Gauguin, Matisse, Chagall. The Passion in French art from the Vatican Museums

Exhibition

For the period of Lent and Easter, the Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini and the Vatican Museums propose as food for thought the exhibition of a precious nucleus of paintings, sculptures and engravings from the Contemporary Art Collection of the Pope’s Museums.

These are works by French artists, such as Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, Maurice Denis, Georges Rouault, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse and others focused on the themes “around” the Passion of Christ, in a path that sheds light on various aspects of the delicate relationship between modernity and tradition in art and in the Church, between the 19th and 20th centuries.
These are crucial years in which artists, especially in France, actively participate in the debate concerning the renewal of contemporary sacred art and the delicate dialogue between art and spirituality. The need to respond to the increasingly urgent questions posed by modern society pushes artists to reflect and experiment: different styles, languages, expressions, techniques show an artistic and spiritual universe of great charm and intensity in which tradition and innovation, past and modernity, converge and integrate.

Likewise, the exhibition offers the opportunity to reread the thoughts on the role of art and in particular the contemporary art of Pope Paul VI, who was responsible for the creation in 1973 of the Collection of Modern Religious Art within the Vatican Museums, now the Collection of Contemporary Art. According to Pope Montini, art is a place in which to express doubts, seek truth, beauty and meaning, communicate knowledge and experiment, without any distinction or preclusion with respect to the faith and culture to which we belong.