Otherworldly Visions

Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions explores the strange and imaginative visual world of the French Symbolist artist through an exceptional group of charcoal drawings, lithographs and pastels. Works from the Getty collection are joined by selected loans to trace Redon’s movement from haunting monochrome imagery toward increasingly luminous colour.

Redon drew inspiration from religion, mythology, literature, music and the rapidly developing sciences of the nineteenth century. Eyes, hybrid creatures, skeletons, floating heads and dreamlike landscapes appear throughout his work, creating images that resist straightforward narrative and anticipate aspects of Surrealism.

The exhibition places recent Getty acquisitions alongside major examples of Redon’s mature pastel practice, showing how the artist used radically different materials to pursue a consistent interest in the unseen, the psychological and the fantastic.