Gustave Caillebotte

The work of Caillebotte (1848–1894) added a new dimension to French Impressionist painting. His radical and modern designs with a photographic quality inspired a new kind of perception and anticipated the dynamism and abstraction of photography which was in the process of being developed. Selected photographs by André Kertész, Wols and László Moholy-Nagy, among others, demonstrate a strong affinity with the work of Caillebotte. The photographers Édouard Baldus, Charles Marville and Eugène Atget documented the image of the “19th-century capital”, a theme which the Impressionist Caillebotte also embraced. The pioneering role of Caillebotte in the photography that followed him is manifested in this juxtaposition of painting and photography.