Exhibition ‘Monet and Abstraction’ in Madrid

Claude Monet, Wisteria, 1917-1920. Oil on canvas (100 x 300 cm). © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. On display at the Fundación Caja Madrid, as part of Monet and Abstraction.

The Spanish Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in collaboration with the Fundación Caja Madrid, is currently hosting an exhibition of a selection of Claude Monet’s paintings that presents an innovative perspective. ‘Monet and Abstraction‘ demonstrates Claude Monet’s influence on the development of abstraction in in Western art during the second half of the 20th century.

The exhibition aims to show how Claude Monet has come to occupy a fundamental role in the history of modern, Western art. In the first half of the 20th century the new avant-garde movements prevailed and as a result Monet’s work, and that of most of other Impressionist painters, was considered out of date and was consequently forgotten. The Madrid exhibition shows how, around the mid 20th century, a generation of European and American abstract artists rediscovered Monet’s paintings. The emphasis on paint and its application in his paintings, his loose brushstroke and sketchy forms were greatly admired by the Abstract Expressionists in the US and those following European Informalism. As a result, Monet assumed the status of undisputed prophet of material-based trends within the abstraction movement.

More than 100 works have been assembled for this ground breaking exhibition, including paintings by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Adolph Gottlieb, André Masson, Philip Guston and Gerhard Richter. Their paintings are hung alongside those of Monet’s, revealing numerous connections. Exhibiting Monet’s painting in this way allows for an appreciation of the important influence that Monet had on the development of certain aspects of abstraction in Western art in the second half of the 20th century.

Monet and Abstraction opened in Madrid yesterday, 23 February 2010, and will be open until 30 May 2010. From there the exhibition will move to the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris for a summer 2010 showing.

An untitled work by Mark Rothko (left) and Claude Monet’s Marine, effect de nuit (right), at the Monet and Abstraction exhibition, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza & Fundación Caja Madrid 23 February – 30 May 2010, Madrid © Photograph REUTERS/Andreas Comas.