Modigliani, Soutine and the other Montparnasse Legends
The Faberge museum from November 25 to March 25, 2018 inaugurates an exhibition of famous artists of the XX century, Paris School.
A unique collection of paintings by the most notorious and influential artists of the Paris school XX century, collected by their passionate admirer and patron Jonas Netter, is being demonstrated in Russia for the first time.
The exhibition in the Faberge Museum of presents more than 120 paintings - the main pearls of Netter’s collection: works by Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, as well as the paintings of Moses Kisling, Maurice Vlaminck, Andre Derain, Suzanne Valadon and other Montparnasse legendary masters.
Montparnasse is the district of Paris, which became the center of its artistic, intellectual and secular life shortly before the First World War and preserved its unique atmosphere until the outbreak of the World War II. Paris of that time became home to many visiting politicians, businessmen, cultural figures. For artists and poets who wanted to join the latest trends in art, Montparnasse was a real place of pilgrimage: in the 1910s all the leaders and ideologists of European modernism were visitors the local cafes.
Nevertheless, the bohemian life of those years was not easy. Young artists - Modigliani, Soutine, Utrillo and many others – used to live in poverty, and their paintings were perceived by the public as scandalous and almost never bought. Modigliani's friends called him "Modi" not only because of the surname, but also because of her consonance with the adjective "cursed" (French: maudit) - this nickname entrenched him and the artists of his circle, whose life was full of hardships and failures.
A huge role in the fate of these artists played the first permanent buyer of their works, their contemporary, an entrepreneur and art lover Jonas Netter. He began collecting the paintings through a meeting with an art dealer Leopold Zborovsky. He began working for Netter - to communicate with artists, collect, exchange and resell their works. In 1915, Netter and Zborovsky signed a contract with Modigliani, according to which they paid the artist 300 francs a month, for which they received all the canvases he had created. By 1917, the monthly amount paid to the artist had grown to 500, and in 1919 - up to 1000 francs. Similar agreements existed between Netter and Zborovsky with Soutine and Utrillo. This contributed to the emergence of demand for artists of the Paris School and formed a new segment of the art market.
Jonas Netter died in 1946, leaving his family an invaluable collection of masterpieces by the artists who are now recognized as the most important artists of the XXth century. For more than 70 years Netter’s collection was not available to a wide audience and only in recent years it began to be shown in Europe.
The exhibition will last from November 25, 2017 to March 25, 2018. During the exhibition, the Faberge Museum is open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. Tickets for the exhibition can be purchased in advance at tickets.fsv.ru.
