After Paris 1900, the Petit Palais devotes a major exhibition to Brussels, a European capital in full artistic and intellectual expansion at the turn of the 20th century.
For the first time in France, painting, sculpture, decorative and graphic arts, photography, architecture, jewellery and fashion are brought together to bear witness to the creative vitality that made Brussels one of the major centres of modernity. The exhibition sets emblematic masterpieces in dialogue: the monumental triptychs of Léon Frédéric, the furniture ensembles and models of Victor Horta, the posters of the Salon des XX, or the jewellery of Philippe Wolfers. This dialogue between disciplines illustrates an abundance whose influence extended well beyond Belgium's borders.
From the Exposition universelle of 1900 onward, the Belgian section was hailed in Paris as a true "artistic renaissance". This recognition confirmed the new importance of Belgium, a young nation-state founded in 1830 and driven by spectacular economic and industrial growth. Brussels then established itself as the political and intellectual heart of the country, but also as an international showcase in which the arts played an identity-forming role.
From the 1880s onward, a teeming microcosm of artists, writers and critics gathered there: Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, Ensor, Khnopff, Van Rysselberghe or Claus. The circles L'Essor, Les XX and then La Libre Esthétique offered this generation a space for experimentation open to Europe, welcoming Cézanne, Gauguin, Denis or Rodin. Symbolism, naturalism, social art and idealism intersected there, making Brussels a genuine laboratory of modernity.
This effervescence, however, takes place against the political and colonial backdrop of the reign of Leopold II, whose enterprise in the Congo, denounced as early as that period by Joseph Conrad, recalls the tensions and contradictions of an era. The exhibition Bruxelles 1900 thus invites visitors to rediscover a capital in transition, between artistic ambitions, national affirmation and historical contradictions.
The exhibition is organised in partnership with the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, the Royal Museums of Art and History and the Royal Library of Belgium. It benefits from the exceptional support of the musée d'Orsay