Van Gogh to Picasso: The Thannhauser Legacy

• The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
   September 21, 2018–March 24, 2019

Drawn from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s Thannhauser Collection, Van Gogh to Picasso: The Thannhauser Legacy features nearly fifty works by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern masters, including Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh.

The exhibition marks the first occasion that a significant portion of the renowned Thannhauser Collection has been exhibited outside of New York since its arrival at the Guggenheim in New York in 1965—over fifty years ago.

The Thannhauser works bring to the fore avant-gardists who sought to liberate art from academic genres and techniques in the late nineteenth century. These artists explored the fleeting effects of nature and ways to capture the spectacle of the changing city at the start of the twentieth century, and employed stylistic devices such as loose brushwork and innovative practices like fracturing and faceting the picture plane.

The Thannhauser Collection is a bequest of nineteenth - and early - twentieth - century art given to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation by Justin K. and Hilde Thannhauser. Justin K. Thannhauser was the son of the German Jewish art dealer Heinrich Thannhauser, who founded the Moderne Galerie in Munich in 1909. From an early age, Justin K. worked alongside his father in the flourishing gallery and helped build an impressive and versatile exhibition program that included the French Impressionists and Post - Impressionists and regularly featured contemporary German artists. For example, t he Moderne Galerie presented the premier exhibitions of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists’ Association of Munich) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), both of which included Vasily Kandinsky, in 1909 and 1911, respectively. 

The Thannhausers also mounted in 1913 one of th e first m ajor Pablo Picasso retrospective s , thus initiating the close relationship between Justin K. Thannhauser and Picasso that lasted until the artist’s death in 1973. An ambitious businessman, Justin K. Thannhauser opened a second gallery in Lucerne in 1919 with his cousin Siegfried Rosengart. 

Eight years later, the highly successful Thannhauser galleries relocated their Munich gallery to the thriving art center of Berlin. There, the dealer organized major exhibitions of the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Claude Monet. Business operations were nonetheless hindered in the next decade with the establishment of a Nazi government bent on purging the “degenerate art” of the avant - garde. 

The Thannhauser gallery in Berlin closed in 1937, shortly after Justin K. Thannhauser and his family immigrated to Paris. Thannhauser eventually settled in New York in 1940 and established himself as a private art dealer. The Thannhausers’ commitment to promoting artistic innovation paralleled the vision of Solomon R. Guggenheim. In appreciation of this shared spirit, Justin K. Thannhauser gave a significant portion of his art collection, including more than 30 works by Picasso, to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which owns and operates the eponymous museum in New York . 

Selections from the Thannhauser Collection have been on view at the Guggenheim since 1965. A bequest of ten additional works received after the death of Hilde Thannhauser , Justin’s second wife and widow, in 1991, augmented the Guggenheim’s holdings and enhanced the legacy of this family of important art dealers. This landmark presentation of the Thannhauser Collection at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will not only trace the development of modernism at the turn of the century, but also underscore the Thannhauser family’s steadfast support of experimental art. 

OVERVIEW OF THE EXHIBITION 

Collecting Impressionism 

The Thannhauser Collection played a major role in expanding the range of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s holdings to include the immediate precursors to the modern era. As prominent dealers in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century, the Thannhauser family not only made a commitment to local contemporary artists, but also they organized important group and solo exhibitio ns featuring French avant - gardists from the late nineteenth century, including Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Édouard Manet. 

These rebellious artists, centered in Paris and largely associated with the loosely defined group of Impressionists , sought to liberate themselves from academic genres and techniques, exploring instead the fleeting effects of nature and urban subject matter, and employing stylistic de vices such as loose brushwork in order to impart an illusion of spontaneity. They developed formal innovations that prepared the ground for the rapid proliferation of radically new approaches to art in the next century.

Édouard Manet
Before the Mirror (Devant la glace), 1876
Oil on canvas
93 x 71.6 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.27
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF

Manet’s Before the Mirror (1876), for example, illustrates the unconventional new types of subject matter in its depiction of a courtesan before her psyche, or mirror, in a state of partial undress. One assumes the role of spectator and intrudes upon this private moment in the boudoir, as the model — back turned — grasps an extended corset string. 



Another painting , Pierre - Auguste Renoir’s Woman with Parakeet (1871), predates the artist’s Impressionist styl e but is nonetheless rendered with the feathery, textured brushwork that characterizes his work. The intimate scene captures a young, upper - middle - class woman playing with her pet bird, yet the stifling interior restricts the model’s space, just like that of her parakeet when confined to its gilded cage. These tensions embody the daily experience of a fashionable Parisian lady. Unlike men, women were confined almost exclusively to indoor domestic spaces and were not permitted to move freely about the city. 

Collecting Post - Impressionism and Early Modernism 

The Thannhausers’ assembling of European art of the fin - de - siècle — a complex period defined by economic, political, social, and psychological turmoil, often in the name of progress — captures the diversity of artistic styles that emerged in reaction to the two dominant strains in art at the time: academic naturalism and the Impressionist adherence to the natural world. Artists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, both subjects of critical exhibitions organized at the early Thannhauser gallery in Munich, turned their artistic eye inward. Van Gogh, in particular, translated reality through the lens of personal experience and emotion. As so - called Post - Impressionists, these artists reacted agai nst the idea of art as a “window to the world” and used sinuous lines and non - naturalistic colors to imbue their paintings with an emotive tenor. 





 

Vincent van Gogh
Mountains at Saint-Rémy (Montagnes à Saint-Rémy), Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, July 1889
Oil on canvas
72.8 × 92 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New YorkThannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.24
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

Painted during Van Gogh’s recovery from an attack of mental distress, Mountains at Saint - Rémy (July 1889) evokes the artist’s emotional state — not to mention the awe - inspiring presence of the rock formations near his hospital grounds — through its thick application of paint and animated brushstrokes. 

Georges Braque
Landscape near Antwerp (Paysage près d’Anvers), 1906

Oil on canvas
60 x 81 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.1
© Georges Braque, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2018
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF

Similarly, Georges Braque, in his Fauvist painting Landscape near Antwerp (1906), employed vibrant, expressionistic colors and deconstructed the landscape as a sensation of patterned light.

Henri Rousseau
The Football Players (Les joueurs de football), 1908
Oil on canvas
100.3 x 80.3 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 60.1583
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

 Still other varied art forms appeared at the turn of the century, including the flattened, stylized work of the untrained artist Henri Rousseau. Set amid an unspecified forest setting, Rousseau’s The Football Players (1908) is at once a joyful romp and a hauntingly dreamlike scene. 

Pablo Picasso 

Drawn to Paris, which had become the international nexus of the art world, the Spanish - born artist Pablo Picasso first came to the city in 1900 for the World’s Fair. 

 

Pablo Picasso
Le Moulin de la Galette, Paris, ca. November 1900
Oil on canvas
89.7 x 116.8 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.34
© Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2018
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

 Le Moulin de la Galette (1900), the foremost painting executed during the course of his two - month stay, reflects the young Picasso’s fascination with the lusty decadence and gaudy glamour of Parisian night life. His artistic style rapidly evolved from more naturalistic to his melancholic Blue period and subsequent Rose period, before Picasso came to pioneer with Georges Braque the faceted forms and flattened spatial planes associated with Cubism. This movement developed in the crucial years from 1907 to 1914 and is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential artistic styles of the twentieth century. By the 1930s, Picasso is a renowned and established artist and his practice continues to evolve . 

Collector and dealer Justin K. Thannhauser, had a strong personal relation ship with Picasso that started early in both men’s careers, in February 1913, when the Thannhauser family gallery in Munich mounted one of the first major Picasso exhibitions in Germany. More than 30 works by Picasso — spanning 65 years of the artist’s career — entered the Guggenheim Foundation’s collection in 1978 and 1991 with the respective donations of Justin K. and Hilde Thannhauser. 

Highlights from the Thannhauser Collection include 

 

Picasso’s Fernande with a Black Mantilla (1905 – 06) 

Pablo Picasso
Woman with Yellow Hair (Femme aux cheveux jaunes), December 27, 1931
Oil and Ripolin (est.) on canvas
100 x 81.1 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.59
© Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2018
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

and Woman with Yellow Hair (1931). The subject of the former painting is Fernande Olivier (née Amélie Lang), Picasso’s mistress, whom he met in 1904. The artist produced more than sixty works featuring Olivier before the pair parted ways in 1912. Here Picasso depicts an enigmatic Olivier wear ing a traditional Spanish mantilla. The sleeping woman in the 1931 canvas portrays another companion, Marie - Thérèse Walter . Walter became a constant subject in Picasso’s work of the 1930s, the period in which she lived with him ; she is often shown in a state of graceful repose or sleep — for Picasso, the most intimate of depictions.


CATALOGUE  

Van Gogh to Picasso: The Thannhauser Legacy is accompanied by a richly illustrated publication that offers a concentrated survey of works by such modern masters as Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gaugin, Édouard Manet, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh, and brings to light revelatory new scholarship on the history of the Thannhauser family and galleries and, more broadly, the cultural milieu of early - twentiet h - century Europe. T exts on the individual artw orks present extensive technical analyses based on the latest advances in conservation technology , offering rare insight s into the artists’ materials and processes. 

Short essays on collection highlights written by current and former Guggenheim curators and conservators illuminate the artists’ stylistic innovations, and an in - depth essay by Megan Fontanella, Curator, Modern Art and Provenance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation , recounts the genesis of Justin K. Thannhauser’s art collection and its eventual tr ansfer to the Guggenheim. Outlining his ambitious career as an art dealer and collector in Europe during the interwar years and into the calamity of World War II, Fontanella explores how Thannhauser’s lifelong endorsement of avant - garde art and eye for ori ginal talent helped define the artistic vanguards of twentieth - century art. 

The publication will be printed in English and Spanish. Edited by Megan Fontanella ; t exts by Julie Barten, Susan Davidson, John K. Delaney, Lidia Ferrara, Megan Fontanella, Vivien Greene, Sasha Kalter - Wasserman, Natalia Lauricella, Gillian McMillan, Nathan Otterson, Federica Pozzi, Samantha Small, Lena Stringari, Jeffrey Warda, and Jeffrey Weiss. 

Cover image: Pablo Picasso Woman with Yellow Hair ( Femme aux cheveux jaunes ) , December 27, 1931 Oil and Ripolin (est.) on canvas 100 x 81 .1 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.59 © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2018 Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

More images:

Georges Braque
Guitar, Glass, and Fruit Dish on Sideboard (Guitare, verre et compotier sur un buffet), early 1919
Oil on canvas
80.8 x 99.5 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser Foundation, by exchange 81.2821
© Georges Braque, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2018
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

Paul Cézanne
Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug (Fiasque, verre et poterie), ca. 1877
Oil on canvas
46.2 x 55.2 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.3
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

Edgar Degas
Spanish Dance (Danse espagnole), ca. 1896–1911 (cast ca. 1919–26)
Bronze
40.3 x 16.5 x 17.8 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.9
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

Paul Gauguin

Haere Mai, 1891
Oil on burlap
73 x 92 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.16
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

 


Édouard Manet
Woman in Striped Dress, ca. 1877–80
Oil on canvas
175.5 x 84.3 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.28
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

Claude Monet
The Palazzo Ducale, Seen from San Giorgio
Maggiore (Le Palais Ducal vu de Saint-Georges Majeur), 1908
Oil on canvas
65.4 x 100.6 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Bequest, Hilde Thannhauser 91.3910
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

Pablo Picasso
The End of the Road (Au bout de la route), Barcelona, ca. 1899–1900
Oil wash and conté crayon on paper
47.1 x 31.3 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.33
© Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2018
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

]Édouard Vuillard
Place Vintimille, 1909–10
Distemper on brown Kraft paper, mounted on canvas
Two panels, left panel: 200.1 x 70 cm; right: 200.2 x 70 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.74
© Édouard Vuillard, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2018
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

Édouard Vuillard
Place Vintimille, 1909–10
Distemper on brown Kraft paper, mounted on canvas
Two panels, left panel: 200.1 x 70 cm; right: 200.2 x 70 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.74
© Édouard Vuillard, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2018
Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF)

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