Collections in the Garden.
Andrea Branzi, the Realm of the Living
from July 11, 2025 to November 2, 2025
156,5 cm
Milan, collection particulière © ADAGP, Paris, 2025
About
This summer, the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny presents an exhibition drawn from its own collection, centred on the theme of gardens—a motif through which Claude Monet’s enduring influence can be traced across the 20th century, from Pierre Bonnard to Joan Mitchell and into the realm of contemporary design. As with every new presentation of the collection, this exhibition also highlights the museum’s most recent acquisitions, featuring works by Jean Gaumy, Maude Maris, and Philippe Smit.
Andrea Branzi, the Realm of the Living
In collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, curated by Marie-Ange Brayer, the museum is presenting a group of works by Italian designer and architect Andrea Branzi, who died in 2023. Fascinated by the figure of Monet, Branzi saw in him a fellow architect who, through his garden, had constructed his own nature. Through a compelling ensemble of furniture, drawings, and models, the exhibition explores Branzi’s reflections on the future of humanity and our relationship with the living world. At its centre is Bamboo Interior Wood, a monumental installation made of painted bamboo, recently acquired by the Centre Pompidou in 2024.
This exhibition is part of the Constellation programme, which brings the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne to audiences throughout France during the Centre Pompidou’s closure for renovation. Pompidou.
Collections in the Garden
The museum’s summer exhibition invites visitors to rediscover key works from its permanent collection through the lens of the garden—a theme at the heart of Giverny’s identity. Visitors can immerse themselves in masterpieces such as Claude Monet’s Nymphéas avec rameaux de saule (1916–1919), Gustave Caillebotte’s Parterre de margeurites (c. 1893), and Pierre Bonnard’s La Seine à Vernon (1915).
Giverny takes pride of place in this selection, with works by Blanche Hoschedé-Monet (Lupins et pavots, n.d.), Theodore Butler (Portail au cerisier en fleurs, Giverny, 1912) and Mary Colman Wheeler (Thé au jardin, 1910 ), as well as contemporary works by Jacques Monory (Technicolor n°1. Monet est mort, 1977) and Terri Weifenbach (Giverny, une année au jardin, 2021).
The exhibition also unveils the latest additions to the collection: Johan Barthold Jongkind’s L’Escaut près d’Anvers, soleil couchant (1866), acquired thanks to a public subscription in 2023, Scène dans le parc (before 1915), a pastel by Philippe Smit, La Berge (2024), a monumental canvas by Maude Maris, and a group of photographs by academician Jean Gaumy, devoted to Monet’s garden (2018-2020).
Jean Gaumy, A Certain Nature, after Giverny
Official painter for the French Navy since 2008 and a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 2016, Jean Gaumy is celebrated for the documentary precision and poetic depth of his photographic work.
As early as 1975, he began doing in-depth reportage in closed worlds: hospitals, prisons, but also trawlers, work published in the book Pleine mer, for which he won the Nadar Prize in 2001. From 2008, he explored extreme or devastated landscapes: the seas of the Arctic Circle, the contaminated lands of Fukushima and Chernobyl, the inhospitable slopes of Piedmont.
Since 2016, Gaumy has been exploring a very different kind of terrain—Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny. Armed with nothing more than an iPhone, he captures what he describes as a “living jumble of plants and water” in striking black and white. The museum recently acquired three prints from this series, which will be shown this summer alongside a set of photographs loaned by the artist, in which Monet’s garden is revealed in a prodigious profusion of organic forms.
Jean Gaumy’s work can also be seen at the Musée National de la Marine in the exhibition « Jean Gaumy et la mer », on view from 14 May to 17 August 2025.
Centennial of the birth of Joan Mitchell
The Musée des impressionnismes Giverny is proud to join the worldwide celebrations marking the centennial of Joan Mitchell’s birth, an initiative of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. On this occasion, the museum is exhibiting La Grande Vallée IX, a major work on deposit from the Frac Normandie since 2009.
A major figure in American abstract art, Joan Mitchell settled in Vétheuil in 1967, close to the house once occupied by Claude Monet in 1878, before he moved to Giverny. La Grande Vallée IX is part of a cycle of sixteen paintings begun in 1983, in which the artist depicts a place described to her by one of her friends, the setting for happy childhood memories. Composed as a diptych, this monumental, vibrant painting immerses viewers in a vibrant, undefined space, where sweeping yellow arcs evoke the movement of trees, while broad strokes of blue and violet suggest sky or water. A free and dynamic transcription of sensory experience in the face of nature, the work bears witness to Claude Monet’s major influence on the evolution of abstraction.
Exhibition curators :
“Andrea Branzi, the Realm of the Living”: Marie-Ange Brayer, Curator, Head of the Design and Industrial Prospective Department at the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou.
“Collections in the Garden”: Cyrille Sciama, Director General and Chief Curator of the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny.
With the help of Marie Delbarre, Research assistant at the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny.
Practical information
Opening days
Exhibition presented from July 11 to November 2, 2025.
Prices
Full price | Concession price
- Adults: €12 | €9
- Audioguide : €4/person (FR or EN)
Free entry for:
- Visitors under 18.
- All Eure residents on the first Sunday of the months of August and September (proof of residency required).
- All individual visitors on the first Sunday of the months of October and November.
Exhibition in progress
The Nahmad Collection. From Monet to Picasso
from March 28, 2025 to June 29, 2025
See more
