The festival’s essential aspect is its territorial basis, given that each edition is constructed thanks to and with all the territory’s cultural players. The festival is spread across the entirety of Normandy, both in sites devoted to culture and in unexpected places, so as to reach the greatest number of people.
For this 5th edition, the festival is inviting the world to celebrate 150 years of Impressionism with such figures of contemporary international creation as David Hockney, Robert Wilson or Sean Scully, to name but three.
Normandie Impressionniste also stands out thanks to its emphasis on multidisciplinary events. Music, dance, the cinema and opera are essential parts of our proposition, often in a hybridisation with the visual arts.
Many contemporary artists, without necessarily spontaneously mentioning the fact, derive a special energy from Impressionism, bound up with nature, the real world and the instant. This dialogue between contemporary art and Impressionism, which made the festival a precursor, constitutes its DNA.
The festival is also contemporary through the sustainable model that it has developed over an intentionally long period, based as much as possible on the pre-existing and on parity. In 1874, just one woman featured in the first impressionist exhibition, Berthe Morizot. 150 years later, 47% of the artists on the programme of Normandie Impressionniste are women.
Philippe Platel,
Director of Normandy Impressionist
Editorial by Philippe Platel
« 2022’s special edition is a first for the Normandy Impressionist Festival: a formula which is more condensed in time and space, in anticipation of a large-scale format in 2024, which will doubtlessly be just as intense. »
