The Black Pegasus by Odilon Redon - 1909 - 50.3 x 61 cm private collection The Black Pegasus by Odilon Redon - 1909 - 50.3 x 61 cm private collection

The Black Pegasus

oil on canvas • 50.3 x 61 cm
  • Odilon Redon - April 20, 1840 - July 6, 1916) Odilon Redon 1909

In the first half of his career, French Symbolist artist Odilon Redon (1840-1916) used charcoals and lithography to depict bizarre, sometimes macabre, creatures that he conjured out of his knowledge of natural science and his vivid imagination. He called these monochromatic works in black his “noirs.” The themes he explored in this phase foreshadowed the Surrealist and Dadaist movements. After the 1890s, his work took a dramatic turn to color as he began working in oil and pastels and added portraits and still-lifes to his fantasy subject matter. These later works won him the admiration of Henri Matisse and other painters as an important colorist.

The Black Pegasus is an example of the shift in Redon’s tenor from nightmares and monsters to mythology and magic as well as from masterful use of black to similarly talented use of color.