Paintings in Exile. The Wanderings of French Art in the Americas 1939-1947.

Dr Victor Claass
(Sorbonne University – Louvre Museum)
Friday, 15 March 2019, 5:30 pm
Warburg Institute
Woburn Square
London WC1H 0AB
Admission free; please register for this event through the Events section of the School of Advanced Study (SAS).
During the spring of 1939, French cultural propaganda services shipped numerous works of art from public and private collections to Argentina, to be displayed at the Buenos Aires Museum of Fine Arts. Trapped on the other side of the Atlantic after the outbreak of the war, these paintings (including major pieces by David, Ingres, Delacroix, Manet and Monet) then toured Latin America and the United States during the conflict. This presentation will retrace the little-known history of these objects – from their departure in 1939 to their repatriation in 1947 – and question the material, as well as symbolical implications of their wanderings.