The long shadow of Claude Monet
Putting together a Monet exhibit with more than 120 works from 80 lenders in 15 countries is best done by a life-long Monet fan – and Christoph Heinrich qualifies. "It's like Christmas and every other holiday at the same time," said the director of the Denver Art Museum, now home to the country's largest Monet exhibit in more than two decades.
And for those who love Claude Monet, the show is like visiting old friends.
Some argue that paintings made in the last decade of his life make Monet as influential to modern art as he was to Impressionism.
Curator Gloria Groom of the Art Institute of Chicago, home to its own Monet exhibit opening this spring, described his work as, "Not having any preconceived I'm starting here and ending there, but rather letting the paint itself tell him where he was going – I think that's a very modern idea.
"These large, immersive, amazing, colorful paintings were very attractive to Helen Frankenthaler, to Ellsworth Kelly," she said. "These are artists who paint big, who paint gestural. When you think about even abstract expressionism, this idea that you're not seeing a subject per se but you are seeing something in the paint itself, those are the gifts he gave to the next generations," she said.
Claude Monet died at age 86 after finding fame and fortune, and both continue to this day. Last May, one of his paintings brought more than $110 million – a record-breaking sale for an Impressionist work.
Monet's "Meules" sells for astonishing $110.7 million, a new artist record (Sotheby's)
Henrich said, "He definitely deserves to be recognized as one of the most innovative painters, standing with one leg in the 19th century, but really with the other leg in the modern age."
For more info:
Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, at the Denver Art Museum (through February 2)Ticket infoExhibition Catalogue: "Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature"Monet and Chicago, at the Art Institute of Chicago (May 10-September 7)Ticket info
Story produced by Sara Kugel.
