Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-inventor of collage, and for the wide variety of other styles that he helped develop and explore. The enormous body of Picasso’s work remains, and the legend lives on, a tribute to the vitality of the “disquieting” Spaniard, who superstitiously believed that work would keep him alive. For nearly 80 of his 91 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that contributed significantly to and paralleled the whole development of modern art in the 20th century.
Salvador Dalí’s artistic repertoire included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science and his closest personal relationships. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric and ostentatious public behaviour often drew more attention than his artwork.
Joan Miró combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries, and sculptures for public spaces.
Marc Chagall was a Russian-French artist who was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including paintings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic tapestries and fine art prints. He composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic. Predating Surrealism, his early works, such as “I and the Village” (1911), were among the first expressions of psychic reality in modern art. His works in various media include sets for plays and ballets, etchings illustrating the Bible, and stained-glass windows.
The Scream (1893), Edvard Munch’s best known work, has become an iconic image of the art world. The Scream was conceived in Kristiania. According to Munch, he was out walking at sunset, when he ‘heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature’. The painting’s agonized face is widely identified with the angst of the modern person. Between 1893 and 1910, he made two painted versions and two in pastels, as well as a number of prints. One of the pastels would eventually command the fourth highest nominal price paid for a painting at auction. In this exhibition you may find a lithography made during the 20th century.
Known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship, Henri Mattise was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, while he is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
Giorgio de Chirico founded the “scuola metafisica” art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His most well-known works often feature Roman arcades, long shadows, mannequins, trains, and illogical perspective. His imagery reflects his affinity for the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and of Friedrich Nietzsche, and for the mythology of his birthplace. After 1919, he became a critic of modern art, studied traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work.
In this exhibition you can admire prints (lithography and etching techniques) created in the 20th Century after Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, Giorgio de Chirico and other important artists of the 20th Century.