NYAB Event - "New to the Print Collection: Matisse to Bourgeois" Exhibition

"New to the Print Collection: Matisse to Bourgeois" Exhibition

The Museum of Modern Art

This event has ended.

This exhibition, which showcases some 80 prints and artists’ books the Museum has acquired over the past two years, reveals how an art collection is always a work in progress. On view for the first time at MoMA, these seminal works in the history of printmaking span more than a century, from 1888 to 2011—with some contextualized by related works already in the collection. Pablo Picasso's 1937 print "The Weeping Woman," acquired in 2011—which filled one of the last major gaps in MoMA’s holdings of works by the artist—is shown alongside the third state of the same image, which joined the collection in 1999. Likewise, Charles White's 1958 linoleum cut "Solid as a Rock (My God Is Rock)," acquired in 2010, is complemented by a lithograph by White that was donated to the Museum more than 40 years ago, illuminating White’s widespread impact on a younger generation of artists. Other highlights include Jasper Johns’s celebrated screenprint "Flags I" (1973), two vertical flags printed with 31 screens, which adds a key example of Johns’ early screenprinting to the collection. The exhibition also addresses more experimental processes that have often led to rare or one-of-a-kind works, from James Ensor’s hand-colored "Deadly Sins" (1888–1904) and a group of Henri Matisse’s monotypes (1914–15), to a recent monumental cyanotype by Christian Marclay.

[Image: Jasper Johns "Flags I" (1973) screenprint 27 3/8 x 35 1/4 in. Publisher: the artist and Simca Print Artists Inc., New York. Printer: Simca Print Artists Inc., New York. Edition: artist’s proof before the edition of 65. Gift of Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, New York, 2011. © 2012 Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York]