BELLE ÉPOQUE

The Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation presents at its Museum in Athens, from October 31, 2026, to February 15, 2027, its major temporary exhibition BELLE ÉPOQUE, dedicated to one of the most fascinating yet contradictory periods in European history.

Focusing on Paris, the celebrated “City of Light”, the exhibition explores the Belle Époque through one of its most characteristic phenomena: the artistic poster. From the late 19th century onwards, posters began to take over the city’s streets, emerging as a dynamic new form of visual communication that would soon play a defining role in the development of both advertising and graphic design.

Approximately 90 works showcase the distinctive artistic vision of 15 significant artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfons Mucha, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton and Henri-Gabriel Ibels. The exhibition also features works by Jules Chéret, René Hermann-Paul, Émile Bernard, Claude-Émile Schuffenecker, George Bottini, Théo van Rysselberghe, Louis Anquetin and Wassily Kandinsky. Alongside the posters, the exhibition includes drawings, oil paintings and pastels.

Integral to the exhibition’s narrative, its scenography recreates the atmosphere of Belle Époque Paris. Focusing on the relationship between artistic posters and public space, the exhibition design evokes the image and pulse of the French capital, inviting visitors on a visual journey through the “City of Light”.

The exhibition focuses on the decades between 1880 and 1900, a period during which colour lithography reached new heights of technical refinement, posters spread throughout urban spaces on an unprecedented scale, and printed images assumed a leading role in everyday life. From advertisements for theatrical performances, cabarets and bicycles to emerging forms of consumption, transport and entertainment, the poster became a visual mirror of a society changing at an extraordinary pace.

Belle Époque Paris is a city in constant motion. Haussmann’s grand boulevards, electric lighting, the Métro, department stores, theatres, café-concerts and cabarets transformed everyday life and gave rise to a new urban culture. Posters followed this radical transformation, occupying every available surface across the city and turning the streets into an open-air gallery.

The artists featured in the exhibition did far more than illustrate a product or promote a performance. Through bold compositions, vivid colours and innovative graphic techniques, they brought the era’s aesthetic experimentation into the world of posters, helping establish the medium as an autonomous art form. The poster thus became much more than an advertisement: it became an ephemeral yet remarkably eloquent chronicle of contemporary life.