Forty paintings of French painter, on loan from the Paris museum Marmottan-Monet, are presented in a large art space in the basement of the K11 Art Mall, a shopping center together shops and cafes, interspersed with works of contemporary art.
Hundreds of visitors lined up Saturday in a trendy supermarket in Shanghai, K11 Art Mall, to discover some of the Lilies of Claude Monet, the centerpiece of the largest exhibition ever held in China and master impressionist loan from the Paris museum Marmottan-Monet. “The K11 is located in the heart of Shanghai, close to where people live. We wanted to reach an audience that usually do not frequent museums, “said Marianne Mathieu, Deputy Director of the Museum Marmottan.
“We wanted to bring these paintings to people, and not force them to leave the city to see. It was important for us to be close to them, “she insisted. The works selected for the exhibition, which opened Saturday, represent almost half of the Monet collection of Parisian museum. “I heard a lot about Monet, and I was very excited to be able to see his paintings with my own eyes,” says Regina Luo, who was among the first visitors Saturday.
First exhibition exclusively dedicated to the painter
The organizers are expecting between 200,000 and 300,000 people in total over the three months that will last exposure, but prefer to limit access to 3000 daily visitors for security reasons. This exhibition is part of the dense program of cultural events planned this year to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the PRC.
Paintings by Monet had already been presented in China, especially at a major retrospective of the Impressionist painters in 2004, but Shanghai’s exhibition is the first devoted exclusively to the painter, according to its organizers. As one of the most iconic artists of the Impressionist movement, Claude Monet, who died in 1926, is best known for his prolific series of Water Lilies , inspired by his water lily pond at Giverny.