Bonnefanten Museum
Maastricht
Avenue Ceramique 250
+31 43 3290190 FAX +31 43 3290199
WEB
Two exhibitions
dal 17/3/2011 al 18/6/2011
WEB
Segnalato da

Guillemette Naessens



 
calendario eventi  :: 




17/3/2011

Two exhibitions

Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht

'Wintertuin' shows forty classic masterpieces from the collections of the city of Liege and the French-speaking Community of Belgium, including seven works known as the 'Belgian national treasures'. 'Treasures from Moscow. Dutch drawings from the Pushkin Museum' presents a chronological and thematic overview of Dutch drawing from the 17th century.


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Wintertuin

A selection of modern masterpieces from the Liege collections.

For the first time, an exchange is taking place between the collections of the city of Liège and the Bonnefantenmuseum. However close Maastricht and Liege may be geographically, all too often the cultural and particularly the language differences prevent good mutual contact. Following a presentation of the Bonnefantenmuseum's collection at our neighbours, it is now their turn to come here.

The collection of classic moderns is of exceptionally high quality. The TEFAF 2011 offers us an excellent opportunity to introduce the professionals and the wider public to these 'gems' from Liège. They have been collected since the 1920s and owe their cohesion in part to two striking actions of the period. Firstly, there was the (partial) acquisition of the private collection of Fernand Graindorge, a European collector who for many years set the pace of art in and around Liège. Secondly, nine paintings were acquired from the famous 1939 auction in Lucerne of the so-called 'Entartete Kunst'; art labelled as degenerate by Adolf Hitler's regime. This yielded the paintings by James Ensor, Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso, among others.

In Wintertuin, the Bonnefantenmuseum is presenting forty classic masterpieces from the collections of the city of Liège and the French-speaking Community of Belgium, including seven works of exceptionally high quality known as the 'Belgian national treasures' (Chagall, Ensor, Gauguin, Kokoschka, Liebermann, Marc and Picasso).

On display is a selection of great names from French and Belgian Pre-Impressionism and Impressionism up to representatives of the 'École de Paris' from the first quarter of the twentieth century, including works by Monet, Pissarro, Ensor, Van Rysselberghe, Signac, Picasso, Chagall, Marc, Kokoschka, Gauguin, Léger and Arp. A selection from Wintertuin is given below in chronological order, with descriptions of some of the central works in the presentation.
James Ensor 1860 – 1949

L'Hôtel de Ville de Bruxelles (1885) is one of Ensor's rare city scapes. Though the compositional interplay of roofs and façades is quite remarkable, what really stands out is the geometric squares of primary colours on the public hoarding at the bottom left of the painting. With these squares of primary colours, Ensor introduces the avant-garde into this painting, which is otherwise rather classical as regards colouring.

Another painting is a more typical example of Ensor's grotesque period, beginning in the late 1880s, in which, as a logical extension, the macabre and ridiculous side of human destiny appears in his work. La Mort et les Masques (1897) portrays death holding a wobbly candle, surrounded by seven masks. The theme of death is echoed in the sky, where two skeletons are in lively pursuit of a balloon. The masks, chinoiserie and shells in James Ensor's work are a direct reference to the hotchpotch of things in his parents' souvenir shop in Ostend.

Théo van Rysselberghe 1862 – 1926

Like James Ensor, Van Rysselberghe also belonged to the 'Cercle des XX', a group of artists who rejected academicism and went in search of the avant-gardes of the day. From 1883, they organised an annual exhibition of twenty outside exhibitors. The two works by Van Rysselberghe in Winter garden are a good example of his exceptional talent in the portrait genre. Les sœurs du peintre Schlobach, from 1884, is a composition with a background in many hues of grey, full of exotic references (probably due to the artist's recent stay in Morocco in the period preceding the work). With their static pose and solemn expression, the two central figures contrast starkly with the rich textures, dim light and hint of movement in the fabrics and carpet.

Another work, La Dame en blanc – Portrait de Mme Théo van Rysselberghe, from 1904, shows his affinity with the Neo-Impressionism of Seurat, although he is not totally converted to pointillism. This painting is one of a series of portraits of writers and artists with whom Van Rysselberghe had close contact. It is a portrait of his wife, who was also the publisher of the catalogues of the 'Cercle des XX' and the magazine 'l'Art Moderne'. The book in her hand refers to her close involvement with art, literature and the publishing business.

Paul Gauguin 1848 – 1903

Le Sorcier d'Hiva-Oa ou Le Marquisien à la cape rouge (1902) is one of the last works painted by Gauguin shortly before his death in 1903. The central figure has been identified as the sorcerer and also the best dancer from the island of Hiva-Oa, where the painter lived during the last two years of his life, taking refuge from the advancing westernisation of Tahiti. This person introduced Gauguin to the island's local traditions and customs. Le Sorcier d'Hiva-Oa is one of a series of portraits of 'feminine' men, with androgynous features, of whom there were many in Polynesian society. The scene taking place between the three characters has a certain mystery to it and is concentrated on the left-hand side of the painting, while the right-hand side depicts a serene natural scene.

Pablo Picasso 1881 – 1973

La famille Soler (1903) is a work made by Picasso on commission from his tailor, in exchange for some suits. Originally, it formed part of a triptych, along with the portraits of Monsieur and Madame Soler. This work is also known by the title of Le déjeuner sur l'herbe de la famille Soler, in reference to the work by Edouard Manet. However, one of things distinguishing it from Manet's theme is the presence of a gun, a game bag and a hare, clearly referring to a hunting party. Living in Barcelona at the dawn of his 'blue period', Picasso painted a series of portraits of friends and people from his close circle. This group portrait was painted from a photo rather than from life, which explains the rather rigid posture of the figures. The background is a uniform emerald green/blue (following some overpainted attempts at Cubism at the top left, behind Madame Soler's head), in reference to the background drapes commonly used at the time in photographic studios.

Marc Chagall 1887 - 1985

La Maison Bleue was painted in 1920 in Vitebsk in White Russia, Chagall's place of birth (in 1887). A pig is visible at the foot of the coloured steppe hut and there is a vague shadow of a cockerel on the chimney. These are relics from Chagall's childhood, which recur throughout his oeuvre. Chagall was 33 when he painted this work. He had already experienced various artistic movements, such as Cubism, which he discovered in Paris between 1910 and 1914. In 1920, Chagall finally settled in exile in France, after numerous artistic activities in Russia (including founding an academy and a museum in Vitebsk), but also after a few collisions with his Suprematist contemporaries. From then on, Vitebsk formed the visual reference point and source of inspiration for the rest of his life and work.

Oskar Kokoschka 1886 – 1980

Monte-Carlo, 1925, is part of an ensemble created in between the many travels undertaken by Kokoschka between 1924 and 1931. In this period, he chose to work in the landscape genre, portraying Monte-Carlo as a fashionable resort. The people in the lower foreground of the painting, with their carefully chosen physiognomy, show how talented the artist was as a portrait painter. The gesture of understanding between the two protagonists reveals a little of their inner lives and emotions. The work, which was already acquired by the Museum of Frankfurt in 1926, was regarded in 1937 as 'Entartet' and removed, as Kokoschka did not meet the conservative and academic standards of the day.

Wintertuin is an initiative of Laurent Jacob, director of Espace 251 Nord, and the result of a collaboration between the Bonnefantenmuseum, the MAMAC (Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Liege) and the Musée de l'Art Wallon in Liege. The exhibitions were mounted in cooperation with Alexander van Grevenstein, director of the Bonnefantenmuseum. Winter garden is a project by Espace 251 Nord and the City of Liege, as part of 'Liege Culture Metropolis 2010', with the support of the Belgian Presidency of the European Council and assistance from the French-speaking Community of Belgium.

The exhibition is on show at the Bonnefantenmuseum during TEFAF 2011.

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Treasures from Moscow
Dutch Drawings from the Pushkin Museum

The exhibition Treasures from Moscow. Dutch drawings from the Pushkin Museum is presenting the ninety best 17th-century Dutch drawings from the Pushkin Museum. The Bonnefantenmuseum will be the first place outside Russia to exhibit such a large number of these works in 150 years. The Pushkin Museum's collection of drawings originated from
several Moscow collectors, who acquired their works at auctions and, in particular, from art dealers in Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and many other German cities.

Treasures from Moscow presents a chronological and thematic overview of Dutch drawing from the 17th century. It includes drawings from undisputed celebrities like Rembrandt, Abraham Bloemaert and Adriaen van Ostade. There are drawings by artists born in the Netherlands, as well as those from elsewhere who sought refuge in the 17th -century centre of the arts, such as Gerard de Lairesse from Liège.

The underlying principle in compiling the exhibition was the astounding quality of the art works, followed by the aim of displaying a variety of themes, compositions and functions. For instance, sketches will be displayed alongside fully detailed figure and composition studies. In this way, the exhibition will give a splendid overview of Dutch drawing in the Golden Age – hitherto practically unprecedented – as well as a glimpse of the history of Dutch art collection in Russia.

The exhibition is accompanied by the extensive catalogue: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts – Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the XVI-XVIII Centuries, Belgian and Dutch Drawings of the XIX-XX Centuries.
This catalogue, which is based on the existing Russian catalogue, was compiled on the initiative of the Foundation for Cultural Inventory (SCI) together with the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, under the supervision of Charles Dumas from the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD).

On show during TEFAF 2011 en TEFAF Paper

Press department (Tues- Fri), 329 Avenue Céramique 250, Postbus 1735, 6201
BS Maastricht. Tel. +31 43 3 29 01 10, fax +31 43 329 01 99
Guillemette Naessens: pressoffice@bonnefanten.nl

Bonnefanten Museum
Avenue Ceramique 250 - Maastricht
Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Last entrance at 4.30 p.m.
We are also open on Mondays if they are a national holiday
Entrance fees 2011
Adults € 8,00
Group reservations * € 6,00
13 until 18 year € 4,00
CJP & (International) Students € 4,00
Children until 13 free of charge
Dutch Museumcard free of charge
Vrienden v/h Bonnefanten free of charge
ICOM, LGOG, Vereniging Rembrandt free of charge

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