There is so much to see, to discover and to rediscover! We regularly visit the permanent collection of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
The latter is offering a new presentation of its collections, entitled "La vie moderne", allowing us to revisit a century of art history through major works. The tour is also inspired by the major stages in the construction of the building that houses it, and by the major donations that have enriched the collection to date.
In May 1937, Paris inaugurated the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in Modern Life and the museum opened its doors for the first time in a wing of the Palais de Tokyo. Taking this founding moment as its starting point, the exhibition unfolds from the monumental rooms where the Delaunay Rhythms are presented, an evocation of this new setting of "modern life" that accompanied the first decades of the 20th century. It then develops through a thematic presentation, around the main masterpieces that entered the collections thanks to the generosity of major donors (Vollard in 1937, Girardin in 1953, Amos in 1955, Henry-Thomas in 1976, 1984, 1986). Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Derain, Dufy, Freundlich, Léger, Buffet, Rouault, Bonnard, Vuillard, Fautrier, Picabia, Ernst, de Chirico and many others are represented. Echoing the artistic movements that have shaped the history of art since Fauvism and Cubism, the focus is on both Surrealism and Realism, as well as on Abstraction and the new post-war currents that flourished in Paris, which became the "capital of modern art".
The exhibition continues with the new paths opened up by artists in the last decades of the 20th century, as they sought to definitively bridge the gap between art and life, around the Fluxus movement and the figure of Beuys, questioning the place and role of the artist in society. Thanks to the Werner donation, a sequence is dedicated to German artists confronted with the same issues in their country. The presentation continues with radical forms of abstraction and the new challenges of contemporary painting, which put the artistic gesture and pictorial creation at the turn of the 21st century into perspective. The tour ends with the latest contemporary acquisitions, which contribute to the development of a new idea of modernity, a reflection of our current societies.