Vernissage TV visits the Fondation Beyeler’s Courbet show:

The exhibition Gustave Courbet at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (Switzerland) presents pioneering works from all phases of the French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. At the heart of the show are Gustave Courbet’s female nudes beside water and his famous painting The Origin of the World (L’Origine du monde, 1866), a work that still provokes today. The exhibition presents works from all phases of Gustave Courbet’s career, including a number of paintings that have rarely been seen in public. On display are self-portraits, scenes capturing Courbet’s native countryside (pictures of secluded streams and springs, rock formations and grottoes), views of the sea, and winterscapes.

The exhibition was created by Ulf Küster, curator at the Fondation Beyeler, and is part of the “Courbet Season”, a joint venture with the Musées d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, which is mounting a concurrent show in the Musée Rath that focuses upon Courbet’s years in Switzerland.

Gustave Courbet at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Switzerland). Vernissage, September 6, 2014.