This was the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition at CaixaForum in Madrid

Until May 19 you have the opportunity to visit the fabulous Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition that is presented in Madrid with CaixaForum.

A magnificent presentation that aims to recover the cultural explosion that will transport you without realizing it to the Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre, cradle of great artists and bohemians of the time.

Therefore, to have a better understanding of the exposure, it is worth knowing what the atmosphere was like in this popular neighborhood at the time when Henri Toulouse-Lautrec resided in Paris.

And also what was the relationship that the great artists of the late 19th century like him, a great genius who marked an era with an innovative style, established with the French capital.

Montmartre, a different Parisian neighborhood

In 1880, Montmartre It was a marginal and even dangerous area far from the center of Paris, but it attracted young artists, painters, writers and musicians of the time who were looking for something different and who moved there seeking to develop their creativity.

Everyone wanted to live spending as little as possible working on the attractive Paris.

Neighborhood Montmartre It gave them that bohemian touch they were looking for and thus avoid the bourgeois center of the French capital, which, in addition to being expensive, did not respond to their concerns.

The streets were always lively with their cabarets, theaters, concert cafes and circuses that became a source of inspiration for artists.

The artists and intellectuals of the time not only attended the shows, but also empathized with the homeless, dancers and prostitutes.

They were attracted to the darker side of life, seeing themselves as people on the margins of established society, and from this came numerous talents in all fields of art.

They were proud of their way of life outside the usual.

El Moulin de la Galette It was the entertainment venue frequented by the working class, while at the same time Moulin Rouge The wealthiest people went and paid enormous amounts to see the curious and provocative dances of the cancan o rumpus.

It was a transformative neighborhood and Toulouse Lautrec He was a key figure who linked artists and intellectuals of the moment and who placed Montmartre at the point of the avant-garde and transgression of the late 19th century.

Curiosities in the biography of Henry Toulouse Lautrec

 Toulouse Lautrec was born in Albi Castle in 1864, in a noble family.

Now the museum dedicated to his work is one of the essential visits in the aforementioned and very beautiful city of Albi, South of France.

At that time it was common for many dynasties of the ancient aristocracy to have arranged marriages, so it was very normal to be related to cousins ​​and relatives.

This was intended to avoid territorial divisions and the dispersion of fortune.

This was the case of Toulouse Lautrec since his parents were first cousins ​​and this caused the artist many health problems from a very young age.

At the age of four he had a younger brother, but he died a year later, and soon his parents separated and he was left in charge of his mother. Adele.

Despite suffering from a disease that affected the normal development of his bones, which began at the age of ten, the artist had a happy childhood, marked by many visits to doctors.

A year later, the weakness of his bones caused two fractures in the femurs of both legs and he could not grow any more.

He was a fragile and weak-looking person who did not reach more than 1,52 m in height.

Since he was a child he liked to draw and made sketches of horses since his father was a great fan of hunting and horse riding.

He painted everything around him around the castle since he painted his first painting at the age of 13, Horse artillery.

Given the interest he showed, his parents gave him painting classes with painters who were friends of the family and this marked his life forever.

He went to live in Paris in 1881 and there he was a student of Leon Bonnat, fashionable portraitist at the time.

In one of the classes he received, he met and became friends with Vincent Van Gogh and in 1884 he went to live in Montmartre, where one of its most famous neighbors was Degas.

Toulouse Lautrec He was fascinated by nightclubs, being a regular customer of many of them, such as the Chat Noir o The Folies Bergere.

He was passionate about the world of prostitution and it was a repeated theme in his works; He painted prostitutes, dancers and actors in their daily lives, whether they were changing, performing or visiting the doctor.

He was interested in closed environments and artificial lights, very far from the landscapes that the impressionists of the time liked to portray.

He was a great observer and masterfully ridiculed the hypocrisy of the most powerful who privately liked the vices they criticized in public.

He was a close friend of the dancer and prostitute Louise Weber known as la Goulue" and how The Queen of Montmartre, whom he drew on numerous occasions dancing the cancan Parisian, fashionable dance in which the leg and skirts were raised.

The owners of the venues he visited asked him to make posters to promote their shows, and this delighted them. Lautrec, who drew everything he saw in the stores, selling his works on the tables.

He had a photographic memory that allowed him to paint very quickly.

In oil painting he did not stand out too much, but where he achieved a lot of popularity was in the Artwork which he made for magazines and advertising posters.

The world of vice and extravagance trapped Toulouse Lautrec from the first moment, and it was there where he took refuge all day, as well as in alcohol.

En Montmartre He could fearlessly hide his handicap and go unnoticed, giving free rein to his weaknesses and his bohemian life.

He considered himself a social chronicler of the moment and mixed with the lowest sectors of the town, representing Parisian nightlife.

Lautrec also traveled to London where he met Oscar Wilde with whom he hit it off quickly, and of whom they say he made the portrait that best reflected the personality of Savage.

Syphilis and alcohol deteriorated his health greatly, causing him to suffer some episodes of madness, and from 1897 onwards he suffered from mania, depression and symptoms of neurosis.

His legs became paralyzed and on several occasions they had to pick him up lying in the streets because he was drunk, because he drank everything, his favorite being absinthe, which he took without control.

On one occasion a delirium tremens He made him shoot the walls of his house because it was believed that they were full of spiders.

After several of these episodes he was admitted to a mental sanatorium, where he continued painting, and where he made paintings about the circus.

When he finally left the sanatorium, his mother took care of him until he died in 1901 near Bordeaux, completely drunk.

Unlike other contemporaries, Lautrec He was a recognized artist during his lifetime and his work was highly valued.

His mother Adele, together with his dealer, opened the aforementioned Toulouse-Lautrec museum in a palace in the center of Albi, where a large part of his work is preserved today.

What to see at the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition

La exposure that now you can visit at CaixaForum in Madrid It features more than 350 works and comes from loans from all over the world, both from private and public collections.

It is a sample of works that tries to make us understand the spirit that was lived in the Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre since it was annexed to Paris in 1860.

The exhibition presents you works that had not shared space since they were created; You will be able to see lithographs with large color images, shadow puppets, humorous magazines and drawings, as well as unpublished pieces with his signature.

There are also works by some of the most recognized artists of the moment who shared an environment with Lautrecas Pierre Bonnard, Alexander Stein, Paul Signac, Lluís Cheret o Vincent Van Gogh.

In the exhibition you are transported to an explosion of creativity in a bohemian and avant-garde environment, in which young artists and intellectuals of the time met to create a movement that broke with the established and that was far outside the bourgeoisie.

Art no longer wanted to be hung in the houses of aristocrats, but in the streets.

The exhibition reveals the collective values ​​of a cultural moment in which art becomes a party in which joy, vice, music, poetry, theater, plastic arts and the circus are mixed.

You will be able to take a tour of the bohemian Paris between centuries and understand what the spirit of Montmartre in the development of modern art.

There, the creation of ephemeral artistic production such as posters, illustrations, prints and designs that were perpetuated over time stood out.

You will see how with the arrival of photomechanics, drawing took on a new dimension with the creation of posters with an absolutely different and innovative style.

At that time, realism began to be turned away by making posters with flat colors and synthetic shapes, and marked the beginning of modern illustration and graphic design.