Toulouse-Lautrec and the Belle-Époque arrive at the Canal Foundation

The Canal Foundation presents for the first time in Madrid, a collection of the most important advertising posters of the artist Toulouse-Lautrec provided by the Museum of Yxelles in Brussels.

Throughout four sections: The pleasures of the night; The pleasures of the scenarios; Literary and artistic pleasures; and Modern pleasures. Consumption, the Canal Foundation exhibits posters of Toulouse-Lautrec and their contemporaries. A total of 65 works are exhibited until May 6, 2018, of which 33 posters are from Toulouse-Lautrec.

This exhibition transports the visitor to the Belle-Époque through black and white film projections showing events that marked the time such as the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1889, the appearance of the department stores, the increase of theatrical shows, etc … and that show the changes of mentality and customs in the Paris of the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX.

The style of Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond of Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, also known as Toulouse- Lautrec is a painter but on a nineteenth-century French poster that broke with Art Nouveau and reinvented the poster turning it into an art in its own right.

Toulouse-Lautrec is a forerunner in the design of the modern poster. With a photographic approach, his posters capture the characters with simplicity and frankness, using strongly marked outlines, asymmetrical compositions, colored spots and simple lines inspired by Japanese Art and aspects of Impressionism. In his very personal style, he also highlights the importance he gives to typography.

The modern pleasures. The consumption

With Industrialization came an important development of commerce and the birth of the consumer society. In this context, a multitude of objects and diverse goods, many of them new and modern, begin to be sold on a large scale. The poster was then the fundamental means used to disseminate these consumer products.

Many artists, among them Toulouse-Lautrec, took advantage of this new format and created a new, more direct and effective language so that the posters could better sell the idea or the product. The figure of the woman and her charms becomes a great claim for the products and a commercial strategy that proved to be broadly effective at the time. It was so that modern advertising was also born.

The pleasures of the scenarios

Paris experienced a remarkable artistic and literary effervescence, which made it the cultural capital of the time. Numerous cabarets and café-concerts flourish with daring shows that reflected the spirit of freedom of the artists. An air of modernity spread throughout the city. The reading of these posters promoting the plays becomes one of the favorite distractions of the pedestrians of the Parisian boulevards, being current topic especially for the women who copy the suits of the artists to go to the latest fashion.

Toulouse- Lautrec has been inspired by the profound changes that have been introduced in society, of the effervescent Parisian life, of Montmartre, especially its cabarets, its fatal women and nocturnal pleasures to express them in their works. Make posters that promote these plays. Among the best known are the poster of Le Chat Noir (the black cat), and the posters that represent the performances of the dancer Jane Avril or the singer-songwriter Aristide Bruant.