He overcame poverty and depression to create the “Impressionism”… Monet in the Jeddah season

He is listed as one of the most important painters in history, he founded the Impressionist art school, overcame depression and poverty, and overcame the obstacles of cataracts, thus etched his name in the history of art. The painter Chloe Monet, named Impressionism for his painting “Impression, Sunrise”.

Monet’s artistic career is filled with thousands of paintings, the most famous of which are “Women in the Garden” from 1867, “Flowers and Fruit” from 1869, and “White Water Lilies” from 1899. Some of his paintings have also been sold at staggering prices and are ranked among the most expensive art paintings in the world, such as “Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas” (Water Lily Pond) created between 1913 and 1917, with an estimated price of about $84.7 million in 2018, and the painting “The Pile of Grain”, which has an international auction price of more than $81 million.

Monet is known in France and Europe as one of the pioneers of Impressionism, the first groundbreaking art movement of the nineteenth century that focused on themes inspired by ancient mythology and Greco-Roman heritage.

Despite all these successes, Claude Monet faced several problems during his life, the most prominent of which was probably the decline of his visual abilities, as he gradually lost the ability to notice the light and brilliance of colors. Claude Monet in 1912. A year later, Monet visited the German ophthalmologist Richard Lieberich, who recommended that he undergo an operation on his right eye, but he flatly refused, despite the Frenchman’s pleas. Minister Clemenceau’s wish was to preserve his weak eyesight in order to see the views he loved, rather than lose it completely, and desperately tried to recognize… Colors While painting, Monet applied a precise arrangement of colors on the palette, he was nevertheless dissatisfied with his painting, which presented a dark character compared to his previous paintings.

Returning to his art school, the Impressionists established a new aesthetic that manifested itself in many aspects, including a focus on the gradations of color and light, which abolished the boundaries between color and painting, and instead turned to nature and the outdoors. The Impressionist movement got its name from a painting completed by Monet in 1872 called Impression of the Rising Sun.

However, Monet’s importance is not limited to his being a forerunner of the Impressionist movement along with other creators, including Renoir, but also lies in his great capacity for artistic renewal, which, combined with his continuous work despite his advanced age, and his openness to non-European civilizations and art, including the Middle East and Japan, raises fundamental questions about the meaning of art and the contribution that can be made as a creator who lived in the first quarter of the twentieth century and understood the major social and cultural changes that contributed to the emergence of the artistic and intellectual modernity movement.

Of note, the Jeddah quarter hosts the interactive “Imagine Monet” exhibition, considered the largest of its kind, containing 200 paintings and offering a unique art experience combining the authenticity of art with the development of modern technology in an emulated atmosphere. Monet’s paintings, through “Imagine Monet”, begin with “Impression”, the famous “Sunrise” (1872) and end with the “Water Lilies” series (1914-1926). These sections represent a journey through time, exploring the genius of the artist and his profound understanding of light and color. As an authentic experience for true art lovers, the creators of the exhibition have designed a “Discovery Room” as an educational journey that starts with the paintings on display and then enters an immersive space that offers a 360-degree view of the paintings, in addition to an innovative audiovisual experience using Image Totale technology.