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Modern Masters: French Art from the Alex Hillman Family Foundation Collection

DATES June 09, 1988 through August 15, 1988
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT European Painting and Sculpture
COLLECTIONS European Art
  • May 1, 1988 Modern Masters: French Art from The Alex Hillman Family Foundation Collection, an exhibition of 35 Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern paintings and drawings, will open at The Brooklyn Museum June 9 in the Robert E. Blum Gallery, located on the first floor, and remain on view through August 15, 1988. The works were acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Alex Hillman during the years following World War II, and range in date from the late 1870s to the late 1940s. The collection includes examples by Bonnard, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others.

    The exhibition illustrates one of the most innovative and productive periods in the history of Western art. Paris became a mecca for artists who, during the years between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and World War I, wanted to learn from masters of the French School and, increasingly, from their peers who, while rejecting the visual formulas of the official Salons, felt themselves to be reinventing art. It was at independent exhibitions presented by such artists, and in the galleries of enlightened dealers, that artists new to the Parisian art scene could go to learn a pictorial vocabulary that differed radically from established academic practice.

    The Alex Hillman Family Foundation Collection includes such important paintings as Braque’s Still Life (1927), Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples and Pears (ca. 1883-1887), Gris’s Harlequin with a Guitar (1917), and Picasso’s classic canvas Mother and Child (ca. 1921). The collection is also rich in works on paper, including a late Cézanne watercolor Cathedral at Aix (ca. 1904-1906), and a pair of small drawings of peasant women by Pissarro. Picasso is represented by two drawings, Study for La Toilette (1906) and Woman in a Chemise (1920).

    The works in this exhibition are on loan to The Brooklyn Museum from The Alex Hillman Family Foundation Collection.

    Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1988, 055-56.
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