Chagall, Dalí, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Miró, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Klee, what do these great landmarks of 20th century art have in common? Having given form and color to a new time, having revolutionized the course of art history forever.

These artists are the protagonists of The Avant-Garde exhibition. Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art at Palazzo Blu – from September 28, 2023 to April 7, 2024 – with an extraordinary sequence of paintings and sculptures from the collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, a museum and exhibition center among the most important and internationally recognized for its art collections. From fall in Pisa it will be possible to admire an exceptional collection of more than 40 works, created by the great names in the history of 20th-century art. In particular, works by Matisse, Mondrian, Klee, Ernst and Gris, as well as those by Chagall, Dalí, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Miró and Picasso will be exhibited for the first time in the rooms of Palazzo Blu. United by a desire to seek new paths and new means of expression, opposing naturalism and the commodification of art, all these artists embraced the changing world and embodied the dramatic contradictions of the 20th century. The exhibition will be precisely a unique opportunity to retrace some of the highlights of the “short century,” in an exhibition curated by Matthew Affron, curator of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with scientific advice for the Pisan presentation, from art historian Stefano Zuffi. The exhibition starts from the Belle époque and leads up to the outbreak of World War II, taking us on an emotional journey capable of letting out the doubts, hopes, anxieties and enthusiasms of a society no longer able to recognize itself. Opening the exhibition will be the Self-Portrait with brush and palette, of a young Picasso, a work that shows the artist’s need to self-assert his identity, while Chagall’s Crucifixion stands as the closing piece of a journey charged with the highest symbolic value.

Gallery:

Vasily Kandinsky
Circles in a Circle
1923
98.7 x 95.6 cm, Oil on canvas
© Philadelphia Museum of Art

Paul Klee
Prestidigitator (Conjuring Trick)
1927
32.7 x 35.9 cm, Oil and watercolor on fabric on cardboard
© Philadelphia Museum of Art

Juan Gris (José Victoriano González Pérez)
Chessboard, Glass, and Dish
1917
73.3 x 103.2 cm, Oil on panel
© Philadelphia Museum of Art

Piet Mondrian
Composition with Blue and Yellow
1932
41.6 x 33.3 cm, Oil on canvas
© Philadelphia Museum of Art