“There is never any question of what to paint,” the late Robert Ryman once said, “only how to paint.” He was born in 1930 in Nashville, Tennessee, and planned to be a jazz saxophonist, which brought him to New York City. But a day job at MoMA brought Ryman face to face with painting. He began to do work that was experimental and abstract, and his use of the color white—applied to paper, canvas, linen, and even newsprint—made him famous in the 1960s. Like Monet, Ryman was obsessed with surface, limit, space, light, and duration. This exhibition at the French Impressionist’s de-facto home is divided into thematic sections based on those notions. Ryman died in 2019, at 88, and this is his first solo show in a French museum since 1981. —Elena Clavarino