One hundred years of modern art on display

“The Three Ages of Woman” by Gustav Klimt, along with a group of masterpieces, are on display at the Bund One Art Museum.

Entitled “100 Years of Modern Art: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art”, the exhibition is supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Italy in China, the Consulate General of Italy in Shanghai and the Italian Cultural Institute in Shanghai.

The exhibition of 57 original works, on loan from the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, offers visitors an overview of modern art from 1870 to 1970 through a collection of works representing several artistic currents – from impressionism to cubism, from abstraction to symbolism and from surrealism to futurism – and revealing renowned international artists such as Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Klimt (1862-1918) and Jackson Pollock (1912- 1956).

The visitor to the exhibition is led from one modernity to another along a multi-faceted route that winds through five routes in the rooms of the museum – Genre painting and portraiture, Symbol and feeling, Reality: subject and object, Geometry and abstractionism, Form and color of the sign. .

One of the highlights of “Symbol and Feeling” is Klimt’s “The Three Ages of Woman.” The female body is the main subject of the Austrian symbolist painter. This painting quickly arranges the newborn, a young mother and the senile body of an old woman in the same painting.

In fact, it is one of the approaches to symbolism where the “hidden” reading of the work is introduced by certain elements linked to the use of shapes and color. In fact, these artists had no interest in depicting external reality as it appears but wanted to convey an emotional and spiritual experience on canvas by striving to go beyond formal requirements.

For them, the world was no longer as the eye sees it but as the soul perceives it. The painting comes alive with personal visions that stimulate the expression of the viewer’s subconscious mind and the search for meanings related to the deepest facets of the human soul.

In the last section of Sign Shape and Color, the art of the second half of the 20th century is characterized by reflections strongly linked to the painted surface and the matrix of signs. Visitors get a quick overview of a range of art historical movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Informalism, Spatialism, Kinetic Art, Optical Art, and Conceptual Art.

Exhibition information:

Dates: until January 8, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Location: Bund One Art Museum

Address: 1 Zhongshan Rd E1

Tickets: 218 yuan (please make an appointment via WeChat account “东一美术馆”)