Invitation
to Daniel Buren,
"Plantations": in situ works, 2026 / Collections

Invitation to Daniel Buren,
Plantations: in situ works, 2026

For summer 2026, Daniel Buren has been invited to take over the spaces of the musée des impressionnismes Giverny. Born in 1938, Buren is an internationally renowned French contemporary artist. His in situ works feature his characteristic visual tool – alternating white and coloured vertical bands 8.7 cm thick – which enables him to reveal and highlight places and their contexts. From his affichages sauvages (unauthorised posters) of the late 1960s to large public commissions, his works have occupied public spaces all over the world, as well as art venues (museums and galleries), playing with viewpoints, colour, space, light and movement.

With his Plantations, travaux in situ, Buren presents a new site-specific creation, which extends from the gardens outside to the museum’s interior, thereby creating a dialogue between the environment of Giverny and works in the collection. A century after Claude Monet’s death, the artist is building on some of the fundamental intuitions of the Impressionist painters, who were interested in the changing effects of colour and light in nature. But whereas Monet and Caillebotte painted quivering water, landscapes and the sky, Buren locates his works in the very space we move through, making perception a shifting and endlessly renewed phenomenon.

Scattered around the landscapes of Giverny, his Plantations create large coloured vistas – tinged with blue, yellow, black, red and violet – which are inserted into the verdant setting of the hill and gardens, extending into the interiors of the rooms. In the galleries, Buren’s work is displayed alongside a selection of works from the museum’s collection, offering visitors an immersion in nature and artistic creation.

Collections

Alongside the exhibition Invitation to Daniel Buren. Plantations: in situ works, 2026, the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny presents, as it does every Summer, a selection of works from its permanent collection. Displayed throughout the exhibition galleries, some 70 paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs and decorative arts are brought together in five thematic sections exploring different aspects of artistic perception. Throughout the exhibition, masterpieces of Impressionism are placed in dialogue with contemporary art around the themes of immersion, horizon, radiance, nuances and structure.

From the lush natural settings painted by Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Caillebotte and Maude Maris to the seascapes and gardens depicted by Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet and Hiramatsu Reiji, where sky and water merge, the exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in the landscape and reflect on the limits of pictorial space. It also explores the ever-changing effects of light in works by Theodore Earl Butler, Mary Wheeler and Maurice Denis, before revealing the infinite subtleties of colour and its variations, from Johan Barthold Jongkind and Jean Francis Auburtin to Jacques Monory. Finally, photographs, prints and sculptures demonstrate how the simplification of forms and the interplay of line and contrast can capture the very essence of a landscape or a figure.

As it does every year, the museum’s summer exhibition offers an opportunity to rediscover its collection from a fresh perspective through new juxtapositions and dialogues. It also showcases the museum’s most recent acquisitions, highlighting a collection that continues to grow through acquisitions, donations and long-term loans.

Curator: Cyrille Sciama, Director General of the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny, Chief Curator, and and Sylvie Patry, General Curator of Heritage at the Musée d’Orsay

Opening days

Exhibition open from July 17, to November 1, 2026.

Press kit

Patrons

Media partners