The Utah Museum of Fine Arts hosts " Monet to Picasso "

Written by Victoria Gunderman Monday, 21 June 2010 21:54

SALT LAKE CITY, UT.- This summer the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) presents the highly acclaimed exhibition Monet to Picasso from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The show features 100 years of European masterworks and the UMFA is privileged to be among only four North American venues selected to host this marquee international touring exhibition. The works on display in this show have never been to Utah before. On view through 21 September, 2008.

During its three-month run at the UMFA, Monet to Picasso features works by the leading artists of the European Modernist movements, dating from 1864 to 1964. More than seventy paintings and sculptures by luminaries of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism are gathered together in this singular exhibition. Most notably, the exhibition includes key works by Gustave Courbet, Pierre August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse, Rene Magritte, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, and Salvador Dalí.

“This exhibition is a unique and tremendously exciting opportunity for all art-lovers living in the region,” said Gretchen Dietrich, UMFA director of public programs and curatorial affairs. “The works of art that comprise the exhibition are by some of the world’s most loved artists and together, they tell the fascinating story of the European Modernism development from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. We are proud to be hosting an exhibition of this caliber and confident that all those who come to see the exhibition and participate in the public programming that we have organized to complement it, will have a memorable and thrilling experience.”

The works in Monet to Picasso reveal a period of artistic innovation that profoundly changed the course of European art. Visitors to this extraordinary exhibition will have the rare opportunity to see a remarkable gathering of work by some of the most important modern masters of the last two centuries.

OVERVIEW
The 74 masterworks of Impressionist and modern European art in Monet to Picasso from the Cleveland Museum of Art illuminate one of art history’s most compelling stories: how masters from Claude Monet and Edgar Degas to Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso opened the visual arts to wider and more varied spheres of experience. The paintings and sculptures on view in this exhibition demonstrate the ways in which artists built on one another’s ideas and discoveries while making their own distinctive contributions to the history of art. Friendship and rivalry, creativity and rebellion, new ways of seeing and unconventional techniques are recurring themes in this sweeping presentation of works by Europe’s modern masters.

FROM REALISM TO SURREALISM
As Europe faced a series of social, political, and economic upheavals between 1860 and 1960, the art world also underwent major transformations as a series of movements and stylistic developments rapidly succeeded one another.

THE AGE OF IMPRESSIONISM
Turning their backs on the French academic system, thirty artists agreed to boycott the 1874 Salon and instead exhibited together in the studio of the photographer Nadar in Paris. Led by Claude Monet, the group included Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, and Pierre Auguste Renoir. They called themselves the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc. A hostile critic, however, branded them “impressionists” in response to Monet’s sketchy view of a harbor under morning fog entitled Impression: Sunrise. Soon the artists embraced this name for themselves. Like Monet, many members of the group shared a profound interest in atmospheric effects and used vibrant colors and short, rapid brushstrokes. But what united the artists more than any name or shared style were the close friendships and rivalries that encouraged the development of new ideas.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Used to describe French painting that came directly on the heels of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism attempted to move beyond its perceived limitations. The term is generally applied to the work of its four most signifi cant artists: Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin. These artists continued using the vivid colors, distinctive brushstrokes, and contemporary subject matter of the Impressionists, but emphasized geometric shapes, distorted form for expressive effect, and unnatural or arbitrary color. They were dissatisfied with the lack of structure in Impressionist paintings, yet they did not agree on a single structural method and pursued independent artistic paths.

 Cézanne set out to restore a sense of order and structure to painting, which he achieved by reducing objects to basic shapes such as cones, cylinders, and spheres. Van Gogh used color and vibrant swirling brushstrokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind, while Gauguin employed large areas of unmodulated color outlined in black as part of his effort to capture primeval emotion. Gauguin and the Symbolists also reacted against the slavish imitation of nature by creating images inspired by memory and imagination.

THE ART OF PICASSO
Pablo Picasso achieved legendary status in his lifetime for his virtuosic technique and numerous inventive styles. Originally from Spain, he initially studied art with his father in Barcelona and later at the Royal Art Academy in Madrid. He made his fi rst trip to Paris in 1900, and invigorated by the city’s vibrant and creative atmosphere, moved there in 1904. His early work is characterized by a melancholic mood and dominated by the color blue, as in his masterwork from this time, La Vie of 1903. The Blue Period gave way to the warmer tonalities of the Rose Period and a corresponding new interest in acrobats and clowns. He often portrayed himself in the guise of Harlequin—a hapless entertainer who lives on the margins of society, barely earning enough money to survive.

MODERN ARTISTS FROM ACROSS EUROPE
In 1909 Henri Matisse established an informal school in an empty convent in Paris, attracting most of his students from outside of France. As the art capital of the world, Paris provided unparalleled conditions for the formation and exchange of creative ideas. The city’s private art academies, independent and official exhibitions, and wealth of dealers and patrons drew artists from across Europe. Some foreign artists, such as Amadeo Modigliani and Chaim Soutine, stayed in the French capital for the remainder of their careers, while others eventually returned home to become leaders of avant-garde movements there.

EXPRESSIONISM
Inspired by the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists in France, progressive artists in Germany withdrew from the academic system to form independent exhibiting associations in the fi nal decade of the nineteenth century. Known as Secessions, these breaks with the official art establishment took place first in the major art centers of Munich and Berlin before spreading to smaller cities such as Dresden. The Secessions paved the road for the formation of even more rebellious groups of young artists known as Die Brücke (The Bridge), founded in Dresden in 1905, and Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider), founded in Berlin in 1911. These artists became known as Expressionists for their heightened emphasis on emotion and use of strong, assertive forms, acrid colors, and sinuous lines.

SURREALISM
Surrealism originated in Paris in the mid-1920s as a literary movement inspired by the new fi eld of psychoanalysis. Of utmost importance to Surrealism were Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) theories about free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious mind. Under the direction of André Breton (1896–1966), a writer trained in medicine and psychiatry, Surrealism became a pan-European phenomenon that spread to theater, fi lm, music, and painting.

In the public imagination, no artist is more closely associated with Surrealism than the larger-than-life Spaniard, Salvador Dalí, followed closely by the highly experimental German painter Max Ernst and the Belgian René Magritte. Breton courted Picasso, but the artist always remained peripheral to the movement, even though his work often illustrated Surrealist publications.

Surrealism remained vital through the 1930s, but during World War II many of its leading artists fled Europe for the United States. There they inspired the development of a new artistic movement: Abstract Expressionism. New York eclipsed Paris as the Western world’s greatest artistic center, thereby ending a major chapter in the history of modern art. Visit The Utah Museum of Fine Arts at : www.umfa.utah.edu/

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