From Fauvism to Surrealism

This volume gathers a wide selection of masterpieces from the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, which shows a spectacular journey through the artistic avant-gardes of the first third of the 20th century. The works, which can be seen at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao between February and May 2022, cover different movements: from Fauvism and Cubism, which at the turn of the century revolutionised the traditional representation of landscape, the figure and still life, to Surrealism, which in the 1920s championed the unconscious, chance and dreams over order and reason. Not forgetting the so-called School of Paris, formed by artists who arrived in the French capital between the wars, attracted by its cultural effervescence, and who contributed to the emergence of a new artistic scene. Fauvism followed in the footsteps of Impressionism and Pointillism, blurring forms in very bright colours, and its representatives in this book include Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse. Cubism, which arose from Picasso and Braque’s determination to represent reality from a multitude of angles at the same time, is represented by works by these artists together with those of Juan Gris, Natalia Goncharova, Delaunay and Léger. The School of Paris include Russian artists such as Marc Chagall and Chaïm Soutine, Bulgarians such as Jules Pascin, Italians such as Modigliani and Gino Severini, Spaniards such as María Blanchard, Dutch artists such as Kees Van Dongen and Japanese artists such as Leonard Foujita. From the Surrealist period and the years that followed, we find works by Man Ray, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Wilfredo Lam, Claude Cahun, Vera Pagava and Léonor Fini. Thus, the works collected in the book form an essential and unforgettable journey through one of the most fascinating periods in the history of art.