Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Picasso to Warhol: Twelve Modern Masters



The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, continued its collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), with the exclusive presentation of the major exhibition “Picasso to Warhol: Twelve Modern Masters” beginning October 2011. This exhibition presented approximately 100 works of art created by 12 of the most iconic artists from the 20th century: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio De Chirico, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. “Picasso to Warhol” was one of the largest concentrations of modern art masterpieces to ever be exhibited in the southeastern United States. Co-organized by the High Museum of Art and MoMA, the exhibition was on view only in Atlanta from October 15, 2011, through April 29, 2012.

Works exhibited included:

Henri Matisse’s “Dance (I),” 1909;

and Jackson Pollock’s, “Number 1A,” 1948.


Pablo Picasso’s “Girl Before a Mirror,” 1932,

and “Night Fishing at Antibes,” 1939;

Jasper Johns’s “Map,” 1961;



and Andy Warhol's Self-Portrait, 1966. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on nine canvases. Each canvas 22 1/2 x 22 1/2" (57.2 x 57.2 cm), overall 67 5/8 x 67 5/8" (171.7 x 171.7 cm) Gift of Philip Johnson. Credit Line: © 2010 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“Picasso to Warhol” continues a multi-year, multi-exhibition collaboration between the High and MoMA, which was launched in 2009 with “Monet Water Lilies,” the first in a series of six exhibitions. On view from June 4 through August 14, 2011, will be the second exhibition, “Modern by Design.” Following “Picasso to Warhol,” a second large-scale exhibition and two additional focus shows are in development for 2012 and 2013. The initiative builds on successful past collaborations between the High and MoMA that resulted in four exhibitions presented in Atlanta between 1997 and 2000. This project will extend ties between the institutions through professional exchanges, development of educational programs and publications and reciprocal admission benefits.


High Museum of Art

The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association, is the leading art museum in the southeastern United States. With more than 12,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High Museum of Art has an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American and decorative art; significant holdings of European paintings; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art. The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art. The High’s media arts department produces acclaimed annual film series and festivals of foreign, independent and classic cinema. In November 2005 the High opened three new buildings designed by architect Renzo Piano that more than doubled the Museum’s size, creating a vibrant “village for the arts” at the Woodruff Arts Center in midtown Atlanta.