In the south, the senses are elated, the hand becomes nimbler, the eye livelier, the brain clearer.
Vincent van Gogh

The development of tourism in what is now called the Côte d’Azur began with a travel description by Tobias Smollett in Travels Through France and Italy in the late eighteenth century. The English writer described the Mediterranean coast of France as a place where the light was brighter than elsewhere, the sky more clement, and the sun shone more frequently. The mild winter climate soon attracted the aristocracy of Great Britian, Germany, and Russia to Nice, which along with the inland area became the French Riviera. Elegant hotels and residences popped up along the coast, parks were established, and tropical plants acclimated. In 1916 Henri Matisse stayed at a health spa in Medon and later settled in nearby Nice, where he stayed at the Hotel Beau-Rivage.

Starting in 1923, Swiss collectors Hedy and Arthur Hahnloser also spent winters in the mild South of France due to Hedy’s state of health. There, she had regular contact with her artist friends Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard.

The previous generation had already discovered the south: Paul Cézanne, who was born in Aix-en-Provence, returned to his hometown after spending time in Paris, after which he dedicated himself to the southern landscape for the rest of his life. In these works, he changed from an Impressionist painting style to a surface-oriented depiction “in parallel to nature.”

On a journey to the South of France in 1888, Vincent van Gogh remained in Arles, where he dreamed of founding a southern studio as an artist colony. Although the idea did not come to fruition, he created countless paintings of glittering landscapes, with which he made his mark on art history.

The exhibition Tout est lumière brings together sun-drenched masterpieces—paintings, drawings, and drawings by artists from Cézanne to Matisse—that sharpen the senses and reveal artistic thought in the spirit of Van Gogh. 

Curated by Konrad Bitterli, Andrea Lutz, and David Schmidhauser