TOULOUSE-LAUTREC & ART - Château Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec

A DIFFERENT APPROACH OF THE ARTIST

Malromé is a lively space, which celebrates Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s artwork and demonstrates his privacy. Limited in his movements, weakened by his sufferings, upset by his loves, all the physical and moral constraints required by his illness, lead him to enhance them, by a total freedom in his pictorial practice.

The vision that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec has on society at this end of century, is deeply human. Witness of his time, Henri transcends all that is grotesque and tragic in the human comedy.

He does not stand as a judge, he who is victim of quick judgments. His drawings, his paintings show the reality of situations hard to live with. He reaches the reality of the human being behind the social mask.
He observed this life from an outside look, with the distance that his appearance required. His sharp sensibility allowed him a total comprehension of those with whom he shared a certain exclusion.

Without material and moral constraints, he knew how to release the pictorial language from the straitjacket of the codes of academic painting and blew a wind of freedom that he left us as heritage. In the effervescence of this turn of the century, he is at the forefront of his generation, and contributes to the renewal of pictorial art.

Guided tour

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

Visits to the Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec apartments and the conservation of their heritage have been entrusted to Pauline Leclercq, our on-site tour guide and expert.

Living in the golden years of the Belle Epoque, Lautrec was a participant and chronicler of Parisian brothels and nightlife. He left behind a prolific body of artworks which are presented in detail to visitors in this guided tour of the late 19th-century aristocratic interior.

New in 2020: discover the art of Toulouse-Lautrec with a brand-new tour route that features exclusive original works, ending in a room exclusively dedicated to his childhood sketches and numerous lithographs.

We welcome individuals as well as groups and school groups.

Information on booking, opening hours and fees

Contemporary art

The Malromé contemporary art gallery is located on the first floor of the Château’s east wing. Here, 230 square metres of space have been dedicated entirely to displaying contemporary art. The curatorial vision of Malromé’s programming is built around three main research areas, keeping in mind the Château’s history and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s legacy.

– Exhibitions that echo the themes explored by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

– The work of artists of Asian origin. Lautrec was a great admirer of classical Japanese woodblock prints, which influenced his style towards more simplified brush strokes and a bold new mise en page.

– Exhibitions inspired by the history of Malromé and its surrounding region: the culture of winegrowing, the pilgrimage to the nearby shrine of Verdelais and the history of the Rostéguy de Lancre family.

RETROSPECTIVE

EMERIC CHANTIER

PRUNE NOURRY

PIERRE CHAVEAU

ANGÉLIQUE DE CHABOT

TADASHI KAWAMATA

JÉRÉMY DEMESTER

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI / DAIDO MORIYAMA

RETROSPECTIVE

EMERIC CHANTIER

PRUNE NOURRY

PIERRE CHAVEAU

ANGÉLIQUE DE CHABOT

TADASHI KAWAMATA

JÉRÉMY DEMESTER

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI / DAIDO MORIYAMA

Discover the new exhibition of contemporary art in the art gallery of Château Malromé. The decorum highlights wild or domesticated animals, made from plant and synthetic materials giving the illusion of being in foam. Questioning the eternal dialogue between Man, animals and Nature, the works of Eric Chantier echo the desire of Château Malromé to anchor itself in a responsible approach that respects the living.

The works of Prune Nourry (born in Paris in 1985) alerted us to the deficit of women in Asia, especially in China and India, where the use of new technologies – primarily ultrasound to determine the sex of the fetus – is diverted for the purpose of gender selection. In the Gallery of the Castle, a path was created through a heap of chalk blocks, evoking the drawings of Lautrec and allowing to slide from work to work, from the Holy Daughters and Terracotta Daughters to the molds of the Process series.

Alternating drawing, painting and the sign, Pierre Chaveau (born in 1944) summoned, trying to make them visible, images that were just waiting to manifest themselves, prisoners of this “Black Azure” celebrated by Arthur Rimbaud in which the two painters continue their conversation in the illustrious company of Vermeer, Hopper, Vinci, Velasquez, Bonnard and a few others.

Angélique de Chabot (born in 1988) has finally released her creatures. Her works have given life to a strange bestiary populated with chimeras. Crustaceans, beasts with feathers and silky coats have hybridized like so many precious monsters, totems and magic talismans. This exposition showcases animist mysticism, immortal metaphysics and the persistence of the sacred, and the way these are still embodied in our lives. Her works are inhabited by ancient spirits, “gods to worship or blaspheme”.

Tadashi Kawamata (born in 1953) has deployed a new in-situ-installation in the art gallery. Between sculpture and architecture, his work made of wood seems fragile at first, but it reveals a science both instinctive and learned from architectural laws. Always carried out in reaction to a specific place, these works allow us to envisage things differently, generate other points of view just like personal poetry, inviting those who walk through them to daydream and contemplate.

Jérémy Demester (born in 1988) has invested in the refined volumes of the Château in order to offer his experimental practice. Oil painting, bronze, abstraction or figuration have been revealed as potential tools that give shape to the light of a landscape, biographical events, spirituality tinged with esotericism. His art draws from art history – notably ancient statuary – and sometimes diverts imagery from Epinal, in order to question what, in an image, is likely to ensure its survival over the centuries.

Nobuyoshi Araki (né en 1940) et Daido Moriyama (né en 1938) portent sur l’humanité un regard à la fois tendre et empreint d’obscurité. Ils saisissent le flux de la vie dans toutes ses dimensions, à la fois vitalistes et mortifères, pour établir un constat en forme de memento mori. Cette exposition inaugurale s’est ainsi attaché à mettre au jour d’intimes coïncidences, pour offrir aux visiteurs un point de vue double sur le monde d’aujourd’hui, et en particulier sur le Japon contemporain. Son parcours a naturellement glissé d’un thème à l’autre, à la manière d’une charade, de la ville à la jeunesse qui la peuple, de la danse aux femmes, des fleurs à la mort.