During the 19th century Paris became the centre of a powerful French school of painting and sculpture, culminating in the dazzling innovation of impressionism.
The dawning of the 20th century brought with it colourful crowds of artists from around the world. The city became a crucible for some of the principal innovations of modern art – notably fauvism, cubism, abstract art and surrealism.
We are here to curate authentic connections between you and those artists who played, loved, fought, drank and, more than anything, created true expression in 20th-century Paris and beyond.
PABLO PICASSO
(1881 - 1973)
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he became the 'rock star' of Modern Art, pioneering cubism, surrealism, expressionism and collage. Over his long career, he created more than 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, theatre sets and costumes.
From the mid-1940s, Picasso worked extensively with Atelier Mourlot in Paris, creating more than 400 lithographs and exhibition posters. His most trusted printer was Henri Deschamps, with whom he collaborated closely from 1945 until he died in 1973.
MARC CHAGALL
(1887–1985)
Marc Chagall was a Russian-French-Jewish painter, illustrator and stage designer and one of the 20th century's most extraordinary colourists. In 1954, Pablo Picasso remarked, 'When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter alive who truly understands what colour really is.'
Unlike most printmakers, who began with a black outline and added colour carefully in layers, Chagall flooded his lithographs with pigment, building plate upon plate until they glowed with the richness of painting. The result feels less like print and more like an original.
By the late 1940s, after revolution, exile and two world wars, Chagall returned to Paris and began experimenting at Atelier Mourlot. He later described the lithographic stone as a talisman capable of holding his joys and sorrows – lovers, flowers, animals and prophets – all the poetry of his life.
Henri Matisse
(1896-1954)
Henri Matisse, the French artist, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor and painter, was one of the undisputed masters and most influential figures of 20th-century art. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and would soon become a leading figure of the Fauvist movement.
He was known for his brilliant use of colour, often inspired by the vibrancy of the French Riviera, and his fluid, original draughtsmanship. Alongside Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, he helped revolutionise the art world in the 1900s.
Over more than 60 years, his vast output included painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic works (etchings, linocuts, aquatints), paper cut-outs and book illustrations.
Lithography and the cut-outs
Matisse's collaboration with Atelier Mourlot was crucial in his later years. Working closely with the master printer, he created some of his most celebrated works.
Fernand Léger
(1881 - 1955)
Fernand Léger was one of the great innovators of twentieth-century art – a painter, sculptor, muralist, ceramicist, filmmaker and influential teacher. After an initially unsuccessful attempt to enter the École des Beaux-Arts, he went on to study both there and at the Académie Julian in Paris. Early inspiration came from Cézanne, but by 1909, living in Montparnasse among artists such as Chagall and Delaunay, Léger was absorbing the radical language of Cubism pioneered by Picasso and Braque.
In 1911, he emerged as one of the first artists to present Cubism publicly at the Salon des Indépendants. Critics coined the term 'Tubism' to describe his distinctive variation on the movement, characterised by bold cylindrical forms and a powerful sense of structure.
The experience of active service during the First World War profoundly affected Léger's artistic vision, introducing mechanical and geometric forms into his work.
GRAHAM SUTHERLAND
(1903 - 1980)
Graham Sutherland was a British artist. His career began in the 1920s and 30s as a printmaker, producing etchings and lithographs of dark, romantic landscapes. Working in print gave him a strong understanding of structure, rhythm and composition, skills that carried through when he turned to watercolour and, by the 1940s, to oil painting. The landscapes he painted on the Pembrokeshire coast — organic, intense and unmistakably personal — marked a turning point in British modern art and established his reputation.
After the Second World War, France became increasingly important to his life and work. In 1955, Sutherland and his wife Kathleen bought Tempe à Pailla in Menton, a house designed by the modernist architect Eileen Gray. The Mediterranean light and landscape influenced his use of colour and space, bringing a subtle shift in his work.
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