Starting this month, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza proposes a journey through time and art with its new temporary exhibition dedicated to Marcel Proust, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
The exhibition, which can be visited from March 4 to June 8, 2025, explores the relationship between the author of In Search of Lost Time and painting, an essential link in both his life and his work.
Proust’s Paris, between brushes and electric lights
Proust cannot be understood without Paris, and Paris cannot be understood without the modernity that defined it at the end of the 19th century. Electricity, cars, cafés full of intellectuals, and spectacles marked the city in which the writer lived, and that atmosphere is reflected in the exhibition.
Divided into five sections – ThePleasures and the Days, Paris, By Swann, The Part of Guermantes and Venice –the exhibition brings together an impressive selection of works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Turner, Monet and Renoir.
In addition, there will be dresses and sketches designed by Mariano Fortuny, sculptures by Antoine Bourdelle and original manuscripts by Proust on loan from institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
A writer who dreamed of painting
For Proust, painting was more than an art: it was a way of understanding the world. In his great work, the character of Elstir – a painter inspired by Whistler, Moreau and Manet – embodies his vision of artistic creation.
The exhibition invites us to immerse ourselves in that gaze, to travel through the Paris of the Belle Époque through Proust’s eyes and to understand how painting influenced his way of writing and his exploration of time and memory.