CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.-The Art Institute of Chicago presents Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, on view through October 10, 2005. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), one of the most popular and important painters of late 19th-century Paris, has not been the subject of a major exhibition since the large retrospective seen in London and Paris in 1991–1992. The National Gallery of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago have collaborated to organize Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, an exhibition that will place the artist's work at the peak of his career between 1888 and 1896 in conjunction with that of other artists at that period. Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries produced images that evocatively recorded the social geography of Montmartre, center of licit and illicit entertainment. Taking Montmartre as a state of mind as well as an environment, the exhibition will re-evaluate the decadent worldview of fin-de-siècle Paris, so different from that of the preceding Impressionist generation. The focus will be on several Montmartre themes, including the dance halls, the circus, and the maisons closes, integrating major avant-garde paintings, topographical canvases, and posters and caricatures of stars like Aristide Bruant and Loïe Fuller.

The aim of the exhibition is to place Toulouse-Lautrec in the wider context of his time and place and to include for comparison and contrast a selection of works by his contemporaries—painters, printmakers, and poster artists—to evoke the life and art of fin-de-siècle Montmartre. This supporting cast will include such famous names as Degas, Seurat, and Picasso, but also less-well-known figures such as Anquetin, Steinlen, and Casas, who nonetheless captured the spirit of that age. This will add a powerful new dimension to our understanding of Toulouse-Lautrec and his time.

Organizers: This exhibition was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Curators: Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre is curated by professor Richard Thomson, University of Edinburgh, a leading scholar of Toulouse-Lautrec and fin-de-siècle Paris, and curator of the 1991–1992 retrospective. The exhibition will be coordinated in Washington, D.C., by Philip Conisbee, senior curator of European paintings at the National Gallery of Art; and in Chicago by Douglas Druick, Searle Curator of Medieval through Modern European Painting and Modern European Sculpture, and Prince Trust Curator of Prints and Drawings; and Gloria Groom, David and Mary Winton Green Curator, Medieval through Modern European Painting.

Other Venues: Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre will be presented at the National Gallery of Art from March 20 to June 12, 2005, and in Chicago from July 16 to October 10, 2005.