Some of the most celebrated works of modern art are coming to the Kimbell Art Museum in the fall of 2013. The Art Institute of Chicago holds one of the greatest collections of modern European art in the world. In the largest loan of its kind from the Art Institute, nearly 100 works from this collection will be traveling to the Kimbell Art Museum. The only venue for the exhibition, the Kimbell will present The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago from October 6, 2013, through February 16, 2014.
“The Kimbell is proud to showcase Chicago’s treasures,” said Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “Some of the great icons of modern art will visit Texas for the first time—paintings like
Pablo Picasso’s Old Guitarist
and Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River.
Henri Matisse, Bathers by a River, March 1909–10, May–November 1913, and early spring 1916–October (?) 1917, oil on canvas, 102 1/2 x 154 3/16 in. The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection.
© 2012 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
With nearly 100 paintings and sculptures on view, this will be the most important exhibition ever drawn entirely from the renowned modern holdings of the Art Institute.”
Among the works in the exhibition—which spans the first five decades of the 20th century—are 10 by Picasso and 10 by Matisse, the friends and rivals whose paintings revolutionized Parisian art at the turn of the century. Bold and brightly colored canvases by Matisse and his Fauve colleagues Maurice de Vlaminck and Georges Braque open the exhibition, followed by the complicated and subtly toned Cubist images of Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris.
The major movements of European modernism are represented by superb examples. Vibrant paintings by German and Russian artists—notably Max Beckmann, Vasily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall—will contrast with the reductive purity of abstractions by the sculptor Constantin Brâncusi and the painters Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. Chicago’s famous collection of Surrealist painting and sculpture will be shown in strength, including pieces by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, Alberto Giacometti and Picasso. A concluding gallery will feature works from the years around World War II by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Balthus and Fernand Léger.
Kimbell Art Museum
The Kimbell Art Museum, owned and operated by the Kimbell Art Foundation, is internationally renowned for both its collections and for its architecture. The Kimbell’s collections range in period from antiquity to the 20th century and include European masterpieces by artists such as Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Poussin, Velázquez, Monet, Picasso and Matisse; important collections of Egyptian and classical antiquities; and Asian, Mesoamerican and African art.
The Museum’s building, designed by the American architect Louis I. Kahn, is widely regarded as one of the outstanding architectural achievements of the modern era. A second building, designed by world-renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, is scheduled to open in 2013 and will provide space for special exhibitions, allowing the Kahn building to showcase the permanent collection.
