Why put on an exhibition bringing together Ferdinand Hodler, Claude Monet and Edvard Munch? Because they are essential painters of the modern age in Europe, working at the frontiers of Impressionism, post-Impressionism and Symbolism. Because they continued to produce work well into the 20th century – up to 1918 for Hodler, 1926 for Monet and 1944 for Munch – and because they all had a decisive influence in the history of art. But for one reason especially: all of them took on problems that seem insurmountable for the painter: how to capture, full on, the dazzling brightness of the sun, using merely colours on canvas? How to paint the snow? How to suggest the movements and variations of light on water or on a tree trunk, despite the immobility of paint? “I have again taken up things impossible to do: water with grasses that undulate in the depths… it is admirable to see, but it is enough to drive one mad to wish to do it.” The words are Monet’s, but they could easily have been spoken by the painter who, right up to his death, doggedly studied the Alpine skyline from his terrace, from dawn to dusk: Hodler. Or by the painter who kept tirelessly returning, to the point of depression, to the same coloured motifs – a red house, sailors in the snow, the setting sun: Munch. All three tested painting against the impossible.

Curator: Philippe Dagen