal Seasons, opening 25 March at the gallery’s space in Hong Kong. Spanning more than a century from Impressionism to present, the exhibition will feature a selection of masterpieces depicting the four seasons, capturing the cyclical nature of life and offering insight into how artists perceive and depict the ever-changing landscape.

Shown as two consecutive presentations, Eternal Seasons will first highlight works by Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Le Sidaner, and Vincent van Gogh, many of which are being shown for the first time in Asia.

Vincent van Gogh’s 1886 View of a Park in Paris was painted during the artist’s pivotal two-year sojourn in Paris. There, Van Gogh encountered avant-garde art and met core members of the Parisian Impressionist circle, which prompted him to reflect on the style he had previously developed in Antwerp. The autumnal palette and quick brushstrokes of View of a Park in Paris indicate Van Gogh’s transition to a more vibrant style, closer to that of French Impressionism, for which he is most remembered. The painting was owned by the avant-garde critic Albert Aurier, and, after his death, remained unrecognized, hidden in one of his descendant’s homes, until it was discovered by a specialist in 1980.

Another highlight is Claude Monet’s Basket of Apples (1885), which was originally commissioned by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel as part of a set of door panels, presenting floral and fruit still lifes, for his Paris apartment. In 2015, the National Gallery in London dedicated an exhibition to Durand-Ruel, a pivotal figure credited with discovering and supporting Impressionists like Monet, Renoir, and Edgar Degas. It took Monet three years to complete the paintings in the commission, treating each panel as an individual picture. Basket of Apples remained in Durand-Ruel’s family for over 120 years.

Bergen Harbour is one of four rare paintings made by Edvard Munch during a visit to the Norwegian city in 1916. This lively rendition of the busy harbor came in the aftermath of a tragedy: Munch arrived in Bergen soon after a disastrous fire hit the city. The artist, however, chose to focus on the city’s vitality, reflecting his newly found more positive and vitalist attitude towards life. Munch once said: “A landscape will alter according to the mood of the person who sees it, and in order to represent that particular scene, the artist will produce a picture that expresses his own personal feelings. It is these feelings which are crucial: nature is merely the means of conveying them.” The brightly colored Bergen Harbour is an optimistic picture, portraying a cycle similar to that of the seasons changing: that of recovery from adversity.

Part two of the exhibition, opening 28 April, will focus on the work of international postwar and contemporary artists such as Alexander Calder, Francesco Clemente, Alex Katz, Jutta Koether, Yayoi Kusama, Michael Lau, Joan Mitchell, Lari Pittman, Ugo Rondinone, Amy Sillman, Pat Steir, Tu Hongtao, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Jonas Wood, and Zao Wou-Ki, some of which have been created or selected by the artists especially for this exhibition.