Paris Portraits: Artists, Friends and Lovers. September 27, 2008 - January 4, 2009
The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, presents a fascinating array of both famous and little-known works in its new exhibition and catalogue Paris Portraits: Artists, Friends, and Lovers. This is the first museum show to feature the great mosaic of Parisian art as a “group portrait” of its leading practitioners.
At no other time and place was the art of portraiture as rich in expressive potential as early 20th-century Paris. The cult of personality that drove the brilliant careers of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, and Marcel Duchamp demanded new forms of human likeness. While naturalistic portraiture still flourished in the French capital, entirely unprecedented kinds of portraits - Fauve, Cubist, Dada, Surrealist, and Expressionist - now joined the avant-garde comédie humaine.
Kenneth E. Silver, Bruce Museum Adjunct Curator, curates the exhibition and authors the catalogue. The exhibition is graciously underwritten by Betteridge Jewelers and Van Cleef & Arpels. Additional support has been generously provided by First Republic Bank. Further support is provided by the Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund and a Committee of Honor under the leadership of Carol and George Crapple, Jean Doyen de Montaillou and Michael Kovner, Coverly and Homer McK. Rees, and Michel Witmer.
