Ai Weiwei – Water Lilies

A leading figure in contemporary art, Ai Weiwei has reimagined Claude Monet's Water Lilies using 650,000 LEGO® bricks. The project intrigues as much as it astonishes; the result is dazzling. Two of the three Water Lilies sets created by the artist are being presented in France for the first time.

These Water Lilies are first and foremost a tribute to his father, Ai Qing. After studying in Paris, Ai Qing returned to China deeply influenced by Impressionism and French poetry, before being silenced. His masterful work encompasses, in a single gesture, a harrowing past as well as the personal tragedies Monet endured while creating the Water Lilies at Giverny, in the midst of the First World War. Ai Weiwei is undoubtedly one of the few to have grasped a fundamental truth: to create a successful work in LEGO®, only one path is possible—the monumental. This is also where the essence of Monet's Water Lilies lies.