Everything is light

In the south, the senses are sharpened. The hands become more dexterous, the eye more attentive and the mind clearer.
Vincent van Gogh

The tourist development of what is now known as the Côte d'Azur began at the end of the 18th century with Tobias Smollett's travelogue Travels through France and Italy. In it, the English writer describes the Mediterranean coast of France as a land where the light shines brighter than elsewhere, the sky is more gracious and the sun shines more often. The mild winter climate soon attracted aristocrats from Great Britain, but also from Germany and Russia, to Nice, which, together with its surrounding area, was transformed into the Riviera. Chic hotels and villa districts sprang up along the coast, parks were laid out and tropical plants acclimatised. In 1916, Henri Matisse spent a spa holiday in Medon and then settled in nearby Nice, where he stayed at the Hotel Beau-Rivage.

From 1923 onwards, the collector couple Hedy and Arthur Hahnloser also spent their winters in the mild south due to Hedy's health, where they were in regular contact with their artist friends Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard.

The previous generation had already discovered the south: Paul Cézanne, born in Aix-en-Provence, returned to his homeland after his stay in Paris and devoted himself to the southern landscape. In doing so, he succeeded in overcoming the Impressionist style of painting in favour of a two-dimensional representation "parallel to nature".

In 1888, Vincent van Gogh got stuck in Arles on his journey to the south, where he wanted to realise his long-cherished dream of founding a studio in the south as an artists' colony. The idea failed, but he produced countless paintings of dazzling landscapes, with which he made his mark on art history.

The exhibition Tout est lumière brings together sun-drenched masterpieces – paintings, watercolours and drawings – from Cézanne to Matisse, in which, in the spirit of Van Gogh, the senses are sharpened and artistic thinking is clarified.

Curated by Konrad Bitterli, Andrea Lutz and David Schmidhauser