Displaying items by tag: avantgarde

One of the missions of the Vilcek Foundation is to highlight the many contributions to American society and cultural made by immigrants to this country.

The exhibit “From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism from the Vilcek Foundation,” which opened Sunday at the Philbrook Museum of Art, explores the development of a uniquely American form of avant-garde art.

At the start of the 20th century, Picasso was already living in Paris. The city had established itself as the center of international art at a time when the new machines that had been invented the century before, such as the automobile, the camera and the airplane, were starting to become democratized and to have an effect on lifestyles in the modern metropolis. Film made it possible for the first time to record and reproduce moving images. The speed of movement of people, goods and images had an impact on both life and the worldview, with movement becoming the protagonist and cultural episodes taking place in sequences that were as intense as they were brief. The Avant-gardes appeared as rapidly as they were soon to vanish.

Well aware of the revolutionary spirit of this time of change, Pablo Picasso employed highly unusual formal effects in his painting. With this tactic of transgression, he was able to bring inharmonious elements together in the same picture, in such a way that the resulting work destabilized the notion of static meaning.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was clearly one of the superstars of twentieth-century art. He is the best known and most loved of all modern Italian painters. Working at the epicenter of avant-garde experimentation in Paris between 1906 and 1920, he developed an artistic vision that was entirely his own. This new exhibition is the first to be devoted to the artist at the Estorick Collection and focuses on Modigliani’s works on paper, showing the spiritual and stylistic development of his portrayal of the human face and form. "Modigliani – A Unique Artistic Voice" is on view at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art from April 15 until June 28, 2015.

'What I am seeking is neither the real nor the unreal but the unconscious, the mystery of what is instinctive in the human race'  - Amedeo Modigliani.

Christie’s is to auction a unique selection of rare works on paper from the Triton Collection Foundation, spanning over three centuries of art history and representing the most important avant-garde movements of the 19th and 20th Century, including works by Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Gino Severini, Odilon Redon, André Derain and Salvador Dalí, many of the works on paper will be offered at auction for the first time. Forty nine of the works will be sold in the single owner evening sale Exceptional Works on Paper from the Triton Collection Foundation on March 25, 2015 in Paris during the Salon du Dessin. This will be followed by a further selection of works will be offered across auctions in Paris and London throughout 2015 and early 2016.

The “Nature and Metamorphosis” retrospective includes 56 paintings and 103 drawings from 1924 through 1990, spanning Peter Blume’s entire career. From jarring early works inspired by the machine age and growth of cities through profound ruminations on to power of nature. Blume’s work helped define American modernism.

While best known as a painter, Blume was a virtuoso, dynamic draftsman, and his drawings show a surprising range. The retrospective is curated by Robert Cozzolino, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) senior curator and curator of Modern Art. “Blume was critical to the development and reception of modernism in America. His work played a key role in disseminating avant-garde ideas in the U.S. art world using a method that resembled Flemish art transposed through the lens of Cubism and the unconscious.

"That coat has been round the world. That's when I actually started to make some money!" Pierre Cardin says, stopping in front of a flared, red design among the first exhibits at his new museum in Paris. 

One of the last survivors of the great post-war French fashion houses, Cardin, at 92, still heads a sprawling business empire.

"Back then I hadn't yet become Pierre Cardin. I hadn't found my voice," he says, in uncharacteristically reflective mood.

The avant-garde designer, known for his geometric shapes, dresses decorated with circular and rectangular motifs and  astronaut's headgear, has always tended to look forward rather than backward. But he is making an exception today.

On Saturday, November 1, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will present the world premiere of a Joseph Cornell film that was recently discovered in its own collection. Cornell, a celebrated exponent of assemblage, was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker. MoMA holds an extensive collection of Cornell’s films, which were donated to the institution in 1995 by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

“Untitled Joseph Cornell Film (The Wool Collage)” (circa 1940-55) was discovered in 2011 during a research project led by MoMA’s Film Conservation Manager Peter Williamson.

From the utilitarian mid-17th century cabinets to the playful curves of the Louis XV style and the straight lines of the late 18th century, the upcoming exhibition “The 18th aux sources du design: Furniture masterpieces from 1650-1790” at the Palace of Versailles will offer visitors a crash course on the evolution of early furniture design.

The exhibition aims to showcase the avant-garde nature of some of the techniques and shapes used at the time by presenting the 100 or so items of furniture against a contemporary backdrop rather than the ornate Versailles décor, showcasing each piece as a work of art on its own right.

 A new partnership between the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and The Warhol in Pittsburgh will help preserve Andy Warhol’s entire film collection. Approximately 500 of the Pop artist’s films, which have resided in MoMA’s collection since the early 1990s, will be digitized. The award-winning visual effects company MPC will assist in the frame-by-frame scanning of over 1,000 rolls of 16mm film and the subsequent conversion to high resolution images. The project, which begins this month, is expected to take several years to complete.

While a few Warhol films such as “Empire” (1964) and “The Chelsea Girls” (1966) are icons of avant-garde cinema, many of the works in MoMA’s collection have never been seen by the public.

The Guggenheim Museum presents Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901–1911 in the museum’s Kandinsky Gallery on Annex Level 3. The exhibition features an intimate presentation of sixteen early paintings and woodcuts by Vasily Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), highlighting pictorial themes that preceded the artist’s known nonobjective style.

This exhibition is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Associate Curator, Collections and Provenance.

Kandinsky launched his artistic career in 1895, abandoning a legal profession to become the art director of a printing firm in Moscow. One year later Kandinsky left for Munich, where he formed associations with the city’s leading avant-garde groups, realized his talent for working with three classic printmaking techniques (etching, lithography, and woodcut), and began to evolve as an artist and theoretician.