The 1924 Paris Olympics have inspired a new exhibition in Cambridge. Photo: Shutterstock A Cambridge art show will focus on the last Olympics that were held in Paris a century ago, as the Games return to the French capital this summer.
“Paris 1924: Sport, Art and the Body” will use art, film and photography to tell stories about the momentous sporting event, at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum.
Curators say the exhibition will allow visitors to “explore how the modernist culture” of Paris shaped the future of sport and the Olympic Games we know and love today.”
They say that the 1924 Games was a “breakthrough that forever changed attitudes towards sporting achievement and celebrity, as well as body image and identity, nationalism and class, race and gender.”
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The exhibition will highlight how international artists working across different disciplines – including prominent modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera and Umberto Boccioni – were engaged with themes of the sporting body.
It will present these works of art in dialogue with classical sculpture, posters, fashion, film, photography, sporting objects, advertising and more, to demonstrate how sport captured the imagination of visual culture across different forms.
The achievements of Cambridge University students, who won 11 Olympic medals for Great Britain in 1924, including sprinter Harold Abrahams whose story inspired the award-winning film Chariots Of Fire, will also be celebrated in the exhibition.
“Paris 1924: Sport, Art and the Body” opened to the public on July 19 and will run until November 3.