Visitors therefore left their clothes in the cloakroom to discover in the simplest way the strikingly human characters exhibited on the top floor of the Sucrière, a former industrial building near the city center.
The evening was organized in partnership with the French Federation of Naturism in order to open a reflection on the relationship to the body.
"Being able to bare yourself, in the literal sense, in front of others, is first of all to challenge yourself, to overcome the fears and doubts that you may have about yourself", underlines the invitation to the evening.
"There, the particular thing is perhaps the fact that this exhibition resonates well with nudity", explains Alain Berobier, a 56-year-old civil servant, who only kept his glasses for the visit.
For Viviane Tiar, the president of the French Federation of Naturism, "it's really a relationship with the body, not being ashamed of your body, not feeling guilty by saying to yourself: + but no, I'm not going to be able to because + well no, no, no, you have to dare."
The media having been invited at the start of the evening -and accepted in textile clothing-, a small crowd waited outside for their departure to discover in complete privacy the crowd of motionless casts, naked or dressed, hairy or bald, standing, sitting or lying down.
Already presented in Bilbao, Canberra, Rotterdam, Liège and Brussels, the exhibition which brings together around thirty international artists must remain in Lyon until the beginning of June.
The Maillol Museum will then welcome it from September 7, 2022. A naturist evening had also been organized in Liège.
Naturists visit the exhibition "This is not a body" dedicated to the masters of hyperrealism, on March 25, 2022 in Lyon JEFF PACHOUD AFP
The hyperrealist movement appeared in the 1960s in the United States, as a counterpoint to abstract art, as an extension of Andy Warhol's Pop Art or realist painters like Edward Hopper.
© 2022 AFP