At the turn of the 20th century, Paris was the center of the art world. The first significant avant-garde art movement of the time took place in the studios of Matisse, Picasso, Derain, and their contemporaries, who liberated painting from the academic traditions. Two Moscow businessmen — Ivan Morozov and Sergey Shchukin — supported the experimental efforts of these visionaries and, in the process, assembled impressive collections of their works.
With the start of World War I in 1914, however, Morozov and Shchukin’s collecting came to an end and shortly thereafter — during the October Revolution of 1917 — their artworks were seized by the new Socialist government. Years later, the highly valued collections were turned over to the state-run Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Hermitage St. Petersburg, where most of them have remained on permanent exhibition — at least until now.
For the first time, a selection of paintings, sculptures, and drawings by these daring Parisian bohemian artists, as well as their radical Russian counterparts, Kandinsky and Malevich, are on view in the exhibition Matisse to Malevich: Pioneers of Modern Art from the Hermitage at the Hermitage Amsterdam, through September 17.
Click through below for a gallery of our favorite works.
Henri Matisse, Game of Bowls, 1908 © Succession H. Matisse c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
Henri Matisse, The Red Room (Harmony in Red), 1908 © Succession H. Matisse c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Vasily Kandinsky, composition VI, 1913, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Vasily Kandinsky, Winter, 1909, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Kees van Dongen, Lady in a Black Hat, 1908, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Kees van Dongen, Spring, 1908, co Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Pablo Picasso, Absinthe Drinker, 1901, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Pablo Picasso, Table in a Café (Bottle of Pernod), 1912, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Pablo Picasso, Woman with a Fan, 1907-1908, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Chaim Soutine, Selfportrait, 1920-1921, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
Henri Matisse, Woman in Green, ca 1909 © Succession H. Matisse c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
Henri Matisse, Study of a Foot, 1909-1910 © Succession H. Matisse c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Maurice de Vlaminck, Small Town on the Seine, ca 1909, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2009
© Henri Manguin, Compositie VI, 1913, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2009
© André Derain, Still Life with Skull, 1912, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Albert Marquet, Rainy Day in Paris (Nôtre-Dame Cathedral), 1910, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2009
© Othon Friesz, The Temptation (Adam and Eve), 1910, ‘Staatsmuseum Hermitage St.-Petersburg’
© Raoul Dufy, Portrait of Susanne Dufy, sister of the painter, 1904, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Georges Rouault, Spring, 1911, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2009
© Charles Guérin, Nude, 1910, ‘Staatsmuseum Hermitage St.-Petersburg’
© Pablo Picasso, Boy with a Dog, 1905, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
Henri Matisse, Lady on a Terrace, ca 1907 © Succession H. Matisse c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Alexey Javlensky, Landscape with a Red Roof, 1911, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
© Marie Laurencin, La Bacchante, 1911, co Pictoright Amsterdam 2010
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, ca. 1930– ‘Staatsmuseum Hermitage St.-Petersburg’