Toulouse-Lautrec: the nightlife of Montmartre
- Venue: Museo Arocena, Torreón (México)
- Dates: August 27, 2026 to late January 2027
"Toulouse-Lautrec. The Nightlife of Montmartre" is an exhibition organized by the Museo Arocena and Light Art Exhibitions, in collaboration with Evolucionarte, as part of the museum’s 20th anniversary celebrations.
Through 114 lithographs, the exhibition offers a journey through the life and social atmosphere of late 19th-century Paris, seen through the eyes of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
The exhibition is structured into six sections:
- Posters, chorus girls and characters of the night
- Elles
- Illustration: Le Rire
- Urban life: male portraits
- Female portraiture
- The circus
Montmartre was the epicentre of entertainment, where people from all social classes came together. Its café-concerts and nightlife venues became melting pots of modernity, bringing the bourgeoisie and working classes together through shared passions. In venues such as the Moulin Rouge, Le Chat Noir, Moulin de la Galette and Élysée Montmartre, dancers, singers, regular patrons and artists came together to form the visual world that defined Toulouse-Lautrec’s work.
The Belle Époque (between 1870 and 1914) was a period of prosperity, optimism and cultural effervescence in France, during which Paris established itself as the artistic and bohemian capital of Europe. Café-concerts, cabarets, theatres, brothels and dance halls flourished, particularly in neighbourhoods such as Montmartre, the epicentre of nightlife and life on the margins.
Curated by Rosa Perales Piqueres, PhD in Art History from the University of Seville and Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Extremadura, the exhibition develops a narrative that highlights the artist’s ability to observe and portray life without judgement, capturing the transformations of a society that many of his contemporaries failed to recognise. His images bring us closer to the people, places and new ways of life that defined an era and that today form part of our collective image of Paris in the 1890s.