The Capital of the new Modern World

After 1860 Paris became the capital of the modern world. The revolution in visual arts occurred there. Right up to this day Paris is regarded as the basis of modern achievements in painting. The Impressionists developed new artistic techniques in order to depict the specific atmosphere of the industrial metropolis, with its speed and change, leisure and diversion, anonymity and communication, ballet and theatre, distance and seduction. The pictures of the city by Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro or Paul Signac, pictures of boulevards, stations, parks and cafes, theatres and squares, the Seine and the suburbs, focus on Paris the metropolis and its diverse manifestations. The exhibition in the Folkwang museum in essen is set up to follow the path of a Flaneur wandering through Paris. On display will be about 80 masterpieces of the most famous impressionists, allowing a different view of the first modern Metropolis.