Hemingway said that Paris was a movable feast because they were "very poor, but very happy" regarding the time they lived in the city of light with his first wife. But Paris had already experienced a spectacular fin de siècle, and Montmartre, in a relatively brief period, had become the literary and artistic center that would mark that turn of the century. Over time, the cultural and recreational atmosphere ended up being commercialized by its own creators, to the point that, ironically, bohemia became a great international tourist attraction.
But among all those bohemian artists who experimented with new forms of creation, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec stood out, one of the most representative of the Parisian bohemia that inhabited the Montmartre neighborhood.
Born into an aristocratic family, he had a happy childhood, although he suffered from a bone disease, which, along with two accidents he suffered with femur fractures, conditioned his growth and prevented him from reaching a height beyond one meter fifty.
He soon excelled in drawing, and with the support of family members and painter friends of the family, he moved to Paris in 1881, as a student of one of the fashionable portraitists. But a few years later, he went to live in Montmartre, opened his own workshop, and began to frequent entertainment venues, to enjoy the nightlife and festive atmosphere that permeated the neighborhood.
It was there that he exploited his full potential and coincided with other artists and works that, in some way, left their mark on his style. Edgar Degas or the Japanese ukiyo-e prints, permeated his countless notes and quick drawings, as well as the advertising posters for cabarets and commercial products he came to create.
But a moment came in his life when, despite being a responsible worker and not missing his workshop, the debauchery of the nights began to take its toll, along with the alcoholism and syphilis he contracted, and he had to be admitted for detoxification treatment. Toulouse-Lautrec did not stop painting, not even when his legs and one of his sides became paralyzed.
It was then that he made a series of 39 drawings dedicated to the world of the circus and his favorite place, the Fernando Circus, in a display of extraordinary artistic memory about the shows he saw there. With a visual perspective of photographic influence and an original vision of the characters —the exhibition organizers will explain— he stylizes the figures of acrobats and trapeze artists in complicated poses, which suggest the longing for mastery of the body in the face of the impossibility of his own.
Edgar Degas or Japanese ukiyo-e prints, permeated Toulouse-Lautrec's countless notes and quick drawings.The Reial Cercle Artístic de Barcelona presents this series of drawings dedicated to the circus, along with other illustrations, quick sketches and posters from Toulouse-Lautrec's final period. This exhibition is part of the activities for the celebration of the Cercle's 140th anniversary, curated by Rosa Perales Piqueres.
The room dedicated to portraits stands out in particular, where the sensitivity and delicacy of the drawings from the Elles series, the speed and spontaneity of the gesture of the characters from the Bois de Boulogne, and the caricatures of the upper-class characters are contrasted. The human figure was always his leitmotiv, but women were his true muses and the driving force of his work.
He presents himself as an authorized voyeur, a silent spectator of a feminine intimacy that is shown to us as rarely before. They, relaxed in cafes or strolling along the boulevards, in loving attitudes or even asleep, captured as in a snapshot, which denotes the trust they placed in him and the passion he felt for representing them.
The ability to see and understand his environment, transfer it to paper, and give it human value, allows us to see the complicity he had with many of the people represented, both in his drawings and in his posters, and to realize with whom he felt most comfortable. Jane Avril, his great friend and dancer, never appears represented in a vulgar or provocative way, but graceful and smiling, or the poet and composer Aristide Bruant presented with solidity and seriousness.
His time in the mental sanatorium, towards the end of his life, becomes evident in the chromatic range of his drawings, which darken like the memory of a past time that will not return. The theme, the circus and horses, recalls his childhood with his parents, and the splendor of the Parisian era, with the representation of recognizable characters he would never see again. It is curious how most of the human figures are with their backs to us, as if Henri wanted to position us backstage.
The sensitivity and delicacy of the drawings from the Elles series are contrasted with the speed and spontaneity of the gestures of the characters from the Bois de Boulogne and the caricatures of the upper-class characters.The exhibition can be visited until September 19, and it is worth stopping to admire his work, to feel the energy of the drawings and that pinch of melancholy that shrinks our heart. Toulouse-Lautrec died at 37 with paralysis, but the dynamism and movement of his works, and of his life, will remain present in time.