After settling in Giverny in 1883, Monet painted his gardens until the end of his life. From the late 1890s onwards, he developed the Nymphéas cycle. In its late, large-scale compositions, the horizon disappears and the image unfolds across the entire surface, bringing his painting to the threshold of abstraction.

This garden has become a universal source of inspiration for numerous artists, painters and photographers from widely divergent artistic traditions who have nevertheless acknowledged Monet’s influence. Through visual correspondences and echoes, the exhibition brings together works by post-war and contemporary artists, including Abdallah Benanteur, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Jorma Puranen, Bernard Plossu, Jean Gaumy and Hiramatsu Reiji.

For this dialogue, the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art is lending three works by the Canadian painter and sculptor Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923–2002), a major figure in Lyrical Abstraction. His gestural painting, characterized by thick impasto and mosaic-like compositions of coloured brushstrokes, responds to the vegetal structures and immersive quality of Monet’s works.