Thoroughly Modern(ism)

[Photo provided by Oklahoma City Museum of Art © Photo CNAC/MNAM Dist. RMN - Philippe Migeat]

The Oklahoma City Museum of Modern Art will become a classroom for students of modernism during Matisse in His Time: Masterworks of Modernisn from the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Oklahoma City is the only place in North America that you can see this particular exhibit, which will provide 50 works spanning the scope of Henri Matisse’s career and 50 additional major works by Picasso, Renoir, André Derain, Georges Braque, Joan Miro and Amedeo Modigliani.

The exhibit, which is organized by Centre Pompidou, Paris (Europe’s leading museum of modern and contemporary art) and OKCMOA, will run from June 18 until Sept. 18. Members of the OKCMOA can experience an all-day member’s preview of the exhibit on Friday, June 17.

A primer for those who slept through art history class: Matisse (1869-1954) was a French artist regarded as a leading figure of modern art. Matisse was the leader of the Fauve (French for “wild beast”) movement, a critical observer of cubism and a contemporary and rival of Pablo Picasso. While he was also a draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor, he is known primarily as a painter.