Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon (Bordeaux, 1840 – Paris, 1916) was a painter and graphic artist, a leading Symbolist and a forerunner of Surrealism. His prints explore haunted, fantastic, macabre themes; his oils and pastels, often still-lifes with flowers, granted him the admiration of Henri Matisse and other painters as an important colorist.

He produced his first lithographic series, In the Dream, in 1879; his second, For Edgar Allan Poe, in 1882; his third, The Origins, in 1883. Redon's following lithographic series were Homage to Goya in 1885 and The Night in 1886. He exhibited with the impressionists in Paris and with "The Twenty" in Brussels in 1886. He did three series of lithographs for Gustave Flaubert's The Temptation of St. Anthony — in 1888, 1889, 1896 — and a series for Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal in 1890. In 1900, Redon began a series of flowers studies, far from the macabre subjects and nightmare visions of his earlier black-and-white lithographs and drawings, to paint in the brightest colors. Redon also produced some fine portraits, decorative scenes, and wall ornaments, and he created designs for tapestries. He died in Paris on July 6^th, 1916.