COPENHAGEN, DENMARK.- Statens Museum for Kunst presents French Master Drawings. From Manet and Degas to Matisse and Picasso, on view through October 8, 2006. This summer's exhibition at Statens Museum for Kunst offers a rare insight into the museum's rich collection of drawings and watercolours by French masters from the 19th and 20th centuries. Spanning the range from Ingres, Manet, Moreau, Toulouse-Lautrec and the emergent Impressionism in Degas, Cézanne and Gauguin to 20th century icons such as Matisse, Picasso, Picabia, and Giacometti, the exhibition provides a nuanced picture of one of the most intense and fast-paced epochs within art history. The exhibition presents 80 carefully selected works; pieces that are rarely on display because they are too fragile to withstand long-term exposure to light. The last time several of them saw the light of day, they attracted a lot of attention at the exhibition "Drawn Toward the Avant-Garde" that toured a number of museums in the USA in 2002-2003.

The Art Superpower of the World - From the Romantic era onwards to World War II, France was the main centre of avant-garde art in the world. The cultural openness and tolerance, the accelerating modernity of Paris, and the charms of the French provinces formed the perfect climate for the most experimental avant-garde artists. This enabled France to attract the greatest artistic talents in Europe, and the French artists themselves numbered some of the greatest figures within art history among their ranks. On the sidelines stood hordes of art critics and intellectuals capable of embracing and debating the multitude of artists and movements.

Between Ideals and Reality
The exhibition at Statens Museum for Kunst gives a summary of French-related art ranging from the soul-searching figurations of the Romantic period to the full-blown Modernism of the abstract movements just after World War II. It forms a narrative of 150 years of art that never fully grows roots and which, for that very reason, is saturated by an intensity and innovation without parallel. Throughout the display, the works appear to be part of a prolonged, almost fierce hunt for originality and momentum, an implacable urge to keep up with or, even better, to pre-empt and create the signs and shapes of the times.

The exhibits span an amazing range as regards subject matter and formal idioms even as they also present a clear picture of what happened within the arts during the 19th and 20th centuries. A period where the arts changed greatly, moving from a growing awareness of the modern condition around the Romantic era and the Barbizon School towards an increasing focus on the autonomous status of the arts and its devices in the abstract art of the 1940s and 1950s. An art which continuously alternated between depicting modern life in all its fluid, dynamic mutability and, on the other hand, retaining classical tendencies and concepts of an harmonious and unchanging reality in the midst of - or beyond - the visible world.

The generous contributors
Statens Museum for Kunst's excellent collection of drawings by French masters represents the latest addition to the Royal Collection of Prints and Drawings' rich collection of European art. It comprises more than 450 drawings and watercolours, and a selection of 80 particularly remarkable pieces is presented here. In this regard the museum is particularly indebted to the two Danish private collectors Johannes Rump (1861-1932) and Herbert Melbye (1898-1976); between them, they donated the majority of the many French works to the museum. The exhibition very much reflects the personal preferences of the two donors, albeit those preferences were in line with the predilection for originality and gravitas prevalent at the time. To supplement the significant donations the museum has on its own account acquired a number of important works by e.g. Millet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Picasso, Giacometti, and Vasarely. These works are also included in the exhibition.