Knowra Odilon Redon Odilon Redon Odilon Redon (1840–1916) was a French artist whose drawings, prints, and paintings transformed literary, natural, and religious imagery into enigmatic visions.
The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity : A charcoal lithograph by Redon depicting an enormous eye carrying a severed head through the sky. This early plate crystallizes the uncanny imagery of Redon’s black period.
Noirs : Redon’s term for his works in black, especially charcoal drawings and lithographs made before his turn to color. Their dense blacks and uncertain forms establish the visual logic of his early work.
Charles Baudelaire : A French poet and critic whose writings explored modernity, imagination, and the correspondences among the senses. Baudelaire’s writings helped define the Symbolist climate in which Redon’s art emerged.
Symbolism : A late nineteenth-century movement in literature and art that used suggestion, metaphor, and private imagery to evoke ideas. Redon became a central visual artist of this movement’s inward, suggestive approach.
The Cyclops : A painting by Redon showing the one-eyed giant Polyphemus watching the nymph Galatea. Its mythic subject becomes a tender, dreamlike encounter rather than a scene of violence.
Lithography : A printing process that transfers an image drawn with greasy material on stone or metal onto paper. Redon used lithography to multiply his fantastical images while preserving expressive tonal effects.
Edgar Allan Poe : An American writer known for poems and tales of psychological unease, mystery, and the macabre. Redon illustrated Poe, finding in his stories a literary counterpart to his uncanny images.
Gustave Moreau : A French Symbolist painter known for elaborate mythological and biblical scenes. Moreau shared Redon’s turn toward myth and imagination while favoring a more ornate style.
The Buddha : A painting by Redon depicting the Buddha amid a richly colored, imagined landscape. It exemplifies his later turn to monumental spiritual figures and saturated color.
Charcoal Drawing : A drawing technique using sticks or powder of carbonized wood to make marks on paper. Charcoal allowed him to build velvety darkness and ambiguous forms in his noirs.
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