Marie Bashkirtseff

In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice decided to dynamically bring the fine arts closer to everyday life and to invite contemporary art in particular to revisit the works in its collection.
As part of the program "Contemporary views on the collection" and of the exposition "Homage to Marie Bashkirtseff, Invitation to the museum" that Véronique Bigo, painter, settled to the museum to pay homage to the young artist through her most personal objects.

VERONIQUE BIGO TELLS ABOUT MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

Contemporary views on the collection, route “Véronique tells about Marie Bashkirtseff”, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice - November 12th, 2008 to January 11th, 2009

In this first Route through the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice, Véronique Bigo invents a dialogue of artists through the centuries between herself and Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1884), painter, writer and above all heroine exalted by her brief destiny . How not to be seized by this Russian woman of the XIX century, who knew France better than her country of origin, who sought glory to be sure of existing and for whom everything that was not excessive was only insignificance?
Bigo, faithful to her line which is both interrogative and analytical, fixes on large-format canvases, four objects that belonged to Marie Bashkirtseff: her journal, her bracelet, a handbag, her shoe. They expose, more than they tell, the woman artist, the feminine woman and the vagabond woman who pursued her passions from Moscow to Naples, from Athens to Paris and Nice where she lived for seven years.
As if radiographed, almost stripped of their material, their transparency imposes the distressing presence of the stretched linen canvas which, with exasperating indifference, expects the artist to transform pictorial material into artistic material. The dialogue between these two women thus begins with this intense questioning of linen. Would Bigo have succeeded in taming Maries’s overflowing and fascinating ardor? In our eyes, yes!
She can now engage in a sparkling, charming and,at times, even sassy discussion in a succession of drawings with more intimate dimensions. […]
In this series of drawings, Véronique Bigo continues her rediscovery of colored hues which she makes brighter by using black backgrounds. This elegant allusion to Russian luxuriance allows her to approach in her work the repertoire of seduction, treated here as a tribute paid to the intelligence of the senses.