The grandfather of surrealism
My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.
—Redon
In reaction to the "narrow-mindedness" of his fellow artists, symbolist painter Odilon Redon (1840-1916) sought to open the door on the invisible. Art, according to the theories of the symbolist movement, should "add to human beauty the nimbus of thought." In his studio, Redon would dedicate his energies, like an alchemist, to the creation of his "black pictures," those barely tangible charcoal drawings teeming with fantasy figures. Gradually, color took hold in his works and Redon applied it with a boldness and imagination that heralded the exprerimental approach of modernism and surrealism. Fallen angels and deformed monsters gave way to a completely different vision that was radiant and serene: the triumph of light over darkness.
