Lecture Artist Research : Odilon Redon

 In today's class session, we had a lecture about a French artist Odilon Redon. We viewed about his biography, explored some of his artwork and how the change was with his earlier and later life. Our tutor Zoe had an almost 30-minute long introduction for us to know more about him, I had dropped some notes and this blog will be showing you who he was and what he had done in his life.

 Odilon Redon was born Bertrand-Jean Redon in Bordeaux, France in 1840 and his name Odilon came from his mother's name Odilon. Although he was already an symbolist artist of France, he had a much greater reputation in the United States. Redon started to study drawing when he was 15 years old, however his father insisted that he should study architecture so he switched to this subject but failed the exam at the end, therefore he went back home and started to study sculpture again.

It can be seen that Redon's paintings clearly distinguish with two different stages. The colors of his early life paintings are dark and mysterious until 1890s, in his later life, he had begun to work in oil paintings and pastel works, and the colors started to become rich and contrasted.

Due to his childhood background, he had been a sickly child, liked to be alone and he just felt safe hiding somewhere, so this was the reason how he started to form his own unique weird style in his early life. Redon used black as the most basic color and lithographs or charcoal to depict the silent and strange creatures that inhabited the dark fantasy world. For instance strange snakes, eyeballs suspended in the air, horses with wings... 

Redon began to try to create with oil painting and chalk in his later life, those themes he had been changed to flowers, idols or beauty women. All of the black tones in the past had also become colorful and bright paintings.

Reference :

1.http://arrinconarte-elrincondelarte.blogspot.com/2012/04/odilon-redon-una-puerta-abierta-los.html

2.https://www.portraitonpastel.com/en/odilon-redon-pastel-technique

3.https://www.flickr.com/photos/24605060@N08/2361914097/

4.https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliapugachevsky/what-your-favorite-high-school-book-says-about-you