Exposition Marc Desgrandchamps – Silhouettes

The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon presents a major exhibition devoted to Marc Desgrandchamps, one of the most prominent French painters of his generation.

The exhibition Marc Desgrandchamps - Silhouettes is designed to complement the exceptional collection of paintings and sculptures in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon and inaugurate the new spaces on the 3rd floor of the museum, which are now dedicated to temporary exhibitions with direct access to the rooms from the courtyard of the Bar of the former Palais des Ducs et des Etats de Bourgogne.

This exhibition brings together a significant group of 47 large canvases and polyptychs accompanied by drawings, divided into six distinct rooms and themes, allowing us to understand the changes that have occurred in the artist's practice over the last decade: the appearance of new subjects, forms and motifs that are intensely affirmed. His work as a whole bears witness to the instability of perceptions and the ambiguity of the visible. Through the great plastic originality of his work, Desgrandchamps has created a pictorial universe that is immediately identifiable, yet resists interpretation.

A journey with multiple themes

Spread over six rooms on the 3rd floor, the exhibition explores seven distinct themes through a path designed to apprehend the multiple facets of Marc Desgrandchamps' work, and thus reveals a work that is attentive to capturing the ambivalences of a world impregnated with crises, which can nevertheless reveal itself to be of unmistakable beauty, especially in landscapes. Engaged in a permanent and lively dialogue with ancient art and modernity, Desgrandchamps also seizes images and stories, which leads the public to revisit the history of the arts.


Discover the two paintings acquired by the museum!

In 2022, two significant paintings by the artist Marc Desgrandchamps were acquired to complement the exceptional collection of paintings and sculptures in the Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Untitled, 2020
In a sober architectural setting, two female silhouettes whose faces cannot be guessed contemplate a draped statue. Their contemporary look - jeans, trainers, phone in hand - may make one think of two visitors to a monument. Yet, as is often the case with Marc Desgrandchamps, the scene is deceptively simple. The more you look at the painting, the more opaque it becomes. The architecture is far from insignificant. It is a reconstruction of the space painted by Piero della Francesca in his famous Flagellation of Christ (ca. 1460).