India Mahdavi Lends Her Creative Vision to Pierre Bonnard’s Exhibition at the NGV.

The NGV has partnered with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris to present the world-premiere exhibition Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi. The winter exhibition features more than 100 works by Pierre Bonnard—the leading 20th-century French painter celebrated for his iridescent palette—presented within a contemporary scenography by architect and designer, India Mahdavi.

The paintings of Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) depict intimate domestic interiors, natural landscapes and urban scenes with subtlety and a sensuous approach to colour and light. Renowned for his use of colour to convey emotions, Bonnard was declared by his close friend Henri Matisse as “a great painter, for today and definitely also for the future”.

The exhibition brings late 19th and early 20th century France to life through paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and decorative objects by Pierre Bonnard, shown alongside early cinema by the Lumière brothers, and artworks by Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton and Édouard Vuillard, Bonnard’s early contemporaries.

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No stranger to colour, Mahdavi envelops Pierre Bonnard’s works in an environment that complements his distinct use of colour and texture, and evokes the wistful domestic intimacy his paintings are renowned for.

“Monsieur Bonnard and I share the same passion for colour—the way he invites us into his home and intimacy is sublimated by his very own sense of colour,” Mahdavi explains. “For this exhibition, we dived into Pierre Bonnard’s paintings and extracted some of his patterns and colours to recreate backdrops to his paintings, offering an immersive experience of a home to the visitor.”

Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi is on display now till October 8 2023 at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Tickets and information are available via the NGV website.

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[Images courtesy of NGV. Photography by Lillie Thompson.]