With Camille Pissarro, an outsider became a central figure within the Impressionist collective. Born in the Caribbean, he came to France in 1855, sensed the anti-academic upsurge in painting, and attracted like-minded people. With their revolutionary style of painting, they founded the Impressionist movement. Pissarro also experimented with the pointillism of the younger artists and was the only painter to take part in all eight Impressionist exhibitions in Paris. With around 80 landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and figure paintings from about 50 international collections, the exhibition Camille Pissarro: Impressionist Imagery gives a broad overview of his entire oeuvre and shows the social utopian implications of his art.

The symposium precedes the retrospective, which will be on display at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam from June 14 to September 28, 2025. The cooperation partner is the Denver Art Museum, where the exhibition will be shown from October 26, 2025, to February 8, 2026.

The event will be held in English. Tickets can be purchased online and at the museum’s ticket counter. Students admitted free of charge.

11 a.m.
Welcome (in English)
Dr. Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
Dr. Christoph Heinrich, Denver Art Museum

11:15 a.m.
Camille Pissarro: The First Impressionist (in English)
Claire Durand-Ruel, Paris

12:15 p.m.
A Window into Impressionist Experimentation: Pissarro’s Studio (in English)
Dr. Clarisse Fava-Piz, Denver Art Museum

1:15 p.m.
Lunch break

2:45 p.m.
“All the Arts are Anarchist”: Pissarro’s Politics (in English)
Colin Harrison, Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford

3:45 p.m.
Realism or Utopia? Pissarro’s Depictions of Rural Labor (in English)
Dr. Daniel Zamani, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

4:45 p.m.
Coffee break

5:15 p.m.
Pissarro’s Legacy: Round-table talk (in English)
Claire Durand-Ruel, Clarisse Fava-Piz, Colin Harrison, Joachim Pissarro, Lionel Pissarro, Daniel Zamani 
Host: Christoph Heinrich

6:15 p.m.
Reception