Displaying items by tag: Modern Art

A rare and early reclining armchair designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is currently on view at the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH. A pioneer of modern architecture, Wright designed the chair between 1902 and 1903 and it features the minimal aesthetic and linear design that he is best known for. The chair was originally designed for his prairie style Francis W. Little House in Peoria, IL but he used different variations of the chair over the course of the next decade, including in his own studio in Chicago’s Oak Park.  

The presentation of the chair coincides with the reopening of the Currier’s Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman House (1950), which Wright designed. Along with the exterior, Wright devised the House’s interiors, furniture, gardens, and even its mailbox. The Zimmermans left the house to the Currier in 1988 and it opened for public tours in 1990. Besides being able to view a Wright masterpiece, visitors are offered a glimpse of the Zimmermans’ personal collection of modern art, pottery, and sculpture. The Zimmerman House is the only Wright home open to the public in New England. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Tours of the Zimmerman House are offered ten times a week and require a reservation.

Sotheby’s will present three early bronzes from Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) pivotal The Gates of Hell at its Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 7, 2013 in New York. The three casts are part of a renowned private collection and include a rare, early cast of The Thinker (1906), which is expected to garner anywhere from $8 million to $12 million.

The cast of The Thinker was made by the Alexis Rudier foundry in Paris and was commissioned directly from the artist by the publishing tycoon, Ralph Pulitzer. The sculpture features a plaque stating that it was made for Pulitzer under Rodin’s immediate supervision. The other casts included in the Impressionist and Modern Art auction are Rodin’s beloved The Kiss (1909) and Ugolino and His Children (1883), which was only cast three times during Rodin’s lifetime.

The Directorate of Fine Arts commissioned The Gates of Hell, which was inspired by Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, in 1880. The project was originally expected to take five years but Rodin spent 37 years working intermittently on what would become the defining sculpture of his career. While The Gates of Hell was never fully realized, many of Rodin’s most notable sculptures are related to the single and multi-figure works he created for the commission.

After 89 years in British collections, Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Child with a Dove will leave the UK. The painting, which marks Picasso’s transition from a predominantly Impressionist style to his somber blue period, was sold last year to a collector in Qatar for nearly $77 million. The UK’s government quickly placed an export ban on the work in hopes that a British buyer would step up and claim the painting. The ban expired in December and no British collector or institution was able to raise the funds necessary to keep Child with a Dove in the country.

Qatar has emerged as a major force in the modern and contemporary art markets in recent years. In 2011, the emirate purchased one of Paul Cézanne’s (1839-1906) versions of The Card Players for $250 million. Other major acquisitions by the country include Mark Rothko’s (1903-1970) White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) for $72 million as well as works by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Richard Serra (b. 1939).  

Child with a Dove first came to the UK in 1924 after being purchased by a British collector, Mrs. R.A. Workman. The painting eventually made its way to the art collector Samuel Courtauld and following his death in 1947 was bequeathed to the Welsh Aberconway family. Christie’s sold the painting in 1947 on behalf of the Aberconways. Just last year the painting went on display at the Courtauld Gallery, which Samuel Courtauld founded, as part of the exhibition Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901. The exhibition ends on May 27, 2013 at which point the painting will be returned to Christie’s and then shipped out of the UK.  

Officials at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have announced that philanthropist and cosmetics mogul Leonard Lauder will donate $1 billion worth of art to the museum. The gift includes 78 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures and will significantly improve the Met’s 20^th century holdings. The Leonard A. Lauder Collection includes 33 works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), 17 by Georges Braque (1882-1963), 14 by Juan Gris (1887-1927), and 14 by Fernand Léger (1881-1955); for a private Cubist collection it is unmatched in its quality and breadth.

Highlights from the Lauder Collection include Picasso’s landscape The Oil Mill (1909), which was one of the first Cubist images to be reproduced in Italy; Braque’s Fruit Dish and Glass (1912), the first Cubist paper collage ever created; and Picasso’s Head of a Woman (1909), which is considered the first Cubist sculpture. Together, these works tell the story of a movement that transformed the landscape of modern art. Cubism departed from the traditional interpretations of art, challenged conventional perceptions of space, time, and perspective, and paved the way for abstraction, a concept that dominated the art world for much of the 20^th century.

Lauder acquired his first Cubist works in 1976 and has maintained his remarkable dedication to collecting for nearly 40 years. He continues to collect and is committed to looking for new opportunities to add to his gift to the Met. In coordination with Lauder’s remarkable gift, the Met is establishing a new research center for modern art. The center is supported by a $22 million endowment that Lauder helped spearhead. Grants for the center came from various trustees and supporters of the Met, including Lauder.

The Lauder Collection will be exhibited for the first time at this Met during the fall of 2014.

The Board of Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. announced an upcoming partnership with the National Gallery of Art. The three-year agreement allows the Corcoran to exhibit works of modern and contemporary art from the National Gallery’s collection while the museum’s East Building is under renovation. The Corcoran is working on trimming expenses and has been battling rumors that it will sell its landmark Beaux Arts building due to financial troubles. During the Board’s announcement, officials scrapped any speculation by confirming that the Corcoran will not be moving.

The Corcoran has collaborated with the National Gallery in the past but their new partnership is the most expansive to date. Earl A. Powell III, Director of the National Gallery of Art, said, “We are very pleased to be able to share works from the nation’s collection of modern art with visitors to the Corcoran while our East Building is closed for renovations. We have a history of lending works to the Corcoran, but the larger number of works addressed by this agreement and the increased length of their exhibition at the Corcoran makes this a new development in our long relationship.”

The National Gallery of Art is expected to close for renovations beginning next year.

Sotheby’s will offer the Collection of Alex and Elisabeth Lewyt in a series of auctions in New York and Paris beginning on May 7, 2013. The works, which include paintings and drawings by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), will lead Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale in New York. Proceeds from the sale will benefit a charitable foundation to be created in the couple’s name. The 200 works, which also include illustrated letters by artists such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), are expected to garner anywhere from $67 million to $98 million.

The first sale of the series will present a selection of 20 works from the Lewyt’s collection. Highlights include a seminal Cézanne still-life titled Les Pommes, which the Lewyts bought from the Wildenstein Galleries in 1953; Modigliani’s sensual portrait of the socialite Marguerite de Hasse de Villers titled L’Amazone; and various works by Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque (1882-1963), and Marc Chagall (1887-1985).

Alex Lewyt, a New York-based vacuum cleaner inventor who died in 1988, and his wife, Elisabeth, an animal-welfare activist who died this past December, began amassing their remarkable collection in the 1950s.  

To celebrate their sponsorship of the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement, Rachel Cozad Fine Art in Kansas City, MO presents an exhibition of four paintings by the American artist George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879). Three of the paintings on view were recently discovered and have never been on public display. The works on view, which have been added to the artist’s updated Catalogue Raisonné, are Baiting the Hook, Horse Thief, and two portraits.

Since 2005, 15 newly authenticated paintings by Bingham have been added to his oeuvre of approximately 500-recorded paintings. Renowned art historian E. Maurice Bloch and the University of Missouri Press first published The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné in 1986; the comprehensive Catalogue included all of Bingham’s known paintings at the time of publication. In 2005, art historian Fred R. Kline and the Kline Art Research Associates launched The George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement. The ongoing project is aimed at updating Bloch’s Catalogue while maintaining the high standard of scholarship on Bingham’s life and work that Bloch set in motion.

 Rachel Cozad Fine Art, which specializes in modern and contemporary art as well as 19^th and 20^th century American art, has a special focus devoted to Bingham. Bingham, who is best known for his paintings of American life on the frontier along the Missouri River, was a pioneer Luminism, a landscape painting style characterized by its careful depiction of light, the use of aerial perspective, and the practice of concealing visible brushstrokes.

Marguerite Steed Hoffman, a current trustee and former chairman of the Dallas Museum of Art, has donated $17 million to the institution to create the Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Fund for European Art Before 1700. Hoffman specified that $13.6 million is to be used for acquisitions and the remaining $3.4 million is allotted for exhibitions and planning. Hoffman’s generous gift is one of the country’s largest geared towards the purchase and care of Old Master works.

While the Dallas Museum of Art has a substantial collection of late 19^th and early 20^th century works, its Old Master holdings are lacking. Hoffman’s donation will help expand its European Renaissance and Baroque collections; her gift also more than doubles the museum’s acquisition endowment.

Hoffman created the fund in honor of her late husband, Robert, who died in 2006. The two were important benefactors of the museum for years and participated in an important gift of modern and contemporary art that took place in 2005. The gift was part of a campaign that helped raise over $185 million for the museum.

After 15 months without a director, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will appoint Colin B. Bailey, a deputy director at the Frick Collection in New York, the head of the consortium. Bailey, 57, is a renowned specialist in 18^th and 19^th century French art and has been at the Frick since 2000.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which includes the modern-leaning M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the neoclassical California Palace of the Legion of Honor, was left leader-less after the death of its previous director, John Buchanan, in 2011. The city of San Francisco and a private board of trustees oversee the museums, which collectively are the largest public arts institution in San Francisco and one of the largest art museums in the state of California.

The announcement, which was made by the museum board on Wednesday, March 27, 2013, comes after a considerable period of tumult among the museums; the past year has included tense labor negotiations, firings of senior staff members, and scathing criticism of the board’s president, Diane Wilsey. Wilsey, an art collector, philanthropist, and prominent San Francisco socialite, has been accused of using the museums’ resources for her own benefit and of nepotism.

The museums’ recent troubles have not deterred Bailey’s excitement to join the Fine Arts Museums. His abundance of museum experience includes stints at the National Gallery of Canada, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.    

The Baltimore Museum of Art has organized the first exhibition devoted to the Jewish-American artist Max Weber’s (1881-1961) formative years in Paris. Born in Russia, Weber emigrated to the United States at the age of 10. In 1905, after studying at the Pratt Institute in New York, he traveled to Paris. Weber soon became acquainted with a number of important modern artists including Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Henri Rousseau (1844-1910). Upon his return to New York in 1909, Weber helped introduce cubism to America.

Max Weber: Bringing Paris to New York explores Weber’s transformation from a classical painter to a bold, pioneering artist. The exhibition features over 30 paintings, prints, and drawings by Weber, many of which are on loan from the Estate of Max Weber. The show includes works by Matisse, who spent time as Weber’s instructor, Picasso, Rousseau, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901).

Today, Weber is not the artist most readily associated with the cubist movement. However, at the peak of his career, Weber was a bona fide celebrity; in 1930 he became the first American artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Max Weber: Bringing Paris to New York is on view through June 23, 2013.