Suburbs, fires and metropolises

The city here is a historical and emotional character: Toledo retreats into the landscape, Troy burns, New York moves and the modern suburbs become color.

This selection approaches urban space less as an inventory of monuments than as a scene of events and transformations. Toledo, painted from its periphery by Ricardo Arredondo, is inscribed in the dust and rock of Castile. At Juan de la Corte, the suburbs of Vienna abandoned by the Turks and Troy in flames give the city a dramatic function: it becomes an issue, refuge or loss. The squares of Cadiz, Malaga and Lérida extend this political memory. Then modernity changes the scale of the subject. Jongkind observes the Quai d'Orsay, Everett Shinn and George Bellows grasp the intersection and the street fight, Streeton diffuses the light on the outskirts, while let Schiele, Soutine and Ensor make roofs and facades vibrate. The city view then becomes a psychological portrait of the modern world. The selection "Urban landscapes and city views" notably compares Don Alphonse the Wise, after having conquered from the Moors the square of Cádiz, the first maritime square owned by the kings of Castile, seized the sea to open to Christians the path which would lead them to Africa. and Landscape on the outskirts of the city of Toledo. Its reading favors light.

When the city becomes a character, its streets can flee, its roofs tremble and its suburbs keep track of history.