THE AGE OF MODERNISM - ART IN THE 20TH CENTURY

1. Reality and Distortion

The exhibition starts with the supreme Modernist, Pablo Picasso. Along with the radically simplified forms of the paintings of Henri Matisse and the primeval simplicity of the sculptures of Constantin Brancusi, Picasso`s pioneer Cubist paintings of the 1900s mark the explosive beginning of "The Age of Modernism - Art in the Twentieth Century".

Pablo Picasso, Sitting Nude, 1908, State Hermitage St. Petersburg

This, the first of the four paths, bears the title of "Reality and Distortion"; It exemplifies the radical innovations of` Modernism. Twentieth-century artists no longer depict reality: they treat the work of art as an autonomous reality in itself. Form and colour no longer serve an illustrative purpose but come into their own as autonomous values. Reality reveals itself in an entirely new light, with new colours and with new forms

Henri Matisse, Boules Players, 1908, 113,5 x 145 cm, State Hermitage St. Petersburg

Through distortion and alienation, artists such as Fernand Léger, Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner create a new human image. The headlong pace of life in the new century is present in the paintings of Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, as it is in those of Robert Delaunay and Franz Marc.
The crisis of the avant-garde seems to anticipate that catastrophic turning point for Western civilization, the Second World War. In the 1920s, avant-garde artists such as Pablo Picasso, Kazimir Malevich and Giorgio de Chirico revert to almost classical forms. Later, the postwar sculptures of Alberto Giacometti and the paintings of Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Asger Jorn, Jean Dubuffet and Georg Baselitz draw upon this experience to convey the sense of a profoundly damaged humanity.