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Odilon Redon (born Bertrand Redon; ; 20 April 18406 July 1916) was a French Symbolist draftsman, printmaker, and painter.
Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, Redon worked almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, works known as his noirs. He gained recognition after his drawings were mentioned in the 1884 novel À rebours ( Against Nature) by Joris-Karl Huysmans. During the 1890s, Redon began working in pastel and Oil painting, which quickly became his favorite medium, abandoning his previous style of noirs completely after 1900. He developed a keen interest in Hinduism and Buddhism religion and culture, which increasingly showed in his work.
Redon is perhaps best known today for the dreamlike paintings created in the first decade of the 20th century, which were inspired by Japanese art and leaned toward Abstract art. His work is considered a precursor to Surrealism.
Back in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpting, and Rodolphe Bresdin instructed him in etching and lithography. His artistic career was interrupted in 1870 when he was drafted to serve in the army in the Franco-Prussian War until its end in 1871.
In 1886, Redon exhibited his work with the Impressionism in their the last exhibition. The same year, he also began participating in the exhibitions of Les XX in Brussels.
In the 1890s, Redon worked in pastel and oil; he did not make noirs after 1900. In 1899, he exhibited with the Les Nabis at Durand-Ruel's.
Redon had a keen interest in Hinduism and Buddhism religion and culture. The figure of the Buddha increasingly showed in his work. Influences of Japonisme blended into his art, such as the painting The Death of the Buddha around 1899, The Buddha in 1906, Jacob and the Angel in 1905, and Vase with Japanese Warrior in 1905, among others.
Baron Robert de Domecy (1867–1946) commissioned Redon in 1899 to create 17 decorative panels for the dining room of the Château de Domecy-sur-le-Vault near Sermizelles in Burgundy. Redon had created large decorative works for private residences in the past, but his compositions for the château de Domecy in 1900–1901 were his most radical compositions to that point and mark the transition from ornamental to abstract painting. The landscape details do not show a specific place or space. Only details of trees, twigs with leaves, and budding flowers in an endless horizon can be seen. The colors used are mostly yellow, grey, brown and light blue. The influence of the Japanese painting style found on folding screens, byōbu, is discernible in his choice of colors and the rectangular proportions of most of the up to 2.5 metres high panels. Fifteen of them are located today in the Musée d'Orsay, acquired in 1988.
Domecy also commissioned Redon to paint portraits of his wife and their daughter Jeanne, two of which are in the collections of the Musée d'Orsay and the Getty Museum in California. Most of the paintings remained in the Domecy family collection until the 1960s.
Redon died on 6 July 1916 in Paris.
Redon's drawings are characterized as mysterious and evocative by Joris-Karl Huysmans in the following passage from the novel À rebours (1884):
The art historian Michael Gibson says that Redon began to want his works, even the ones darker in colour and subject matter, to portray "the triumph of light over darkness."Gibson, Michael, and Odilon Redon (2011). Odilon Redon, 1840–1916: The Prince of Dreams. Los Angeles, Calif: Taschen America. p. 97. .
Redon described his work as ambiguous and undefinable:
His choice of color and subject matter in the second part of his career led to Redon being considered a precursor to Dadaism and Surrealism. According to Surrealist André Masson, Redon's use of bright colors in his flower pastels, as well as his choice of depicting uncommon or imaginary species renders his works "released from stylized naturalism", thus demonstrating the "endless possibilities of lyrical chromatics".
In 1923, Mellerio published Odilon Redon: Peintre Dessinateur et Graveur. An archive of Mellerio's papers is held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Redon was the inspiration for Guy Maddin's 1995 short film Odilon Redon, or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity.William Beard, Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin. University of Toronto Press, 2010. . pp. 363–365.
In 2007, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presented the exhibition "As in a Dream" with a survey of Redon's work with more than 200 drawings, lithographs, pastels, and paintings.
The Grand Palais in Paris, France featured a vast exhibition of Redon's art from March to June 2011
The Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland showed a retrospective from February to May 2014.
The Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands, had an exhibition with an emphasis on the role that literature and music played in Redon's life and work, under the title La littérature et la musique. The exhibition ran from 2 June to 9 September 2018.
File:Redon - L'oeil, comme un ballon bizarre, se dirige vers l'infini, 0217275.jpg| The Eye Like a Weird Balloon, Goes to Infinity, 1882 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
File:Odilon Redon - Sita.jpg| Sita, c. 1893, pastel (Art Institute of Chicago)
File:La Mort de Bouddha (The Death of Buddha), c. 1899, Odilon Redon.jpg| The Death of Buddha, c. 1899 (private collection)
File:Odilon Redon Le Christ du silence Petit Palais 29122017.jpg| The Jesus of Silence, Petit Palais File:Odilon Redon - Flower Clouds - Google Art Project.jpg| Flower Clouds, 1903 (Art Institute of Chicago) File:Redon.ophelia.jpg| Ophelia, 1900–1905 (Dian Woodner Collection) File:The Buddha.png|The Buddha, 1904 (Van Gogh Museum) File:Reflection, 1900-1905.jpg| Reflection, 1900–1905 (private collection) File:Redon.bouddha.jpg| The Buddha, c. 1904-1907 (Musée d'Orsay)
File:WLA moma Odilon Redon Apparition.jpg| Apparition, 1905 (Museum of Modern Art)
File:OdilonRedon-The Chariot of Apollo.png|The Chariot of Apollo, 1909 (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux) File:Odilon Redon 005.jpg| Flowers, 1909 File:Redon - CHRIST EN CROIX, RF 1984 53.jpg| Christ on the Cross, 1984
File:Redon - Underwater Vision c. 1910.jpg| Underwater Vision, c. 1910 (Museum of Modern Art)
File:Odilon Redon - The Cyclops, c. 1914.jpg| The Cyclops, 1914 (Kröller-Müller Museum) File:Bemberg Fondation Toulouse - L'enlèvement de Ganymède - Odilon Redon 41x32.5 Inv.2148.jpg| The Abduction of Ganymede (Bemberg Foundation) File:Evocation Odilon Redon.jpeg| Evocation, undated (private collection)
File:Saint Sebastian by Odilon Redon.JPG| Saint Sebastian, 1910-1912
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