Georges Braque
Trees at L’Estaque (1908)
Fernand Léger
The Village (1914)
Metropolitan Museum presents the Lauder Collection ‘Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be the most important exhibition of the essential Cubists —Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso— in more than 30 years. October 20, 2014 – February 16, 2015 ]]>
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The exhibition and accompanying publication will trace the invention and development of Cubism using iconic examples from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, with its unparalleled holdings in this foundational modernist movement. The exhibition will mark the first time that the Collection, which Mr. Lauder pledged to the Museum in April 2013, is shown in its entirety, including the most recent addition, Léger’s “The Village”. The exhibition, which opens October 20, 2014, will present 79 paintings, works on paper, and sculpture: 17 by Braque, 14 by Gris, 15 by Léger, and 33 by Picasso. Rich in modernist pictures by Picasso and Braque, the exhibition will also include an unprecedented number of papiers collé by Juan Gris and a stunning array of Léger’s most famous series, his “Contrasts of Forms”.
Cubism was the most influential art movement of the 20th century: it radically destroyed traditional illusionism in painting, revolutionized the way we see the world (as Juan Gris said), and paved the way for the pure abstraction that dominated Western art for the next 50 years. Led by Picasso and Braque, the Cubists dismantled traditional perspective and modeling in the round in order to emphasize the two-dimensional picture plane. Cubist collage introduced fragments of mass-produced popular culture into pictures, thereby changing the very definition of art.
Over the past 40 years, Leonard Lauder has selectively acquired masterpieces and seminal works to create the most important collection in private hands of works by the four preeminent Cubist artists: Mr. Lauder made his first two Cubist acquisitions in 1976 and continues to add to the Collection, which is distinguished by its quality, focus, and depth. In coordination with Mr. Lauder’s announcement of the gift of the Cubist works, the Metropolitan Museum, with support from a group of trustees and supporters, including Mr. Lauder, has established a new research center for modern art, housed at the Metropolitan. The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art will serve as a center for scholarship, archival documentation and collections, and innovative approaches to studying the history of Cubism, its origins and influence. The Center has been envisioned by Mr. Lauder as a means to transform the presence of modern art at the Metropolitan in dialogue with its encyclopedic collections. With its own dedicated two-year fellowships—with two new recipients arriving each year—the Center will also sustain focused research on all aspects of modernism, the Leonard A. Lauder Collection and the Metropolitan Museum’s growing holdings of early and mid-20th-century art.
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Leonard Lauder donates $1billion collection of cubist art to the Metropolitan Museum (news, April 2013)
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