Monaco Shines in Beaubourg’s Colors

Couleurs! takes over the Grimaldi Forum until August 31, 2025. This standout exhibition, born from a rare collaboration with the Centre Pompidou—currently closed for renovations—brings more than 100 masterpieces to Monaco.

Curated by Didier Ottinger, Deputy Director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Couleurs! at the Grimaldi Forum offers more than a simple artistic retrospective: it is a sensory journey through the modern history of color, from Matisse to Basquiat, with stops at Picasso, Magritte, Kandinsky, Chagall, and Louise Bourgeois.

A chromatic journey

The scenography invites visitors to wander freely between two pathways. Along the outer ring, seven spaces are devoted to the great colors—blue, red, pink, yellow, white, black, and green—each showcasing major 20th-century works. At the heart of the exhibition, a multisensory immersion awaits: each monochrome is paired with sound compositions by Roque Rivas (IRCAM) and olfactory atmospheres created by Alexis Dadier for Fragonard. This synesthetic experience lets color resonate beyond sight, giving it texture, scent, and vibration.

Color as freedom

For Didier Ottinger, color is not a fixed theory but a living, elusive material: “It is felt more than it is explained.” From Kandinsky’s spiritual azure to the Guerrilla Girls’ subversive pink, or Warhol’s incandescent reds, each work reveals a unique, deeply personal appropriation.

A symbolic celebration

With Couleurs!, the Grimaldi Forum celebrates its 25th anniversary while renewing its partnership with the Centre Pompidou, with whom it already collaborated in 2012 on the Extra Large exhibition. This new encounter marks an exceptional dialogue between Monaco and one of the world’s richest collections of modern and contemporary art.