International Art News

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954). Woman with a Hat, 1905. Oil on canvas; 31 3/4 x 23 1/2 in. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Bequest of Elise S. Haas. © 2012 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

February 28–June 3, 2012 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife Sarah were important patrons of modern art in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century. This exhibition unites some two hundred works of art to demonstrate the significant impact the Steins’ patronage had on the artists of their day and the way in which the family disseminated a new standard of taste for modern art. The Steins’ Saturday evening salons introduced a generation of visitors to recent developments in art, particularly the work of their close friends Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, long before it was on view in museums.

Beginning with the art that Leo Stein collected when he arrived in Paris in 1903—including paintings and prints by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, and Auguste Renoir—the exhibition traces the evolution of the Steins’ taste and examines the close relationships formed between individual members of the family and their artist friends. While focusing on works by Matisse and Picasso, the exhibition also includes paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Manguin, André Masson, Elie Nadelman, Francis Picabia, and others.

Museum Hours

Egon Schiele, 'Two Women Embracing' (detail), 1915. Pencil, watercolour, gouache. 48.5 x 32.7 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, 'Water-carrier' (detail), c.1808-12. Oil on canvas. 68 x 50.5 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapesty .

Until the 12th of  December 2010 – Royal Academy of Arts
European Masterpieces from Leonardo to Schiele
The Royal Academy of Arts presents a major exhibition of works which showcases the breadth and wealth of one of the finest collections in Central Europe. The exhibition features over 200 works and includes paintings, drawings and sculpture from the early Renaissance to the twentieth century. Selected works by artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Goya, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Egon Schiele, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso are on display, many of which have not previously been shown in the UK. The exhibition comprises works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, with additional key loans from the Hungarian National Gallery and provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to view these artworks in London.
The show is organised broadly chronologically, with thematic sections which consider the richness of the collections in relation to religious works, mythological subjects, portraiture, still lifes and landscape
painting. The exhibition opens with the dramatic St. Andrew Altarpiece, 1512, from Liptószentandrás,
drawing attention to the wealth of skill and sophistication of early wood carving in Hungary. The work
reflects the influence and exchanges of culture with Northern European painters, sculptors and carvers.
Key works from the early Italian School include rare and exquisite Renaissance bronze sculptures
attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea Riccio as well as fifteenth-century devotional paintings by
Jacopo Parisati da Montagnana and Liberale da Verona. The Northern European Schools are represented through paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Maerten van Heemskerck. At the heart of the exhibition sits a selection of over eighty Old Master drawings which includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Altdorfer, Annibale Carracci and Giambattista Tiepolo and ranges from preparatory studies to presentation drawings.
The Italian School remains prominent throughout the galleries dedicated to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and includes religious and mythological paintings by artists including Jacopo Tintoretto and Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Il Guercino) whilst works by Nicolas Poussin and Laurent de la Hyre highlight the French School. Large scale paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens showcase the Flemish School and the exceptional Spanish collection is displayed through works by El Greco, Goya, Jusepe de Ribera and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest houses the state collection of international art works in Hungary andincludes the Este rházy collection, acquired in 1871. The collection began in the seventeenth century but expanded during the rule of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy (1765 – 1833) who was primarily responsible fordeveloping the fine collection of Old Master paintings and drawings which is showcased in the exhibition.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is Raphael’s Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist , 1508 (known as The Esterházy Madonna).
Treasures from Budapest: European Masterpieces from Leonardo to Schiele includes still lifes, landscapes and portraits by some of Europe’s finest artists, including works by Royal Academicians Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Constable and Angelica Kauffmann. The exhibition concludes with a showcase of works by Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro and twentieth century artists including Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Egon Schiele alongside works by Hungarian artists such as Károly Ferenczy and József Rippl-Rónai.

Museum Hours

Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Until the 26th of September 2010 – Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Established in 1876, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has close to a quarter of a million historically significant works of art, including paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Chinese porcelain, architectural installations, and contemporary artworks. An American landmark, the museum possesses magnificent impressionist and post impressionist collections, as well as celebrated collections of artworks by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and American painters. The museum has an extremely enlightened and creative approach towards art historical research and its dazzling curatorial concepts have reaped the museum the opportunity to organize the United States Pavilion of the Venice Biennale two times. This exhibition marks the first time the Taipei Fine Art Museum is cooperating with a major American museum and is a rare opportunity. Focusing on the development of the Philadelphia Museum of Art collection, the exhibition offers viewers a glimpse of American philanthropic patterns and museum collecting style. The exhibition is a veritable feast including sixty paintings and sculptures by the legendary artists Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Museum Hours

Paul Gauguin - Leda en de zwaan, 1889

Van Gogh Museum – Until the  6th of June 2010
In 1889, during the Paris World’s Fair, Paul Gauguin and several friends exhibited their work on the festival site of the Café des Arts, owned by a certain monsieur Volpini. Among other works, Gauguin’s show included a series of prints he had made at the instigation of Theo van Gogh as a way of drawing attention to his paintings. This series of prints became known as the Volpini suite.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Volpini Suite: Design for a plate: Leda and the swan, 1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh FoundationThese 11 zincographs on brilliant, canary-yellow paper were created at a crucial point in Gauguin’s oeuvre and offer an overview of the central themes in his work, from the exotic landscapes of Martinique to scenes of Pont-Aven and Arles. With the Volpini suite Gauguin effectively presented his calling card as an artist.

Paul Gauguin: The breakthrough into modernity is the first to examine in depth this series of lithographs, which played such a crucial role in Gauguin’s development into a modern artist. The exhibition will also show works by Gauguin and his friends like Charles Laval, Emile Bernard and Louis Anquetin closely linked to the Volpini suite.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Breton girls dancing, 1888, National Gallery of Art, Washington (collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon)Altogether there will be some 60 works of art (paintings, works on paper, sculptures and ceramics) on view, including key pieces such as Be mysterious (Musée d’Orsay), Breton girls dancing  (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Self-portrait (Pushkin Museum, Moscow) and Is there news (Gemälde galerie Neue Meister, Dresden). The recent acquisition of the Van Gogh Museum, Breton girl spinning will also be on show.

Café des Arts and the Pont-Aven School
In the rebel tradition of Gustave Courbet and Eduard Manet, Gauguin and his friends had organized their own exhibition as a counterpart to the established art being shown at the Paris World’s Fair in the Café des Arts. This L’Exposition de Peintures du Groupe Impressioniste et Synthétiste was the first joint presentation by a group of artists who were to become known as the Pont-Aven School. They had rejected Impressionism and Realism in favour of Synthetism, a style characterised by a simplification of form and colour into flat, rhythmic patterns and undulating lines. This new movement became a major source of inspiration for Les Nabis, a group of avant-garde artists working in Paris in the period 1890-1905, and other artists.

More