21/04/2020
Happy Birthday Odilon Redon! On this day in 1840, Redon was born in Bordeaux, France. He was born as Bertrand-Jean Redon, but acquired the nickname "Odlion" from his mother's name, Odile. His interest in art manifested young, around age 10. At age 15, he began formally studying drawing, but when it came time to attend university, at the advice of his father, Redon chose to pursue achitecture at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. However, young Odilon did not manage to pass the exam for architecture and instead stayed and began to study painting under Jean-Léon Gérôme in 1864. When he returned to his hometown of Bordeaux, he began studying lithography and etching with the wonderfully eccentric Rodolphe Bresdin. Redon's art career was briefly paused in 1870 when he joined the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War. Afterwards, he worked exclusively in shades of black within the mediums of charcoal and lithography, creating his well known "noirs". Soon, in the 1890s, Redon discovered his love of pastels and oils and produced no more "noirs" after 1900. His work is now well-loved for its characteristic mystical and fantastic, but beautifully vulnerable nature. "My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."
Image: Odilon Redon, Profil lumiere, 1886, Lithograph, courtesy: Yale University Art Gallery
