Toute L'histoire De La Peinture En Moins De Deux Heures, Par Hector Obalk - Tournée

Hector Obalk brings Toute l'histoire de la peinture en moins de deux heures to Bourse du Travail Lyon

We are proud to welcome Hector Obalk and his celebrated live lecture-performance Toute l'histoire de la peinture en moins de deux heures to Bourse du Travail Lyon, a stage perfectly suited to the scale, clarity, and energy of this singular event. From our vantage point as host, what arrives is more than a talk: it is a high-definition voyage through centuries of painting, paced like a concert and delivered with the brisk wit and sharp eye that have made Obalk a reference for curious newcomers and seasoned museum-goers alike. On our stage, a monumental screen and precise lighting help reveal brushwork, varnish, and hidden details that conventional slideshows never reach. The evening’s live musical interludes and the artist’s playful, exacting commentary fold into one continuous arc, creating an atmosphere that feels simultaneously intimate and grand. For our audience in Lyon, it is the rare chance to experience an art-history panorama as theater, with the immediacy and humor of a performer who knows how to make five hundred years of images feel urgent, present, and exhilarating.

An ever-evolving performance and the artist’s current momentum

From our perspective hosting this tour date, one of the most striking aspects of Hector Obalk’s current artistic momentum is how restlessly new this show remains. Season after season he refines the montage, swaps sequences, and adds freshly digitized or newly restored masterpieces, so that the evening never plays the same way twice. The 2024–2025 iteration is marked by tighter narrative bridges between centuries, crisper zooms on material texture, and bold juxtapositions that bring artists from distant epochs into direct, illuminating dialogue. Obalk’s timeline is not a museum corridor; it is a live editorial act, designed in the rehearsal room and stress-tested in front of audiences across France, then subtly adjusted before each performance. His presence onstage—half art historian, half showman—translates scholarship into rhythm, with punchlines that deflate clichés and transitions that let images argue with one another. As a venue, we witness how his approach activates the room: laughter punctuates astonishment, and a collective hush accompanies the slow drift from a panoramic view to a microscopic detail. This is the artist’s current project in its purest form: a living, touring essay on painting that grows by being performed.

What audiences can expect at Bourse du Travail Lyon is a headlong journey from the inventors of pictorial space to the rebellions of modernity and the restless experiments of the present, all stitched together by Obalk’s signature method. He moves with unhurried speed—Giotto to Masaccio, Titian to Caravaggio, Rembrandt to Velázquez, Goya to Delacroix, Manet to Monet—before letting the narrative fracture into the shocks of Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and beyond. Iconic works surface not as museum postcards but as living problems: Las Meninas becomes a lens on power and looking; Olympia a provocation that still stings; Les Nymphéas a meditation on time, surface, and immersion. The sweep continues through the twentieth century’s ruptures and into contemporary painting, where the question “What makes a great picture now?” is tackled with the same clarity and mischievous precision. Throughout, music threads the images—baroque pulse to modern minimal shimmer—supporting Obalk’s tempo as he toggles from sweeping context to razor‑sharp close‑ups. Our technical team amplifies the effect with high-resolution projection and carefully tuned sound, ensuring that each pivot of the narrative lands with maximum impact for Lyon’s audience, who will discover not a lecture about paintings, but paintings that seem to speak for themselves under a guide who asks the right questions at the right moment.