"Des Chimères"

The Gustave Moreau museum invites a young artist to take a look at the Gustave Moreau museum's landmark works.

Les Chimères, an enigmatic work, drawn as much as painted, and even tattooed. A work from which emanate creatures and monsters, intertwined with the bodies of their mistresses, countless naked maidens, chained to their vices, in dissidence with other women clothed and crowned in medieval finery, who process to the marvelous heights of the canvas, between Gothic city and craggy mountains.

This highly symbolic work, imbued with antiquity, the Middle Ages and spirituality, is now reinterpreted by the young artist Margaux Laurens-Neel, who offers you, through ceramic sculpture and watercolor, a new journey to the heart of this dream island.
"This island of fantastic dreams contains all the forms of passion, fantasy, caprice in women [...]", wrote Gustave Moreau in a commentary on his work Les Chimères, in a November 1897 publication, thirteen years after leaving this canvas unfinished in 1884.

From the museum's first floor to the large studio, the swarming creatures, colorful and lustrous, take their place in their setting. Hybrid animals, reworked female figures, flowers and wildlife unfold until July 7, 2025.