Collection Merzbacher: Le Mythe de la Couleur

When private collectors open the treasures they have acquired with an equal distinct eye and passion, this is unusual enough. When this collection focuses exclusively on color and includes some of the most renowned names of the fauvism and expressionism, this is an extraordinary gift to the public.

This summer and until the end of November, the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, based in Mrtigny, Switzerland, exhibits one of the most important private European collections, which belongs to Werner and Gabrielle Merzbacher. In 1998 for the fifty years anniversary of Israel the couple accepted to show their outstanding collection. Later it has been displayed in Japan in 2001, in London in 2002, in Zurich in 2006 and at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The Pierre Gianadda Foundation is the first private foundation to welcome the Merzbacher collection.

More than one hundred art pieces from about fifty artists among the most important fauvists, expressionists and abstracts of the late 19th and 20th century.

Werner Merzbacher’s childhood was far from being bathed in color Sent by his parents in Switzerland to escape the Nazis, the young German boy survived Second World War while his parents perished in Auschwitz. In 1949 he leaves Zurich for the United States where he meets his future wife Gabrielle who is originally from Switzerland. Gabrielle’s parents had already started their own art collection around Picasso, Van Gogh, and Matisse. It would be the first step toward an exceptional collector's life for Werner and Gabrielle.

Together they will visit the art galleries in New York City and it mark the beginning of a passionate journey spent collecting pieces that all had a common point: color. As if they knew that only color was the answer to the horrors of war, hate and persecution.

In 1964, the couple and their children will move back to Switzerland from where they will pursue their worldwide search for the artwork that has the power to move them. All pieces are marked by an exceptional colorful palette.

The exhibit is under the direction of Jean-Louis Prat. The catalogue reproduces in color all the art pieces displayed during the exhibit.

Fondation Pierre Gianadda Martigny, Switzerland Until November 25, 2012

http://www.gianadda.ch/wq_pages/fr/expositions/

Posted by Evelyne Holingue for the Gene Oliver Gallery

Picasso, les chemins du Sud.

In the summer 2013, the Parisian Hotel Salé, home of the largest collection related to Picasso in the world, will reopen after four years of major remodeling. Strangely, very little is offered to the public in Antibes, Cannes, Vallauris, Vauvenargues, and Mougins where Picasso spent much of his time after the Second World War.

Thanks to the Centre d’Art La Malmaison in Cannes, visitors are offered an important glimpse into the artistic process of creation and collaboration through two original exhibits.

At the Centre d’Art, about ten major pieces – paintings, sculptures, ceramics – cohabit with thirty photomontages born from the collaboration between Picasso and the local photograph André Villers between 1954 and 1961. In addition, the director of the Centre d’Art, Fréderic Ballester, in collaboration with Anne Baldassari, the president of the Hotel Salé, has enlarged photos of La Malmaison and placed them along a path that leads the visitor from Cannes, to the artist’s studio and then to Vallauris, only a few kilometers away. This is indeed in Vallauris that Picasso spent twenty years creating near 4 000 ceramics, a few of them in display at the Musée Magnelli. Picasso in the south of France constantly lived between the sophisticated world of the rich and famous and the world of the hard-workers, poor and industrial. The two paintings Fumées a Vallauris (1951) and La Baie de Cannes, realized seven years later, exemplify to the perfection the back and forth journey between these two worlds, where Picasso was equally liked and admired.

Through these two unique exhibits Le Centre d’Art is not only showing an important part of Picasso’s artistic journey but also hinting to the possibility of offering more to the public than a temporary exhibit. What if one day, the legendary places where the artist lived and created so much opened their doors to the public? Imagine entering the artist’s studio in Vallauris, his famous home La Californie, or Notre-Dame-de-Vie where he died or the Chateau Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence where he is buried! Meanwhile, it is still worth to pay a visit to Le Centre d’Art de La Malmaison in Cannes to admire the work of the giant and dream of the life he lived there along the plein air exhibit.

Until end of September 2012. www.cannes.com

Posted by Evelyne Holingue for the Gene Oliver Gallery

Virtual Museums

When the growth of e-books sales is exponential, when online research has replaced studying at the library, will virtual museums replace brick and mortar art museums? A new version of the online museum launched by Google last year is now available. From seventeen participating museums in 2011, Google is expanding to 151 art institutions located in the five continents. All together 32 000 art pieces available for free. In addition, a clever tool allows the viewer to select an artist and admire his/her artwork wherever it is exhibited. “Technology at the service of the cultural diversity,” says Google. “And everything is free.” From the MET and MoMA in New York to the Ermitage in Saint Petersburg, from the Tate in London to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, all world-renowned museums are now online. All but Le Louvre. Twenty-nine American museums, eighteen German and thirteen British are available through the mega virtual museum. Only six are French. Google acknowledges that working with France is more challenging than it is with other countries. The major reason is the tight French legislation that protects the authors of any creative work. It is a rather smooth process with old artwork but extremely difficult with modern and contemporary art. Besides, as Alain Seban, the president of the Centre Pompidou in Paris explains, “our approach is to provide complimentary online documents, information and even films related to the artwork but never to replace a physical visit to the museum. “ Henri Loyrette, at the Louvre, also declined Google’s invitation. He was disappointed of the quality of the first version, and although he admits being very impressed with the new version, he is also a fervent believer in the brick and mortar experience. My fellow French citizens have always been reluctant to move forward, fearful to lose their rich history, but when it comes to art, I must say that no online visit can match the experience of climbing the stairs that lead to Le Louvre while listening to Paris’s heartbeat. http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/04/14/opa-a-succes-de-google-sur-les-musees-en-ligne_1685605_3246.html

In Times of Crisis, Matisse, a Feast for the Eyes

In 1918, Apollinaire compared Matisse’s art to a fruit bursting with light, like an orange.
Russia and the United States placed then Matisse on a pedestal. Ironically, the painter knew less success in France. The classicism that brought him fame in foreign countries left the French cold. Matisse, the painter of light, seemed too transparent, lacking mystery.
A new retrospective, at the Centre Pompidou, focuses on Matisse’s repetitive use of the same subject matter, allowing the painter to reflect on the form until the end of his artistic career. The exhibit gathers an exceptional selection of art pieces borrowed from public and private collections, often reunited for the first time since their creation. This selection will allow the viewer to follow Matisse through his artistic journey, searching for his voice. “Each canvas is a vertigo,” he said once. “I never start a new piece without fright.”
Unlike many masters, Matisse didn’t learn how to draw and paint at an early age. It’s because of appendicitis that he will use crayons for the first time, imitating his hospital roommate.
From now on, he will never stop. He insists to study art. Exasperated, his father agrees. When Matisse is finally accepted at the Beaux-Arts, after several attempts, he is twenty-five years old.
Signac, one of his friends, also the leader of the Neo-impressionists since Seurat’s death, convinces Matisse to come to Saint-Tropez. This is where Matisse paints between 1904 and 1905. In the summer 2005, the Fauvism is right behind his work. The color is not anymore used to serve the topic. Color exists alone. Just before World War I, the Cubism overthrows Fauvism.
Matisse will borrow little to the avant-garde movements, still searching for his voice. In 1916, he leaves Paris for Nice and instantly is home. “When I understood that every morning I would see this light again and again, I couldn’t believe in my happiness.”
Happiness will be Matisse’s favorite topic for ten years. Windows wide opened onto the soft light of South France, pigeons in vast ateliers, luscious green plants…
In 1930, Matisse drops his brushes for large colored sheet of paper. Scissors in hand, he cuts and cuts, until mastering perfection, until offering us the Nus bleus or Blue Nude in 1952.
More than ninety years later, Apollinaire’s words are more relevant than ever. Matisse’s art bursts with color and life. When darkness colors our twenty-first century world, Matisse is a feast for the eyes and the heart.

Matisse, paires et séries,
Centre Pompidou, Paris,
from March 7 to June 18, 2012.

Posted by Evelyne Holingue for the Gene Oliver Gallery

Emile Bernard: the Most Famous Unknown Post-Impressionist

The Institut National de l’Histoire de l’Art is dedicating an exhibit to Emile Bernard, one of the most unknown and yet key-player post-impressionist artists.
Emile Bernard started at a very young age his search for an absolute artistic ideal. He was convinced that a true artist was not only a painter but also a writer, and at his death he will indeed leave behind a prolific oeuvre in both media.
Despite painting profusely and with talent, Emile Bernard never emerged as some of his post-impressionism contemporary fellow artists did, and thus never reached the same fame.
This exhibit, perhaps, will give him back what he fought for most of his life: recognition for this contribution to post-impressionism. At least, it will allow the viewer to admire an abundant artwork and learn more about the Ecole de Pont-Aven.
Pont-Aven was, in the mid 19th century, nothing more than a picturesque village in Brittany, between Concarneau and Quimberlé. Painters from France, but also from foreign countries, including the USA, gathered there to fuel their inspiration with the natural surrounding beauty and the country scenes they would depict in their artwork.
Emile Bernard had already experimented all kinds of pictorial techniques, explored Brittany in search of topics either humans or naturals, and brought unique freshness to his art through a vivid palette when he and Gauguin started to work together in 1888.
Both artists were in search of absolute purity, in opposition to the naturalism and impressionism movements.
When Bernard and Gauguin met, they shared their studies on the simplification of the forms, the renouncement of the traditional perspective, and the use of bold strokes. Their common goal was to deliberately exclude realism from their artwork. Without depth, details, volumes and perspectives, and under an artificial light reminding of a theatrical scene, the subject of the painting had less importance than the way it was depicted.
In 1889, Bernard participated to the exhibit at café Volpini during the Exposition universelle, to reveal the new esthetics that characterized the Ecole de Pont-Aven.
Despite a creative fruitful collaboration at Pont-Aven, Gauguin became the undisputed leader of the modern art movement, leaving behind a disenchanted Emile Bernard who would never recover from the deception. In the spring of 1891, the two of them were no longer friends. Bernard was convinced that Gauguin stole him the merit of their new esthetical search. Soon, Gauguin left Pont-Aven for Tahiti. Bernard stayed and pursued his work, concentrating on the painting of rural scenes, reminding many of Millet. In his work, landscapes, fields, houses, and people were rendered without much details focusing instead on colorful forms that gave to the canvas an almost musical beat.
The deep conviction that Gauguin used him never left Emile Bernard in peace. Talented but bitter, he spent the rest of his life searching for his own artistic truth in Italy, Greece, and Egypt.
After a decade spent in Egypt, he returned to Paris in 1904 where he died in 1941. Avoiding the popular salons where contemporary artists met, he became very critical of them, favoring tradition to exploration, strange move for someone who had been so involved in experimenting with the art in his own youth.
The exhibit showcases through paintings, illustrated books by Emile Bernard, as well as through personal correspondence, and manuscripts from his important literary production, the unusual journey of an artist who was an important element of the late 19th century avant-garde and of the early 20th century arrière-garde movements.

Emile Bernard: au-delà de Pont-Aven
Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art
6, rue des Petits Champs
Paris 2e
Until April 14, 2012

Posted by Evelyne Holingue for the Gene Oliver Gallery

From Henri Edmond Cross to Henri Matisse

Thorough his artistic life, Henri Matisse never ceased to question representation, realism, the relation between drawing and color, between surface and volume, between interior and exterior. The painter spent his life thinking of form and is considered the father of modern painting.
As a major exhibit about Matisse is about to open early March at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a smaller exhibit at the Musée Marmottan Monet, also in Paris is closing in a few days.
Dedicated to Henri Edmond Cross, the exhibit ‘Henri Edmond Cross et le néo-impressionisme. De Seurat à Matisse’ follows the chronological evolution of the artist’s lifelong work. The exhibit highlights Cross’s relationships with the pointillists Seurat and Signac in Paris and his influence on a younger generation of artists gathered in the south of France to study and create art.
Among them a young Matisse who was no doubt greatly influenced by the work of Henri Edmond Cross.
Interesting note, Henri Edmond Cross, born Delacroix, translated in English his last name to avoid the confusion with the painter Delacroix, symbol of the French romantic painting.

Posted By Evelyne Holingue for the Gene Oliver Gallery

The Hudson River School at Le Louvre

Over the last years the Louvre has lent some of its artwork to many American museums. Visitors in Indianapolis, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, and Detroit have enjoyed many exhibits thanks to the traveling artwork coming from the renowned French museum.
The Louvre has recently signed a new partnership with the High Museum of Atlanta, the Fondation Terra in Chicago and the Crystal Bridges Museum in Betonville, Arkansas. In exchange, the Parisian museum will open its doors to a selection of 19th century American artworks.
Among them, landscapes from Thomas Cole (1801-1848), the painter at the origins of the informal alliance of landscape artists, now know of the Hudson River School, a movement that changed the course of American art.
The first depiction of The Last of the Mohicans and of a crimson fall that was also the first ever painted Indian summer, are among the treasures that Parisians will discover at the Louvre until April 16, 2012.

Image Credits: Cedar Grove - The Thomas Cole National Historic Site