Talisman.
Carte blanche to Ali Banisadr.
September 9 – December 7, 2026
10:00 - 18:00
Audience type General public
Presented by Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Paris
In this year marking the bicentennial of his birth (1826–1898), the Gustave Moreau National Museum is launching a new programming format centered on a “carte blanche,” entrusted to a contemporary artist and conceived in dialogue with the work of this visionary creator.
It will fully embody the spirit of the museum-studio envisioned by the artist: a place of creation, education, and transmission where the idea of timeless art—imbued with symbolism and constantly reexamined by successive generations—lives on.
The perspectives offered by young artists, as well as by established figures, will foster a fresh interpretation of Gustave Moreau’s legacy and its resonance in the contemporary world.
This intergenerational dialogue will highlight connections, influences, and formal or conceptual echoes, while bringing to light different artistic responses to shared concerns.
By juxtaposing works from entirely distinct historical contexts, this program will underscore the enduring nature of certain aesthetic, social, and spiritual questions that span the ages and continue to fuel contemporary creation.
Much like the syncretism that permeates the work of Gustave Moreau, Ali Banisadr’s practice, represented by the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, continues this approach aimed at transcending reality to achieve an imaginary and fantastical vision of the world around us.
Ali Banisadr
Born in Tehran in 1976, Ali Banisadr is today one of the leading figures in international contemporary painting. Deeply shaped by his childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, Banisadr transforms these memories into compositions of remarkable vitality.
At the age of 12, he moved with his family to California. In San Francisco, he studied psychology and developed an interest in graffiti. He has lived and worked in New York since 2000, when he moved there to study at the School of Visual Arts and the New York Academy of Art.
Since his first solo exhibition in 2008, his works have been featured in numerous museums, including the S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent (2010); the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in The Hague (2011); the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2012); the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg (2013); the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto (2017); the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (2017); and as part of a two-person exhibition with Andrew Sendor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville (2019). He participated in the exhibition “Love Me/Love Me Not: Contemporary Art from Azerbaijan and Its Neighbors” during the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
His recent solo exhibitions include those held at the Het Noordbrabants Museum in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (2019); the Benaki Museum in Athens (2020); and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut (2020).
“Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist,” the first major American museum retrospective dedicated to Banisadr’s work, was presented at the Katonah Museum of Art in New York in 2025, then at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, in Florida, in 2026, and will travel to the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, as well as the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2027.
Some of these works are housed in France at the Musée national d'art moderne – Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Practical Information
Exhibition featured in the permanent collections
Included in the museum admission ticket
Exhibition organized in partnership with the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Paris.
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Upcoming exhibitions
Talisman.
With Nadja at Moreau's museum
