Art News

The Milwaukee Art Museum Presents "Impressionist Masterworks on Paper"

artwork: Pierre Auguste Renoir - "Bathers with Crab", circa 1890–99 - Oil on canvas - 21 1/2" x 25 3/4" - Collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. On view at the Milwaukee Art Museum in "Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper" until January 8th 2012.


Milwaukee, Wisconsin.- The Milwaukee Art Museum is proud to present “Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper” on view at the museum through January 8th 2012. Organized in conjunction with the Albertina in Vienna, “Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper” is the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the significance of drawing to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist avant-garde movements — and to the development of modern art. The exhibition makes its premiere in Milwaukee, presenting more than one hundred drawings, watercolors, and pastels by many of the greatest artists in the history of Western European art — Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas,  Pierre Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. These artists created drawings independently of painting, as they sought to create an art that more accurately represented their times. In the process, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists effectively elevated drawing in nineteenth-century France to a status equal with that of painting.

When the Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, the Museum won a gentlemen’s wager with the Carnegie Museum of Art – the loan of Renoir’s “Bathers with Crab” from their collection for its Impressionism exhibition. Of all the Impressionists, Pierre–Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) remained committed to the human figure when others turned to landscapes. And unlike Edgar Degas who shocked critics by painting prostitutes and milliners, Renoir painted the loveliest models in the most classical way. Throughout his long career, Renoir sought the right balance of dappling light and shade (as all good Impressionists were expected to do) and feathery brushwork, without sacrificing the contours that so attracted him to the female nude. Bathers is a beautiful example of the challenges and ultimate success Renoir had with painting nudes in the Impressionist manner.

artwork: Paul Gauguin - "Tahitian Woman", circa 1894 - Charcoal and pastel on paper, glued to yellow wove paper & mounted on grey millboard sheet - 54.9 x 49.5 cm. Collection of the Brooklyn Museum   -   On view at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

The Milwaukee Art Museum’s history began in 1882 when the Milwaukee Museum of Fine Arts was founded. The museum dissolved six years later. In 1888, the Milwaukee Art Association was created by a group of German panorama artists and local businessmen; its first home was the Layton Art Gallery. In 1911, the Milwaukee Art Institute, another building constructed to hold other exhibitions and collections, was completed. The institute was built right next to the Layton Art Gallery. Alfred George Pelikan, who received his Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) from Columbia University, was the Director of the Milwaukee Art Institute from 1926 to 1942. The Milwaukee Art Center (now the Milwaukee Art Museum) was formed when the Milwaukee Art Institute and Layton Art Gallery merged their collections in 1957 and moved into a three-story building underneath the Eero Saarinen-designed Milwaukee County War Memorial. The museum is home to over 25,000 works of art. Its permanent holdings contain an important collection of Old Masters and 19th-century and 20th-century artwork, as well as some of the nation’s best collections of German Expressionism, folk and Haitian art, American decorative arts, and post-1960 American art.

artwork: Vincent van Gogh - "The Oise at Auvers", 1890 - Pencil and gouache on paper sheet - 47.3 x 62.9 cm. Collection of the Tate, London.  -  On view at the Milwaukee Art Museum until January 8th 2012.

The museum holds a large number of works by Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as many works by the German Expressionist, Gabriele Munter. Other notable works in the collection includes Fauve paintings by Georges Braque and Maurice de Vlaminck, seminal Expressionist paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Vassily Kandinsky, and magnificent works by Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti. The MAM recently gained international recognition with the construction of the white concrete Quadracci Pavilion, designed by Santiago Calatrava (his first completed project in the United States), which opened on May 4, 2001. The pavilion was engineered by the Milwaukee-based engineering firm, Graef, while the construction manager was also Milwaukee-based, C.G. Schmidt. The structure contains a movable, wing-like brise soleil which opens up for a wingspan of 217 feet during the day, folding over the tall, arched structure at night or during inclement weather. The brise soleil has since become a symbol for the city of Milwaukee. In addition to a gallery devoted to temporary exhibits, the pavilion houses the museum’s store and its restaurant, Cafe Calatrava. The pavilion received the 2004 Outstanding Structure Award from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering. Visit the museum’s website at … http://mam.org