LATEST EVENTS AT THE ART GALLERY
The Moderns : Painting in Réunion from 1925 to 1946
28th October 2023 - 27th October 2024
Curators : Colombe Couëlle, Bernard Leveneur
The Musée Léon Dierx invites you to discover a large selection of previously unpublished works that bear witness to the revival of Réunionese painting in the inter-war years. These artists offer a contemporary vision of the island, using forms and colours that bring Reunionese painting into the modern age.
Artist Residency "Heritage and Creation" #4
Behind the light, a rediscovered memory
Thierry Fontaine
Tiéri Rivière
Abel Técher
27th November 2021 - 3rd April 2022
Three artists from Reunion Island, Thierry Fontaine, Tiéri Rivière and Abel Técher, are exhibiting the results of their residency at the museum in 2021 as part of the department's "Heritage and Creation" # 4 programme.
# Resonances, the Louvre on Reunion Island
The Hierarchy of Genres: The Art of Drawing in France in the First Half of the 19th Century
17th July - 15th October 2021
Résonances is a multi-faceted exhibition organised as part of a partnership between the Musee du Louvre and the five museums on Reunion that have been awarded the "Musée de France" label.
Ever since it opened its doors in 1793, the Musée du Louvre has been conceived as a "museum of museums", serving the whole of Réunion. Today, the Louvre continues to develop its activities throughout France, particularly in the French overseas territories. Reunion was chosen for the quality of its museums and collections.
Artist Residency "Heritage and Creation" #3
An installation by Kako
31th October 2020 - 4th April 2021
Piédbwa, l'arbre manifeste (The Manifest Tree) is an installation that invites the public to walk through transformed forests and discover his creative processes, combining painting, drawing and sound. Kako constantly confronts us with the recreation of landscapes, wanting to alert us to the urgent choice we have to make between destroying Nature and protecting Living Things.
Residency "Heritage and Creation" #2
The Highlands of an islandPhotographs by Morgan Fache
8th November 2019 - 5th April 2020
Housing a rich collection of 19thcentury landscapes and portraits, for more than two years, the Leon-Dierx art gallery has been presenting works that depict the mountain areas of the island through its exhibitions Au cœur d’une île, les artistes et les Hauts de La Réunion au XIXe siècle en 2017 (At the heart of an island, 19thcentury artists and the mountain areas of Reunion in 2017), Traces fantômes (Ghostly tracks) and Un peu de bleu dans le paysage (A little blue in the landscape) with the painters Charly Lesquelin and Charles Prime (Residency « Heritage and Creation » #1). Les Hauts d’une l’île (The highlands of an island) is the third element of the program.
Abolition dayWith an installation by Mathilde Fossy « Dissipating the mist »
27th April - 15th September 2019
On 20th December 1848, over 60 000 slaves were freed following the speech given by the Commissioner of the French Republic Joseph Napoléon Sarda-Garriga on the ‘Place du Gouvernement’ square in Saint-Denis. The artist Alphonse Garreau, who had settled on the island during this period, later produced a painting recalling the event and today bearing the title of "Allegory of the abolition of slavery in Reunion". An exhibition held to commemorate the 170th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Reunion.
A floating world, dialogue of etchings, Japan-Europe27th October 2018 - 24th March 2019
For the second time, the Leon-Dierx art gallery exhibited works from the Johannesburg art gallery for an original presentation focusing on Japanese etchings. The collection from the South African art gallery presented the evolution of the art of engraving between the 17th and 19thcenturies, as well as the development of the main topics treated by the masters of Japanese etchings during this period. At the same time, a selection of engravings and lithographs by late 19thcentury European artists, present in the collections of the two art galleries, demonstrated the important influence of Japan on the art of etchings in the western world during the second half of the 19thcentury.
Artist Residency "Heritage and Creation" #1
Ghostly traces / A little blue in the landscape
Works by Charly Lesquelin / Works by Charles Prime
18th May - 26th August 2018
As part of their residencies at the Musée Léon Dierx, visual artists Charles Prime and Charly Lesquelin have been researching the landscape, drawing their inspiration from the museum's historical collections and those of the Archives départementales de La Réunion.
At the heart of an island, 19thcentury artists and the mountains of Reunion16th September 2017 - 1st April 2018
Over 150 drawings, engravings, watercolours, paintings and photographs present a panorama of visual representations of the cirques, the high plateaus and the Piton de La Fournaise volcano. Initially settled by runaway slaves in the 18th century, then by the island’s poorer inhabitants in search of land to settle on for their survival in the 19th century, these areas have marked the psychology of the island since its discovery. Pictorial representations of the interior of the island appeared very late on, but increased in number during the 19th century.
From Manet to Picasso: treasures of the Johannesburg art gallery and the Leon-Dierx art gallery25th November 2016 - 4th June 2017
Unique in this part of the world, the collections of French art from the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century housed in the Leon-Dierx art gallery (Reunion) and the Johannesburg art gallery (South Africa) were brought together for the first time! From Edouard Manet to Pablo Picasso and including Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot and Auguste Rodin, the exhibition enabled visitors to discover over 200 masterpieces from these two exceptional collections.
