Meet the Masters

by Kimberly Rene’ Vanecek

You won’t need to fly to New York or Paris to view a Picasso or a Cézanne. El Pasoans are able to view works by these masters of modern art at The El Paso Museum of Art.

EPMA set precedence as the first museum to collaborate with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum with its Modern Masters Series: Highlights from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The two-year long partnership is presenting 10 masterpieces from the Guggenheim’s extensive collection by seven artists inclusive of Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Robert Delaunay and Albert Gleizes.

“This is a unique opportunity for several reasons: bringing such masterworks to El Paso, having the chance to examine and interpret them closely in a series of small focus exhibitions, and enhancing the national profile of the EPMA,” said Patrick S. Cable, EPMA senior curator.

The first of six separate installations is scheduled to begin Oct. 5, 2014, and will run through Feb. 1, 2015: Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso: Birth of Cubism . The overall series runs from Oct. 5, 2014, to Oct. 2, 2016. Cable says this exhibit will look at the origins of one of the first revolutions in painting of the twentieth century–—Cubism.

“As we study closely Cézanne’s bold yet lush “Still Life: Plate of Peaches” (1879-80) alongside Picasso’s early Cubist “Carafe, Jug, and Fruit Bowl” (1909), and as we learn more about the creational and cultural context of this pair of works, we begin to appreciate more fully the lineage that leads from atmospheric Impressionism of the 1870s to Cezanne’s more structural, color-constructed Post-Impressionism, and ultimately to Picasso’s first ventures into Cubism, where structure and construction of the pictorial composition take on prime significance,”  said Cable.

The exhibits to follow Birth of Cubism include Expressionism and Der Blaue Reiter that will feature two masterpieces by Russian-born artist and author Vasily Kandinsky and German painter and printmaker Franz Marc.   

Orphism and the School of Paris follows and features the genius of Robert Delaunay, the originator of Orphism and dually noted for his strong colors and geometric shapes, alongside painter and author Albert Gleizes.

The fourth installment is an epic work by Marc Chagall, “The Green Violinist”; Kandinsky and the Bauhaus features two masterworks by Vasily Kandinsky; and closing out the series is Pablo Picasso’s epic still life “Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit.” All works on exhibit are canvases painted between 1879 and 1931 and are universally recognized as classic works by these world-renowned artists.

“This collaboration presents the opportunity to bring from the Guggenheim Museum in New York to the El Paso Museum of Art choice works by key figures of twentieth-century modernist painting, from Picasso to Chagall, at a time when costs of transport and insurance make it more difficult than ever for museums to share their collections long distance,” said Cable.

Birth of Cubism: Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso Oct. 3, 2014 – Feb. 1, 2015

Peter and Margaret de Wetter Gallery

For further information: Facebook.com/ElPasoMuseumofArt