Exhibition Guillaume Bresson - Versailles

From 21 January to 25 May 2025, the Palace of Versailles presented an exhibition by the contemporary artist Guillaume Bresson, a leading light of French figurative painting.

Guillaume Bresson creates hyperrealist paintings featuring characters involved in street fights that reference religious and history painting. The artist’s works was exhibited in the Africa Rooms and therefore engage in dialogue with large battle scenes from the colonial conquests of Louis-Philippe.

The artist

Guillaume Bresson was born in Toulouse in 1982 and trained at the Paris School of Fine Art; he is  considered to be a leading light of current French figurative painting. After living in Paris and Berlin, he has now settled in New York and is known for his unapologetically contemporary scenes. By revisiting a style of representation with its roots in classical painting that had been neglected until the early 21st century, Guillaume Bresson creates a new form of contemporary history painting by applying this genre of reconstruction of reality to his own times. As both a painter and director, he embeds his work in the present by linking his creations to topical social issues. 

The exhibition was presented in collaboration with Galerie Nathalie Obadia.

Historical yet contemporary work

Guillaume Bresson’s paintings are characterized by their realism. In order to achieve this photographic accuracy, the painter follows a process beginning with preparatory photoshoots in his studio using models. Their bodies are choreographed, creating poses and theatricalized movements that are reminiscent in some respects of Baroque painting. In the editing process, the artist isolates and detaches the bodies and then rearranges them into a group. In this way, Guillaume Bresson constructs paintings in which body language plays a central role in the creation of the narrative.

The exhibition at the Palace of Versailles

The exhibition of works by Guillaume Bresson was held in the Africa Rooms of the Palace of Versailles. These rooms, with their grand decorative schemes installed under Louis-Philippe, showcase huge paintings depicting battles of the colonial conquest of North Africa in the 1830s and 1840s. In this counterpoint between the historic paintings, notably by Horace Vernet, and works by Guillaume Bresson, battlefields and urban guerillas were contrasted and challenged the visitor to consider how violence is presented in painting.

The Exhibition catalogue

The exhibition catalogue is available from the Librairie des Princes and online shop, as well as the artist's monography.

Patronage

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous support of

• McArthurGlen Paris-Giverny
• The Cora Foundation
• Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt

Partners

https://www.lemonde.fr/

https://www.telerama.fr/

https://www.connaissancedesarts.com/

https://www.technikart.com/

https://www.nova.fr/

https://www.arte.tv/fr/

Mobile application and audio guide

The audioguide includes 4 commentaries on the major themes in Guillaume Bresson's work and his inspirations. The commentaries are also available on the application.

We recommend that you download the free application before you arrive, then launch it to load the exhibition route in advance.