
Their
art, several pieces of which are in the more than 100 pieces in the collection
brought color and imagination to art.
Several pieces of their work were on display and were purchased by
collectors in Paris and Berlin. Artists
from several nations began to meet in Schools in those cities and discuss where
they saw art going. What emerged was a
similarity of style that was eventually termed Post-Expressionism and what morphed
into what we know today as Cubism.
The
LACMA curator spent 10 years touring and collecting commitments from more than
40 museums and private collections in Switzerland, the United States, France,
Germany, and the United Kingdom, culminating in 95 paintings and more than 45
other art pieces, which will tour for more than a year. The display began in Zurich and moved to
LACMA for this month’s opening. Next
stop is Montreal. The excitement of
setting up the exhibit is captured in an audio and visual link titled Unframed.
As we
made our way through the exhibit we were as much impressed by the collection as
by the story it told. The audio tour, by
the way was free: available as an App on my smart phone. The time frame, from
the 1890s through the First World War, showed some of the political impact on
the artists. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner for example changed the date on some of his
paintings to reflect that he was still in Germany when he painted a piece.
The
single criteria for being in the collection was that the artist is a recognized
Master. Rarely in one collection would
you see works by the above mentioned artists as well as Wassily Kandinsky,
Gabrielle Munter, Matisse, Robert Delaunay, and Paul Signac. The value of the
collection if it were sold as a whole would truly be priceless.
I
recently saw the movie The Monument Men. The irony of Hitler’s stealing of major art
from collections of Jews as well as from churches and museums, was his literal
prosecution of many of the artists whose works are included in this collection.

Mary was
just called for Jury Duty. That inspired me to write a Post about that
process. Join me next time and see what
my mind and experience might put to paper.