Must-see exhibitions in France in 2023

Thanks to France.fr, the official website for tourism development in France, there is no shortage of ideas for visits and walks. But this month, the website incites us to a cultural Tour de France, at least on a pictorial and graphic level, by listing the must-see exhibitions!

This is the case of the very important Manet / Degas exhibition held at the Musée d'Orsay from March to July and which proposes to take a “new look at the Impressionist movement in painting”. This new double exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay is devoted to Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, “two masters of the new painting of the 1860s-1880s”. The exhibition shows “their differences, demonstrating the heterogeneous and conflicting nature of pictorial modernity, and reveals the value of Degas’ collection, where Manet took on a greater role after his death”.

The Czech-born painter and poster artist Alphonse Mucha has had an important career in Paris in the 1900s, after attending art classes in Paris itself. To celebrate this career, the Grand Palais is organising an immersive and interactive exhibition from March to August “to rediscover an avant-garde artist whose work continues to inspire contemporary creators”. The exhibition offers an overview of Mucha’s work, a figure of Art Nouveau, and his humanist ambition, particularly as a master of poster design in Paris, at the turning point of his career in 1900, when he was heavily involved in the Paris Universal Exhibition.

Another exhibition is devoted to Henri Matisse at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Entitled “Le tournant des années 30” (The turning point of the 30s), this exhibition focuses on a lesser-known period of the artist’s work The public will be able to “dive deep into the interwar period with sculptures and objects from Matisse’s collection, drawings, engravings, photographs, archive documents and film extracts”.

Paris is not (all) France! Must-see exhibitions are also held in other regions this year, and they include a few emblematic retrospectives of French art.

The first focuses on Yves Klein, a contemporary French artist “eternally associated with luminous blue, a colour shade patented under the name of International Bleu Klein”, to whom the Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence is devoting a major exhibition (until March). The exhibition “explores the bridges between the personal life of the French artist and his creations”. Visitors dive “into the artist’s intimacy with the help of archival documents, objects from his studio and little-known works while admiring some of his masterpieces”.

Another artist honoured in the region this year is Niki de Saint Phalle, a contemporary Franco-American artist, who is exhibited at the Abattoirs de Toulouse, the Mecca of modern art in Occitania (until March). The exhibition, which is mainly devoted to the 1980s and 1990s, “a prolific period for the artist who multiplied her commissions”, features Nikki de Saint Phalle creating works for public spaces such as the Stravinsky Fountain in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, pieces of furniture, numerous jewels and lithographs, but also inflatable objects and “countless accessible works that make everyday life exceptional”.

In a joint communication involving France and Spain, the Ministry of Culture has also presented an exciting programme to celebrate the 50th anniversary Pablo Picasso’s death. The programme includes some forty major exhibitions on an international scale: in Spain (16 exhibitions), France (12 exhibitions), the United States (7 exhibitions) and other European countries, including Germany and Switzerland.

“Fifty years after his death, Pablo Picasso is more relevant than ever”, at least that is what France intends to demonstrate with the “Picasso Celebration” at the Musée National Picasso in Paris (March to August). The museum is proposing to rediscover its permanent collection, with masterpieces from the museum and works by modern and contemporary artists to be hung from spring onwards. In addition, an event exhibition devised by British fashion designer Paul Smith will invite the public “to revisit the most emblematic moments and subjects in Picasso’s work”.

It should be noted that many other Parisian museums are celebrating the master of Cubism in 2023: the Centre Pompidou, the Musée du Luxembourg, the Musée de l’Homme, the Musée de Montmartre and the Petit Palais. In other French regions, several museums are also taking part, such as the Picasso Museum in Antibes, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, the Collection Lambert in Avignon, the Musée Goya in Castres and the Musée de la Céramique in Vallauris.

• Exhibitions in Paris in 2023
• Exhibitions in French regions in 2023
• “Picasso Celebration”