Renoir: Intimacy

The filmmaker Jean Renoir, son of impressionist painter Pierre August Renoir, described how his father looked at flowers, women and clouds in the sky as other men touch and caress. impressionism is generally conceived of as purely visual, an optical exploration of light dappled surfaces and shifting colours. Renoir: intimacy instead focuses on the central role of tactile sensations in renoirs canvases. In all the different phases of his long career, working in a variety of genres (including group scenes, portraits, Nudes, still lifes and landscapes), Renoir powerfully evoked the sense of touch. Renoir: intimacy reveals the ways Renoir made use of the tactile qualities of volume, material and texture as a vehicle to depict intimacy in its different forms-from social intimacy among family and friends, to the erotic-and how that imagery is visceral connected to the sensuality of the artists brushstroke and the physical surfaces of his paintings. Published to accompany an exhibition at the muses de arte thyssen- bornemisza in Madrid, this gorgeous volume includes more than 70 works by the artist, loaned from museums and private collections worldwide.