From Manet to Kelly — The Art of the Imprint
This morning, I took the time to travel through Valais to Martigny to visit From Manet to Kelly — The Art of the Imprintat the Fondation Pierre Gianadda. And I must say, the experience is worth lingering over — especially if you see art not only as image, but as trace, inscription, and presence.
What the Fondation brings together here is far from an ordinary selection: 178 masterpieces of printmaking, drawn from the remarkable print collections of the National Institute of Art History (INHA) in Paris, unfold along a path that spans nearly two centuries of experimentation and invention.
What strikes you immediately is the coherence of the curatorial vision. This is not simply about showing beautiful works; it is about allowing the viewer to feel printmaking as an act, as a language, as an imprint of gesture. From Goya to Manet, from Edvard Munch to Käthe Kollwitz, through to the abstract serigraphs of Ellsworth Kelly or the rigorous lines of Vera Molnár, each work tells its own story of tension between material, pressure, contact, and repetition — as if an invisible world of forces were being played out on paper.
What moved me most was the sense of intimacy with the works. There are no overwhelming formats here, no spectacular gigantism. Instead, we stand before sheets that still carry the memory of the burin, the etching needle, the drypoint — and that return to us the subtle thrill of an artist working the surface with the same intensity as a painter confronting canvas.
The exhibition takes its time. It opens with a historical reflection on the collector Jacques Doucet — a visionary who, at the beginning of the 20th century, knew how to assemble foundational works from a history too often overlooked: that of the print. From there, the journey unfolds through finely tuned thematic sections — Energies, Figures, Gazes, Landscapes, Homages — each revealing a distinct way of inhabiting the white space of the paper.
This morning, I found myself returning again and again to certain prints, watching how light interacts with texture, how a simple arrangement of lines can open up an entire world of sensations. From Manet to Kelly reminded me why these repetitive, often discreet gestures — yet deeply sensitive — lie at the very heart of what we call art.
If you find yourself passing through Valais before 14 June 2026, I can only recommend this immersion into the art of the imprint: an exhibition that lets you almost touch the poetry of gesture, the quiet power of printmaking, and that extraordinary ability artists have to make us feel, through a line alone, the depth of a gaze cast upon the world.
