« The world must be romanticized […]. When I give common things an august meaning, habitual realities a mysterious meaning, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite an air, a reflection, a gleam of the infinite: I romanticize them " wrote Novalis, the pope of German Romanticism, in 1798.

Used with varying degrees of success, the recipe has had many followers. What about today? Which painter still applies himself to " romanticize "The world? Keen to bring contemporary art into its collections, the Museum of Romantic Life has set its sights on the illustrator Françoise Pétrovitch. Intended to resonate with the Abelard and Heloise, Paolo and Francesca and other tragic lovers weeping on its walls, the artist's adolescents with closed eyes and evanescent bodies stand out against the hushed decor with their strident colors (bright pinks and blues)."

Playing with clichés and reactivating well-worn motifs (melancholic faces and poses, fleeting touches, closed eyelids, dreamlike hair…), Françoise Pétrovitch plunges with undisguised delight into the murky waters of ink wash, a technique she has made her specialty. Far more than in her oil portraits, it is in her floating landscapes, and particularly her islands inspired by Arnold Böcklin's strange and fascinating Isle of the Dead, that a certain Romantic heritage can be seen, through the shimmering waters, the interplay of reflections and doubling, the randomly shaped stains and drips, the indeterminate and shifting forms. And what if Romanticism were… that part which eludes us, of the undefined, of the provisional… » 1?

1 Quote from the artist taken from a filmed interview with Gaëlle Rio, director of the Museum of Romantic Life.

"FRANÇOISE PETROVITCH: TO LOVE. TO BREAK UP" MUSEUM OF ROMANTIC LIFE
16, RUE CHAPTAL, PARIS 9TH – UNTIL SEPTEMBER 10TH
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