Georges Focus: La folie d’un peintre de Louis XIV

The discovery of the work of Georges Focus from the period of his confinement at the Petites Maisons arouses an overwhelming sense of astonishment today, not to mention shock. It inspires us with a feeling of something new, something never seen before, and challenges our received ideas.

Georges Focus, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture under Louis XIV, produced two separate streams of work: public, Academy art on the one hand, personal and intimate, on the other.

This astonishing corpus, brought together in France for the first time at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, comprising around 80 drawings as well as prints and paintings from the University of Edinburgh, private collections and public institutions including Beaux-Arts de Paris, bears witness to his unique trajectory.

The exhibition is an opportunity to explore the exceptional and unique œuvre of an artist suffering from madness at the time of Louis XIV.

Curated by Emmanuelle Brugerolles

Palais des Beaux-Arts
13, Quai Malaquais
75006 Paris

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