Like most art museums, the Art Institute’s collection is far larger than the number of works visitors see hanging on the gallery walls. Featuring about 80 rare drawings that are usually not on display due to their fragility and sensitivity to light, Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper gives visitors a peek into some of the highlights of the Department of Print and Drawings’s archive.
Contemporary art enthusiasts waiting for the opening of the Art Institute’s much hyped Modern Wing will be pleased with the exhibit. Focusing on the innovations of household names like Picasso, de Kooning, and Modigliani, as well as other less well-known 20th-century artists, the exhibit will draw in and impress casual visitors and modern art buffs alike. Works on Paper is organized in chronological order, grouped by artistic movement, and includes some of the century’s most important schools, including Cubism, Dadaism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism. Modern allows visitors to see how art rapidly evolved innovation by innovation, from Picasso’s early work to the work of artists of the 1990s, like Felix Gonzalez-Torres. In addition, the drawings, sketches, watercolors, and other types of works on paper on display are the best way to see the artist’s processes and ideas in a less formal medium.
Highlights of the collection include works by one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso. Hanging at the entrance of the exhibit is his exquisite 1904 painting, “Woman with Helmet of Hair.” The work’s blue tones, shapes, lines, and feeling of melancholy remind the viewer of the Art Institute’s iconic Picasso painting, “The Old Guitarist.” The detail and quality of “Woman with Helmet of Hair” compare favorably to the more famous painting. Next to it is another Picasso work, “Head of a Woman,” which shows the geometric influence that began to shape the artist’s work just before he helped start the Cubist movement. Arguably the most groundbreaking innovation in 20th-century art, Cubism was a revolution, and the exhibit drives this home with a couple of other early cubist works by Picasso’s contemporaries, Georges Braque and Gino Severini.
Pen, brush, and black-ink drawings by Matisse are another highlight, clearly displaying his distinctive style in a more casual medium. The works have varying degrees of formality; some even look like traditional paintings on canvas. Similarly, Ivan Albright’s 1962 “The Rustlers” is as intricately painted on paper as Albright’s paintings regularly on display in the museum. There are also several interesting studies for larger works, including one for a painting from Piet Mondrian’s famous Composition series, in addition to an incredible newly refurbished Purist drawing by artist/architect Le Corbusier that demonstrates the best qualities of both that artist and the short-lived Purist movement as a whole.
The exhibit’s emphasis on the evolution of modern art and the large breadth of works on display are its strongest aspects. The collection shows the wide variety of art that was popular from 1900 through the 1990s. From a small work by Jackson Pollock that exemplifieds abstract expressionism to Salvador Dali’s surrealist drawings to the works of Andy Warhol and Sol Lewitt, Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper leaves the viewer in awe of how the last century began with Matisse and Picasso and ended with the highly abstract works of Gonzalez-Torres and Sol Lewitt.
Please watch the Provenance as mentioned by The Art Institute of Chicago on their website of the Picasso portrait Lady with a helmet of hair….
You can read that the last ownership in 1930 is by
Mr. Alfred Gold in Berlin and the year before dec 1929 it was in the Brewster Collection.
Can anybody explain to me how it is possible that Mrs Kate L. Brewster although she did not have the final ownership could leave it as a gift to the Art Institute??? Furthermore all information in books and for example on the website of Dr. Enrique Mallen
Piccasso Online Project this work is described as painted on cardboard… however The Art Institute claims the work has been painted on woodpulp cardboard …a material that Picasso as fa as I know
never used during his blue period!! All works from that period are on canvas or on cardboard.
More worse is the description of Mr Antonio Romulo Tenes from Spain who wrote a biographie about Picasso s early works.
On page 515 of his book about Picasso fraud he describes this gouache painting Lady with a helmet of hair as fraudulently attributed to Picasso and being a work by Picasso s father Jose y Blasco!!
And no one takes action…..?????
No wonder it was a gift by Kate L. Brewster her name
in the Museum is settled ..how important can one be.
Lets just hope abd pray that the President of the USA soon will take his steps to clear things up..
he was informed recently about it