Pearlman Collection gifts to Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA - Upcoming Exhibitions

Pearlman Collection gifts to the Brooklyn Museum, the LACMA, and the MoMA 

Upcoming Exhibitions at the three museums

Amedeo Modigliani 

Jean Cocteau, 1916

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the Brooklyn Museum

Photo by Bruce White

Vincent van Gogh

Tarascon Stagecoach, 1888 

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the LACMA

Photo by Bruce White

Paul Cézanne 

Mont Sainte-Victoire, c. 1904–06 

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the MoMA

Photo by Bruce White

The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation entire collection will be gifted to three major institutions: the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Comprising an exceptional group of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern artworks, the Pearlman Collection will be gifted across the three institutions in a novel sharing arrangement that will enhance access to larger and more diverse audiences through continually changing contexts.

In recognition of Henry and Rose’s generous spirit, the collection will travel as an exhibition before being placed under the care of the respective institutions. From February to July 2026, the exhibition Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA will be on view at LACMA, and in the fall of 2026 the collection will travel to the Brooklyn Museum. In the near future, MoMA will also present an exhibition of the Pearlman gifts.

Henry Pearlman (1895–1974) began purchasing avant-garde art in 1945 with a landscape by Chaïm Soutine, which led to a selfguided education in 19th- and 20th-century European art and a passion for collecting that endured for the rest of his life. From the very start of this collection, he and his wife, Rose, maintained a fundamental interest in sharing their experience of art as widely as possible, instilling populist values in their children and grandchildren that are the Foundation’s inspiration for making this extraordinary gift. 

As part of this gift, 29 works will join the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, with exceptional paintings and sculpture by Chaïm Soutine, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Amedeo Modigliani, including the latter’s 1916 portrait Jean Cocteau and an extremely rare limestone sculpture, Head (c. 1910–11); LACMA will receive six works, including Edouard Manet’s Young Woman in a Round Hat (c. 1877–79), and Vincent van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach from 1888, the first paintings by either artist to enter the collection; and MoMA will receive 28 works, with a primary focus on Paul Cézanne, including the paintings Mont Sainte-Victoire (1904–06), and Cistern in the Park of Château Noir (c. 1900), as well as 15 of Cézanne’s most luminous watercolors.

“For years we have explored every model we could imagine for the future ownership and guardianship of this collection,” explained Daniel Edelman, President of the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation. “We ultimately chose the Brooklyn Museum for the works that tell Henry’s story of discovery and for its commitment to engaging a diverse community; LACMA for works that specifically enhance their ability to innovate around bringing art to where people are; and MoMA, where Cézanne’s works on paper will be shared and cared for by one of the finest departments of drawings and prints that we know, as well as a half dozen of his paintings that together support the artist’s foundational role in the story of modern art. With very different collections, communities, and presentations of art, these three great institutions share an understanding that museums, their audiences, and how those audiences engage with art, are constantly changing. All three are committed to leading that challenge and inspiring others to meet it as well.

“Rather than put conditions on the gift that would become limiting in a future that none of us can know, we created a set of guidelines to encourage these three institutions to collaborate on a flexible movement of the art among them. Our aim is to bring these major works to new audiences, allowing them to be seen in different contexts, reuniting our collection’s works with one another on a regular basis, and perhaps even inspiring collectors and museums to consider new models for ownership of art.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome this extraordinary gift from the Pearlman Collection—the most significant addition to our European art holdings in nearly a century,” said Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum. “Henry Pearlman collected with the public in mind, believing that modern art should inspire audiences of all backgrounds. Between 1960 and 1986, the Brooklyn Museum presented six exhibitions dedicated to the collection, and now, nearly 40 years after the last of those presentations, we’re honored to give a group of these masterworks a permanent home in the borough where the Pearlman family grew up. As important, we are excited by the Foundation’s strategy of collection sharing with our wonderful peers, MoMA and LACMA.”

“LACMA is deeply grateful to welcome these masterpieces to the museum’s collection, and especially for van Gogh and Manet, two towering figures of 19th-century art, whose paintings will be represented in our collection for the first time,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “It is also an honor to help fulfill Henry and Rose’s wish to share their collection with our vast public, together with the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA. We look forward to presenting the collection to LACMA’s visitors in an upcoming exhibition next year, as well as in future exhibitions at LACMA and our colleague institutions both locally and around the world.”

“This generous gift significantly expands MoMA’s collection of works by Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas, and underscores the enduring legacy of Henry and Rose’s vision,” said Glenn D. Lowry, The David Rockefeller Director of The Museum of Modern Art. “We are honored to work with our colleagues in Los Angeles and Brooklyn to ensure that the Pearlmans’ commitment to research, scholarship and access, and their belief in the artists they acquired will continue to inspire the public now and in the future.”

About the Pearlman Foundation

Since 1976, the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection has remained on long-term loan at the Princeton University Art Museum. While in the Art Museum’s care, and in collaboration with the Foundation, there have been three traveling shows of the collection, some 500 individual loans of artworks to exhibitions across the globe, and two tour publications, including a recent one offered online and free to the public.

Meanwhile the Foundation created a website that allows high resolution viewing of works, including those that can’t always be on exhibition. It supported the digitalization of the history of the collection by the American Archives of American Art and its availability online. And it encouraged proactive lending, offering individual and small groupings of works to museums to exhibit within their permanent collection galleries.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036

www.lacma.org

Exposition Modigliani / Zadkine @ Musée Zadkine, Paris - "Modigliani / Zadkine. Une amitié interrompue" - Présentation de l'exposition + catalogue

Modigliani / Zadkine

Une amitié interrompue

Musée Zadkine, Paris

14 novembre 2024 - 30 mars 2025

Amedeo Modigliani 

Cariatide, vers 1913-1914 

Dessin (graphite, lavis d’encre, pastel)

Paris, musée d’Art Moderne de Paris

Amedeo Modigliani 

La Bourguignonne, 1918 

Huile sur toile 

Collection particulière

Cette exposition au Musée Zadkine est la première à s’intéresser à une amitié artistique jamais explorée jusqu’alors, celle qui unit le sculpteur Ossip Zadkine au peintre Amedeo Modigliani. 

A travers près de 90 oeuvres, peintures, dessins, sculptures mais également documents et photographies d’époque, elle propose de suivre les parcours croisés de Modigliani et Zadkine, dans le contexte mouvementé et fécond du Montparnasse des années 1910 à 1920. Bénéficiant de prêts exceptionnels de grandes institutions - le Centre Pompidou, le musée de l’Orangerie, les musées de Milan, Rouen et Dijon - ainsi que de prêteurs privés, le parcours fait se confronter, comme au temps de leurs débuts artistiques, deux artistes majeurs des avant-gardes, et permet de renouer les fils d’une amitié interrompue. 

Ossip Zadkine rencontre Amedeo Modigliani en 1913 : les deux artistes, fraîchement débarqués à Paris, rêvent chacun de devenir sculpteurs et partagent alors le « temps des vaches maigres » comme l’écrira Zadkine dans ses souvenirs. Cette amitié, aussi brève que féconde sur le plan artistique, est interrompue par la Première Guerre mondiale. Modigliani abandonne la sculpture pour la peinture, sur le conseil de marchands. Zadkine s’engage comme brancardier en 1915, avant d’être gazé et d’entamer une longue convalescence. Les deux artistes se retrouvent brièvement au sortir de la guerre, avant que leurs voies ne divergent à nouveau. Modigliani connaît un succès croissant avec ses peintures, mais il meurt prématurément à 35 ans, en 1920, tandis que Zadkine entame une longue et fructueuse carrière de sculpteur. Zadkine n’oubliera pas Modigliani et conservera précieusement le portrait fait par son ancien camarade, dont la gloire posthume ne fait que croître, à tel point que « Modi » devient l’une des figures mythiques de l’art moderne. 

L'exposition se déroule en cinq parties :

Modigliani / Zadkine : des débuts à Paris sous le signe de la sculpture

L’exposition débute en présentant côte-à-côte une sélection d’œuvres de Modigliani et Zadkine réalisées entre leurs arrivées respectives à Paris – 1906 pour Modigliani, 1910 pour Zadkine – et les débuts de la Première Guerre mondiale. Lorsque Zadkine rencontre Modigliani en 1913, celui-ci s’adonne pleinement à la sculpture, depuis sa rencontre avec Brancusi en 1909. La parenté de leur quête artistique ne peut que rapprocher les deux artistes : tous deux veulent rompre avec l’esthétique académique et se tournent vers de nouveaux modèles, puisés dans l’Égypte ancienne, les arts khmers et africains. Modigliani cherche un type de visage idéal, à l’ovale accusé et aux yeux en amande dont Zadkine se souviendra encore dans les années 1920, lorsqu’il sculptera à son tour une magnifique série de têtes idéales. 

Modigliani / Zadkine : Une amitié interrompue (1918-1920)

Dessins et portraits peints de Modigliani, accompagnés d’une magnifique sélection de gouaches de Zadkine, illustrent ici les chemins divergents qu’empruntent Zadkine et Modigliani au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale. La guerre met un terme brutal à l’amitié des deux artistes. Trop fragile pour s’engager, Modigliani est réformé et renonce définitivement à la sculpture, sur le conseil de son marchand Paul Guillaume. Zadkine s’engage dans la Légion étrangère : affecté à l’ambulance russe en 1915 comme brancardier, il est gazé en 1916, puis définitivement réformé en octobre 1917. Les chemins des deux artistes se croisent à nouveau brièvement à la fin de la guerre, avant la mort prématurée de Modigliani en janvier 1920. 

A Montparnasse, les affinités électives

Un magnifique ensemble de « portraits d’amitié » dessinés par Modigliani, met en scène les « Montparnos » que Zadkine et Modigliani fréquentèrent tous deux au temps de leur amitié, tels Max Jacob, Chana Orloff ou André Salmon. Modigliani était en effet célèbre pour les portraits qu’il croquait rapidement, à la terrasse des cafés, en échange d’un verre ou d’un café, ou simplement en gage d’amitié et de reconnaissance. Le portrait qu’il fit de Zadkine, l’un des chefs-d’œuvre de la collection, s’inscrit indubitablement dans cette veine et constitue l’un des fleurons de l’ensemble.

Zadkine et le mythe Modigliani

Ici, documents, films et photographies, témoignent de l’ampleur du « mythe Modigliani » et montrent la part active prise par Zadkine dans l’édification de la légende. La mort de Modigliani, emporté par une méningite tuberculeuse le 24 janvier 1920, constitue un traumatisme pour la communauté d’artistes installés à Montparnasse. Dès les années 1920, la légende s’empare de cet artiste au destin tragique. Ceux qui l’ont connu et admiré de son vivant, livrent tour à tour leur témoignage.

Zadkine ne fait pas exception : dès 1930, le sculpteur évoque son ami dans un numéro spécial dédié à Modigliani. Dans ses souvenirs, publiés un an après sa mort en 1967, Zadkine brosse un éloquent portrait, haut en couleurs, de « Modi » et apporte ainsi sa pierre à l’édification de la légende du « prince de Montparnasse ».

Pour évoquer cette amitié artistique, le plasticien Ange Leccia a choisi de réaliser un film, intitulé Adelia, Zadkine et Modigliani. Il met en scène une adolescente d’aujourd’hui en train de regarder des portraits photographiques des deux artistes, dont les images fantasmatiques se superposent et s’estompent, en écho à la légende qui entoure les deux artistes. 

Des extraits d’une émission de 1963 avec Blaise Cendrars et Ossip Zadkine évoquant leur jeunesse avec Modigliani viennent enrichir cette partie illustrant le mythe. 

Un temple pour l’humanité

Avec sa scénographie volontairement immersive et spectaculaire, la dernière partie met en scène le rapport qu’entretinrent chacun des deux artistes à l’architecture et au sacré, à travers le motif du Temple. Les têtes sculptées par Modigliani dans les années 1910 sont en effet conçues comme un ensemble décoratif devant s’intégrer dans un spectaculaire « temple de volupté » soutenu par des « colonnes de tendresse » (comme l’écrivait le marchand Paul Guillaume) qu’auraient symbolisé de souples femmes-cariatides. Ce motif de la cariatide, inlassablement dessiné par Modigliani est également repris à maintes reprises par Zadkine et donne lieu à certains chefs-d’œuvre du sculpteur, dont la réputation avant-guerre tient largement à ses grands bois sculptés, avatars modernes des divinités antiques. 

Modigliani / Zadkine vu par les artistes d’aujourd’hui

Afin d’ancrer le dialogue entre Modigliani et Zadkine dans l’actualité artistique, trois artistes ont été invités à contribuer au catalogue : Giuseppe Penone, qui possède dans sa collection personnelle une Cariatide attribuée à Modigliani, ainsi qu’Ange Leccia et Ivan Messac. 

COMMISSARIAT DE L'EXPOSITION

Cécilie Champy-Vinas, conservatrice en chef du patrimoine, directrice du musée Zadkine

Thierry Dufrêne, professeur d’histoire de l’art contemporain à l’Université Paris Nanterre

Avec la collaboration d’Anne-Cécile Moheng, attachée de conservation au musée Zadkine

LE CATALOGUE DE L'EXPOSITION

Modigliani Zadkine

Une amitié interrompue

Edité par le Musée Zadkine et Paris Musées

L’ouvrage met l’accent sur l’amitié de deux artistes qui se sont croisés et influencés réciproquement dans le contexte mouvementé et fécond du Montparnasse des années 1910-1920, et prolonge cette évocation jusqu’à nos jours, par le regard de trois artistes contemporains. Sous la direction de Cécilie Champy-Vinas et Thierry Dufrêne. Avec les contributions de Diederik Bakhuÿs, Cécilie Champy-Vinas, Thierry Dufrêne, Flavio Fergonzi, Véronique Gautherin, Ange Leccia, Ivan Messac, Marianne Le Morvan, Maureen Murphy, Anne-Cécile Moheng, Giuseppe Penone. 16 x 24 cm, relié, 160 pages, 130 illustrations : 30 €

MUSÉE ZADKINE, PARIS

100 bis, rue d’Assas - 75006 Paris

zadkine.paris.fr

Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern - Exhibition @ MoMA, New York + Book

Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern

MoMA, New York

November 17, 2024 – March 29, 2025

Lillie P. Bliss. c. 1924 

The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

The music room in Bliss’s apartment, 

1001 Park Avenue, c. 1929–1931

The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

Installation view of the exhibition 

“The Lillie P. Bliss Collection, 1934.”

May 14, 1934 – September 12, 1934

The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

Installation view of Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern 

on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

from November 17, 2024, through March 29, 2025 

Photo: Emile Askey

The Museum of Modern Art presents Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern, an exhibition focusing on the collection and legacy of LILLIE P. BLISS, one of the Museum’s three founders and an early advocate for modern art in the United States. The exhibition which marks the 90th anniversary of Bliss’s bequest coming to MoMA, includes iconic works such as Paul Cézanne’s The Bather (c. 1885) and Amedeo Modigliani’s Anna Zborowska (1917). The exhibition, which features about 40 works as well as archival materials, highlights Bliss’s critical role in the reception of modern art in the US and in the founding of MoMA.

Paul Cézanne

The Bather. c. 1885 

Oil on canvas. 50 x 38 1/8″ (127 x 96.8 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Lillie P. Bliss Collection, 1934 

Conservation was made possible by the Bank of America 

Art Conservation Project 

Photo: John Wronn

Amedeo Modigliani 

Anna Zborowska. 1917 

Oil on canvas. 51 1/4 x 32″ (130.2 x 81.3 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York  

Lillie P. Bliss Collection, 1934

Photo: John Wronn

When it opened in 1929, The Museum of Modem Art was a destination where visitors could see groundbreaking temporary exhibitions, but it did not have a significant collection. Just two years later, when Lillie P. Bliss died, she left approximately 120 works to the Museum in her will. In an effort to ensure the Museum's future success, Bliss stipulated that MoMA would receive her collection only if it could prove that it was on firm financial footing within three years of her death. 

In 1934 the Museum was able to secure the bequest, which became the core of MoMA's collection. This included key works by Paul Cézanne, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Odilon Redon, Marie Laurencin, and Henri Matisse, as well as a selection of paintings by Bliss's friend, the American artist Arthur B. Davies. 

Georges-Pierre Seurat 

Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor. 1888 

Oil on canvas. 21 5/8 x 25 5/8″ (54.9 x 65.1 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Lillie P. Bliss Collection, 1934

Odilon Redon 

Silence. c. 1911 

Oil on prepared paper. 21 1/2 x 21 1/4″ (54.6 x 54 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Lillie P. Bliss Collection, 1934

Bliss's bequest also allowed for the sale of her works to fund new acquisitions, facilitating the purchase of many important artworks, including Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night, which is featured in the exhibition. Other favorites wholly or in part funded through the Bliss bequest, such as Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, are on view in the collection galleries.

Vincent Van Gogh

The Starry Night. Saint Rémy, June 1889

Oil on canvas. 29 x 36 1/4″ (73.7 x 92.1 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (by exchange), 1941 

Conservation was made possible by the Bank of America 

Art Conservation Project 

Photo: Jonathan Muzikar

At the end of her life, Lillie P. instructed her bother Cornelius Newton Bliss Jr. to burn her personal papers, making it challenging for future generations to recognize the essential part she played in the history of modern art. The exhibition showcases archival materials from MoMA's Archives and other collection, reconstructing Bliss's life before MoMA, including her passion for music, her involment in the Armory Show of 1913, and her interactions with fellow collectors and artists. It also highlight Bliss's critical role in MoMA's founding, and her continued impact on the Museum going forward, through scrapbooks, journals, photographs, and letters.

"It has been a joy to explore the life and work of this courageous woman whom we have known as little more than an important name. We are eager to share our discoveries, and to shine a spotlight on Lillie Bliss for the first time since 1934, when MoMA organized an exhibition to celebrate the new bequest," says Ann Temkin.

Inventing the Modern: 

Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped The Museum of Modern Art

by Romy Silver-Kohn (Editor), Ann Temkin (Editor), 

Anna Deavere Smith (Foreword by), 

Mary Schmidt Campbell (Text by), Sloane Crosley (Text by)

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, 2024

384 p. - ISBN 9781633450790

 

The exhibition is presented on the occasion of the release of Inventing the Modem: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped The Museum of Modem Art, a revelatory account of the Museum's earliest years told through newly commissioned profiles of 14 women who had a decisive impact on the formation and development of the institution. Inventing the Modem comprises illuminating new essays on the women who, as founders, curators, patrons, and directors of various departments, made enduring contributions to MoMA during its early decades (especially between 1929 and 1945), creating new models for how to envision, establish, and operate a museum in an era when the field of modem art was uncharted territory.

Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern is organized by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and Romy Silver-Kohn, co-editor with Ann Temkin of Inventing the Modern: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped The Museum of Modern Art, with Rachel Remick, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.

MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York

11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019

moma.org

La collection Emil Bührle, Musée Maillol, Paris

La collection Emil Bührle : Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Modigliani, Picasso
Musée Maillol, Paris
20 mars - 21 juillet 2019 

LA COLLECTION EMIL BÜHRLE

Courtesy Culturespaces / Musée Maillol

Le musée Maillol accueille les chefs-d’oeuvre de la Collection Emil Bührle, une des collections particulières les plus prestigieuses au monde. Présenté pour la première fois en France, cet ensemble, réuni entre 1936 et 1956 à Zurich, propose un panorama de l’art français du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle.

Né en Allemagne, Emil Georg Bührle (1890-1956) s’établit en Suisse en 1924 et rassemble, surtout entre 1951 et 1956, plus de 600 oeuvres d’art. Pour la première fois à Paris, une partie de ces chefs-d’oeuvre est présentée et réunie au sein d’une même exposition.

Dévoilant une soixantaine de trésors de la Collection Emil Bührle, l’exposition parcourt plusieurs courants de l’art moderne : les grands noms de l’impressionnisme (Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Sisley) et du postimpressionnisme (Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec), les débuts du XXe siècle avec les Nabis (Bonnard, Vuillard), les Fauves et les Cubistes (Braque, Derain, Vlaminck), et l’École de Paris (Modigliani), pour finir avec Picasso.

En attendant son emménagement permanent dans la nouvelle extension du Kunsthaus de Zurich, la Collection Emil Bührle s’offre une visibilité nationale et internationale. Après la Fondation de l’Hermitage à Lausanne en 2017 et trois musées majeurs au Japon en 2018, le musée Maillol a le privilège de montrer des chefs-d’oeuvre tels que La petite danseuse de quatorze ans de Degas (vers 1880), Les coquelicots près de Vétheuil de Monet (vers 1879), Le garçon au gilet rouge de Cézanne (vers 1888/90), ou encore Le semeur au soleil couchant de Van Gogh (1888).

Leur confrontation souligne les liens et les filiations entre les courants artistiques à travers différentes époques, tout en illustrant l’apport personnel de chacun des peintres à l’histoire de l’art. Emil Bührle, pour qui les créations passées influençaient celles du présent, aimait préciser que « finalement Daumier me conduisait à Rembrandt et Manet à Frans Hals ».

L’exposition propose un témoignage historique majeur, présentant l’histoire de cette collection d’un industriel suisse pendant Seconde Guerre mondiale et de la décennie qui a suivi. Une salle, consacrée aux documents d’archives, évoquera le parcours des chefs-d’œuvre et présentera les résultats de la recherche que mène la Collection E. Bührle sur ses fonds depuis plus de quinze ans.

Une exposition de toiles incontournables à travers l’une des collections les plus importantes au monde.

Commissariat : Lukas Gloor, directeur et conservateur de la Collection Emil Bührle, Zurich.

Une exposition Culturespaces.

MUSEE MAILLOL PARIS
59/61 rue de Grenelle - 75007 Paris
www.museemaillol.com

Modigliani @ Jewish Museum, NYC

Modigliani Unmasked
Jewish Museum, New York
Through February 4, 2018

The Jewish Museum presents Modigliani Unmasked, the first exhibition in the United States to focus on Amedeo Modigliani’s early work made in the years after he arrived in Paris in 1906. The exhibition puts a spotlight on Modigliani’s drawings, with a large selection acquired directly from the artist by Dr. Paul Alexandre, his close friend and first patron. The drawings from the Alexandre collection, many being shown for the first time in the United States, as well as other drawings from collections around the world and a selection of Modigliani’s paintings and sculptures, illuminate how the artist’s heritage as an Italian Sephardic Jew is pivotal to understanding his artistic output. 

Modigliani Unmasked considers the celebrated artist, Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920), shortly after he arrived in Paris in 1906, when the city was still roiling with anti-Semitism after the long-running tumult of the Dreyfus Affair and the influx of foreign emigres. An Italian Sephardic Jew with a French mother and a classical education, Modigliani was the embodiment of cultural heterogeneity. When he moved to Paris, he came up against the idea of racial purity in French culture — in Italy, he did not feel ostracized for being Jewish. His Latin looks and fluency in French could have easily helped him to assimilate. Instead, his outsider status often compelled him to introduce himself with the words, “My name is Modigliani. I am Jewish.” As a form of protest, he refused to assimilate, declaring himself as “other.” The exhibition shows that Modigliani’s art cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the ways the artist responded to the social realities that he confronted in the unprecedented artistic melting pot of Paris.

In these years prior to World War I, Amedeo Modigliani largely stopped painting in order to develop his conceptual and pictorial ideas through drawing and sculpture. The works in the exhibition reveal the emerging artist himself, enmeshed in his own particular identity quandary, struggling to discover what portraiture might mean in a modern world of racial complexity.

Modigliani Unmasked is arranged thematically, and includes approximately 130 drawings, 12 paintings, and seven sculptures by the artist. Modigliani’s art is complemented by work representative of the various multicultural influences — African, Asian, Greek, Egyptian, and Khmer — that inspired the young artist during this lesser-known, early period.

When he arrived in Paris, Amadeo Modigliani — still virtually unknown — met Dr. Alexandre, a young physician. Alexandre amassed some 450 drawings directly from the artist and commissioned a number of portraits. The exhibition includes a selection of drawings depicting Dr. Alexandre, as well as a mysterious, unfinished portrait never seen before in the United States. Probably painted around 1913, it is a stylistic anomaly within Modigliani’s oeuvre, more sketchy and gestural than his typical portraits.

Modigliani would visit museums in Paris, including the Louvre and the Musée du Trocadéro, and was mesmerized by the non western art. Unlike most of his contemporaries in the French vanguard, who appropriated such works expressionistically as an abstracted distortion of the human form, Modigliani’s manner of using such stylized effects was far more respectful. The influence of masks in particular is clearly visible in the many drawings and sculptures in the exhibition.

Prominent in the Alexandre collection are the stylized drawings related to sculptures. Produced between 1909 and 1914, this body of work constitutes a distinct category within the artist’s oeuvre and reveals his ongoing preoccupation with identity. Particularly noticeable is his obsessive examination of physiognomy. When seen together, his repeated images of heads and faces reveal minute, calculated variations in the eyes, noses, and mouths. As seen in the exhibition, this group of drawings offer a nuanced commentary on the underlying issue of aesthetics as it relates to race.

In 1911, Amadeo Modigliani began to explore a motif borrowed from ancient art, the caryatid, and a selection of these drawings is included in the exhibition. While in classical art the caryatid is usually a woman, his are male, female, or of ambiguous gender. He also incorporated elements derived from Egyptian art, as well as ancient South and Southeastern Asian sources such as facial features, postures, and tattoos.

The exhibition also includes a selection of life studies and female nudes. Among these are of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, whom the artist met in 1910. Her exotic presence inspired Modigliani to introduce her to Egyptian art. The influences he drew from Egyptian art, such as the attenuation of the figure and the angularity of form, can be seen in the drawings he did of her.

Amadeo Modigliani’s fondness for performance, including theater, street entertainment, and the circus, is reflected in numerous early drawings, often sketched from a blend of life and imagination. The exhibition includes his drawings of the Commedia dell’Arte character, Columbine, as well as circus performers. Many of these works — like others in the exhibition — reveal the acuity of his psychological awareness, which had the effect of transforming simple sketches into portraits.

Modigliani Unmasked is organized by Mason Klein, Senior Curator, The Jewish Museum. The exhibition was designed by Galia Solomonoff and Talene Montgomery of SAS/Solomonoff Architecture Studio.

Modigliani Unmasked Exhibition Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Jewish Museum and Yale University Press. The book includes an essay by Mason Klein that offers close analysis of Modigliani’s portraits and figure studies in pencil, ink, gouache, and crayon, ultimately arguing that the artist demonstrated a modernist embrace of difference, as well as an understanding of identity as heterogeneous, beyond national or cultural boundaries. The 172-page book also includes an afterword by Richard Nathanson. Featuring 165 color illustrations, the hardcover will be available worldwide and at the Jewish Museum's Cooper Shop beginning in September 2017 for $50.00.

JEWISH MUSEUM
1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York City
thejewishmuseum.org

Related post on Wanafoto : Modigliani at Tate Modern, London, Through April 2, 2018

Modigliani @ Tate Modern, London

Modigliani
Tate Modern, London
23 November 2017 - 2 April 2018

Tate Modern stages the most comprehensive Modigliani exhibition ever held in the UK, bringing together a dazzling range of his iconic portraits, sculptures and the largest ever group of nudes to be shown in this country. Although he died tragically young, AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884 - 1920) was a ground-breaking artist who pushed the boundaries of the art of his time. Including 100 works – many of them rarely exhibited and nearly 40 of which have never before been shown in the UK – the exhibition re-evaluates this familiar figure, looking afresh at the experimentation that shaped his career and made Modigliani one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

A section devoted to Modigliani’s nudes, perhaps the best-known and most provocative of the artist’s works, are a major highlight. In these striking canvases Modigliani invented shocking new compositions that modernised figurative painting. His explicit depictions also proved controversial and led to the police censoring his only solo exhibition in his lifetime, at Berthe Weill’s gallery in 1917, on grounds of indecency. This group of 12 nudes is the largest group ever seen in the UK, with paintings including Nude 1917 (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) and Reclining Nude c.1919 (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Amedeo Modigliani

Nude

1917

Oil paint on canvas

890 x 1460 mm

Private Collection

Amedeo Modigliani

Seated Nude

1917

Oil paint on canvas

1140 x 740 mm

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Lukasart in Flanders

Photo credit: Hugo Maertens

Amedeo Modigliani

Reclining Nude 

1919

Oil on canvas

724 x 1165 mm

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Born in Livorno, Italy and working in Paris from 1906, Modigliani’s career was one of continual evolution. The exhibition begins with the artist’s arrival in Paris, exploring the creative environments and elements of popular culture that were central to his life and work. Inspired by the art of Paul Cézanne, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso, Modigliani began to experiment and develop his own distinctive visual language, seen in early canvases such as Bust of a Young Woman 1908 (Lille Métropole Musée d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve-d'Ascq) and The Beggar of Livorno 1909 (Private Collection). His circle included poets, dealers, writers and musicians, many of whom posed for his portraits including Diego Rivera 1914 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf), Juan Gris 1915 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Jean Cocteau 1916 (The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, Princeton University Art Museum). The exhibition will also reconsider the role of women in Modigliani’s work, including editor and writer Beatrice Hastings, who was not simply the artist’s lover but an important figure in the cultural landscape of the time.

Amedeo Modigliani

Self-Portrait as Pierrot

1915

Oil paint on cardboard

430 x 270 mm

Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Amedeo Modigliani

The Little Peasant 

c.1918

Medium Oil paint on canvas

1000 x 645 mm

Tate, presented by Miss Jenny Blaker in memory of Hugh Blaker 1941

Amedeo Modigliani

Boy in Short Pants

c.1918

Oil paint on canvas

997 x 648 mm

Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Leland Fikes Foundation, Inc. 1977

Modigliani features exceptional examples of the artist’s lesser-known sculpture, bringing together a substantial group of his Heads made before the First World War. Although his interests would soon move on, he spent a short but intense period focusing on carving, influenced by contemporaries and friends including Constantin Brâncuși and Jacob Epstein. Suffering from poor health, Modigliani left Paris in 1918 for an extended period in the South of France. Here he adopted a more Mediterranean colour palette and, instead of his usual metropolitan sitters, he began painting local people, including shopkeepers and children, such as Young Woman of the People 1918 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Boy with a Blue Jacket 1919 (Indianapolis Museum of Art).

Amedeo Modigliani

Juan Gris

1915

Oil paint on canvas

549 x 381 mm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Amedeo Modigliani
Jeanne Hébuterne

1919 

Medium Oil paint on canvas

914 x 730 mm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The exhibition concludes with some of Modigliani’s best-known depictions of his closest circle. Friends and lovers provided him with much-needed financial and emotional support during his turbulent last years while also serving as models. These included his dealer and close friend Léopold Zborowski and his companion Hanka, as well as Jeanne Hébuterne, the mother of Modigliani’s child and one of the most important women in his life. When Modigliani died in 1920 from tubercular meningitis, Jeanne tragically committed suicide. Tate Modern brings together several searching portraits of her from Modgliani’s final years, on loan from international collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which depict her in a range of guises from young girl to mother.

Modigliani is curated by Nancy Ireson, Curator of International Art, Tate Modern and Simonetta Fraquelli, Independent Curator, with Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator. Visitors can also enjoy a new integrated virtual reality experience in the heart of the exhibition. The Ochre Atelier: Modigliani VR Experience invites visitors to step into the studio where the artist lived and worked in the final months of his life. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing and a series of events in the gallery.

Sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Virtual Reality in Partnership with HTC VIVE

Supported by Maryam and Edward Eisler, with additional support from the Modigliani Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Patrons and Tate Members

TATE MODERN
Bankside, London SE1 9TG
www.tate.org.uk

Amedeo Modigliani, LaM, Villeneuve d'Ascq : une rétrospective

Amedeo Modigliani, L'oeil intérieur : une rétrospective
LaM - Lille métropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, Villeneuve d’Ascq
26 février - 5 juin 2016

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI

Femme assise à la robe bleue, 1917-1919. 

Collection Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Donation d'Oscar Stern, 1951

© Photo : Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Le LaM présente au printemps 2016, en collaboration avec la Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, une importante rétrospective consacrée à l’œuvre d’Amedeo Modigliani.

Le musée conserve l’une des plus belles collections publiques françaises du célèbre artiste de Montparnasse : pas moins de 6 peintures, 8 dessins et une rare sculpture en marbre réunis par Roger Dutilleul et Jean Masurel, fondateurs de la collection du LaM. Collectionneur passionné, Roger Dutilleul croise la route de Modigliani en 1918, moins de deux ans avant la mort prématurée de l’artiste. Autour de cette rencontre et de ce fonds exceptionnel, le LaM orchestre une exposition-événement qui réunit plus de 120 œuvres, parmi lesquelles près d’une centaine de Modigliani (43 dessins, 5 sculptures et 49 peintures) – dont de nombreux prêts inédits en France –, mises en dialogue avec une sélection d’œuvres d’art extra- occidental et d’œuvres de certains de ses contemporains et amis: Constantin Brancusi, Moïse Kisling, Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso ou encore Chaïm Soutine.

L’exposition propose une traversée de l’œuvre d’Amedeo Modigliani en explorant trois aspects d’une carrière tout à la fois brève et féconde. En premier lieu, l’exposition mettra en lumière le dialogue que le jeune artiste italien, de formation classique, a entretenu avec la sculpture antique et extra-occidentale. Autre dimension centrale de son œuvre, sa pratique du portrait occupera une place prépondérante dans le parcours. Seront mis en exergue les portraits qu’il fit de ses amis, pour la plupart acteurs eux aussi de l’avant-garde parisienne. Enfin, l’exposition sera l’occasion de mieux comprendre la relation singulière qui lie l’œuvre de Modigliani au collectionneur Roger Dutilleul : entre 1918 et 1946, ce dernier fit l’acquisition d’une trentaine de tableaux et de très nombreux dessins de l’artiste, toutes périodes confondues, ce qui fait de lui, avec le Docteur Arnold Netter, l’un des plus importants collectionneurs de l’œuvre du peintre.

AUX SOURCES DE LA SCULPTURE

Après avoir suivi l’enseignement de plusieurs écoles d’art à Florence et Venise, Amedeo Modigliani quitte l’Italie pour Paris en 1906. Il y fait la connaissance de Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, André Derain et Diego Rivera. À la fin de l’année 1907, il rencontre le Docteur Paul Alexandre, qui devient son mécène et lui ouvre les portes de sa colonie d’artistes. Encouragé par sa rencontre avec Constantin Brancusi vers 1908, Modigliani se concentre sur la sculpture. Visiteur assidu des musées du Louvre et du Trocadéro, il regarde avec attention les reliefs de l’Égypte antique, les statuettes de la Grèce archaïque, les masques de Côte d’Ivoire et les fragments du temple d’Angkor. Le patient travail d’analyse et d’absorption qu’il opère alors – allonger ou aplatir la figure, moduler les traits du visage, jouer sur le déhanchement ou les ornements – se révèle à travers ses études en séries. Pour rendre compte de ce long travail d’élaboration, l’exposition réunira un ensemble significatif de sculptures et d’études de têtes et caryatides, motifs qui occupent presque exclusivement Modigliani de 1910 et 1914. Ces œuvres prendront place auprès d’une Tête de femme sculptée – seule version en marbre connue à ce jour – acquise par Jean Masurel. 

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI, PORTRAITISTE DE L’AVANT-GARDE

L’état de santé de Modigliani, ainsi que des soucis financiers, l’obligent à renoncer à la sculpture en 1914 ; il se consacre alors exclusivement au dessin et à la peinture. Les années de guerre lui permettent de se rapprocher des autres artistes d’avant-garde restés à Paris, en particulier ceux du cercle de Picasso. L’un d’entre eux, l’écrivain Max Jacob, le présente au marchand Paul Guillaume en 1915. Le portrait reprend alors la première place dans son travail. Croquant sans relâche, Modigliani utilise la physionomie des artistes qui l’entourent pour mettre au point un vocabulaire du portrait radicalement nouveau. Bien que parfaitement reconnaissables, les visages s’unifient en masques symétriques où, souvent, l’un des yeux apparait sans pupille. Il parvient à combiner avec maîtrise la véracité du portrait – exécuté de mémoire – et un style tout à fait personnel. Cette période constructive fut particulièrement prisée de Roger Dutilleul : les portraits de Moïse Kisling, Viking Eggeling et Jacques Lipchitz font partie de la collection du LaM. Ils donnent un aperçu d’un ensemble qui comprenait aussi ceux d’Henri Laurens et Léopold Survage. Au- delà des relations amicales, ces portraits révèlent parfois des échanges artistiques dont témoignera une sélection d’œuvres réalisées par les peintres et sculpteurs qui furent aussi les modèles de Modigliani.

LES DERNIÈRES ANNÉES

Dès 1916, le poète d’origine polonaise et courtier amateur Léopold Zborowski met toute son énergie à faire connaître l’œuvre de Modigliani. Après une série de nus, exposés à la galerie Berthe Weill en décembre 1917, Amedeo Modigliani, dont la santé décline, passe l’année 1918 à Nice. Il y poursuit son travail de portraitiste et perfectionne le style qui fera son succès : le cadre s’élargit, la palette s’éclaircit sous l’influence de Cézanne, la matière s’allège, toute contenue dans une ligne qui serpente, tandis que la composition s’unifie dans une peinture apaisée. Pendant ces quelques années, Lunia Czechowska, amie du peintre, Hanka Zborowska, épouse de son marchand, et sa célèbre compagne Jeanne Hébuterne, la mère de sa fille, sont ses modèles privilégiés. C’est au début de cette période que Dutilleul fait la connaissance de Modigliani, par l’intermédiaire de Zborowski. L’amateur éclairé devient l’un des de ses principaux acheteurs, réunissant plusieurs nus et portraits de la période niçoise, avant de constituer une collection plus exhaustive dans les années qui suivent. Il devient aussi l’un de ses modèles en 1919, lorsqu’il prend la pose pour un portrait qui appartient aujourd’hui à une collection privée américaine et que le LaM présentera à nouveau dans ses salles.

Exposition organisée par le LaM et la Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais. 

LaM - Lille métropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, Villeneuve d’Ascq

www.musee-lam.fr