MOMA LENDS EXHIBITION OF DRAWINGS TO PUSHKIN STATE MUSEUM OF FINE ART IN MOSCOW
First Significant Exhibition of Postwar American Art in Moscow
in Forty Years
The New York School: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art, Moscow
September 27-November 30, 1999
The New York School: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art––the most important exhibition of postwar American art to be shown in Moscow in forty years––will be on view at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art from September 27 through November 30. The show is traveling under the auspices of The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
“This exhibition continues our commitment to make postwar American art available to the Russian people through their outstanding museums. Earlier this year, The Museum of Modern Art lent three major Abstract Expressionist paintings to the Hermitage, in the first of a series of loans to that venerable institution. We will continue to seek ways to share our vast collection with our colleagues in Russia,” says Glenn Lowry, Director, The Museum of Modern Art.
“The end of the century inevitably forces us to evaluate the achievements of the passing century. Art of the New York School represents one of the brilliant pages of that history. Although the names of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem deKooning do not need introduction, the work of these artists is still little known to our public, and their works on paper are being exhibited in Russia for the first time. This exhibition represents a wonderful gift to the Moscow public,” says Dr. Irina Antonova, Director, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art.
The New York School: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art comprises 42 drawings from the museum’s collection by seminal artists such as Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock, as well as Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko. The New York School, the first internationally acclaimed American art movement, later came to be known as Abstract Expressionism.
While The New York School is the first MoMA exhibition to travel to the Pushkin, the two museums share an extensive history of loans of individual works. MoMA borrowed from the Pushkin a number of paintings, drawings, and photographs for the 1998 retrospective Aleksandr Rodchenko; as well as works for Picasso and Portraiture (1996) and Henri Matisse: A Retrospective (1992-93). MoMA lent a Marc Chagall painting to the Pushkin’s 100th anniversary exhibition (1998), and five works were lent to the exhibition Paul Cézanne and the Russian Avant-garde (1999), organized by the Pushkin and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Dr. Antonova became a corresponding member of the Museum’s International Council in 1998.
The last major exhibition of postwar American art in Moscow took place during a 1959 cultural exchange, when Soviet artworks were shown in New York and American exhibitions were on view in Moscow. Several museums and private collections lent works by Pollock, William Baziotes, Motherwell, and Arshile Gorky, among others. At that time, the American works were considered controversial not only in Russia, where Socialist Realism was at its height, but in Washington, where some officials of the U.S. government were convinced that abstract art represented only the political left.
By the 1950s, the mythic stature assigned to artists such as Pollock and Rothko contributed to the association of Abstract Expressionism with American individualism and the eventual shift from Paris to New York as the center of new art. The influence of Surrealism, introduced by European artists who had emigrated to the United States during World War II, can be detected in the works of the 1940s, with their similarity to automatic drawing and use of symbolic imagery.
The New York School was presented for the first time at The Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 1998, in conjunction with the highly acclaimed retrospective Jackson Pollock (September 17, 1998–January 12, 1999). Magdalena Dabrowski, Senior Curator, Department of Drawings, who organized the exhibition, writes, “The New York School represents this first seminal, or as it was often called, ‘heroic,’ moment in the development of post–World War II American art, where the aspirations of the American artists to create radical new artistic language culminated in pluralism of expression. This marked the triumph of American painting and made New York the main center of artistic creation for the decades to come.”
Chartered in 1953, The International Council comprises 200 individuals from 28 countries who support aspects of the Museum’s international activities, which are coordinated by MoMA’s International Program department. More than 260 exhibitions covering all areas of the modern visual arts have been circulated in Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, and Africa under Council auspices. In addition, exchanges of library materials and publications, educational programs, and professional assistance to foreign museums have been organized.
