Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper at the A.I.C.

Matisse 1906


This show
is a nice opportunity
to compare Modern with Contemporary
(unless, like myself, you'd just as soon ignore the latter)


I'm not especially thrilled with the above,
but
I sympathize with the artist
needing to add a strip to the top of his sheet
after realizing that
he began the figure too high on the page.





Ludwig Meidner, 1913

Nightmarish ?
Yes... but also beautiful





Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1905



Ah.. for the life of a wild, young artist.
This is presumably a scene from his studio in Dresden
where he and his friends founded "Die Brücke"





Lovis Corinth, Self Portrait , 1924


Something of an anomaly,
Corinth is from an earlier generation (b. 1858),
but here,
in the last year of his life,
we find him
as a full blown expressionist.









Oscar Kokoschka, Portrait of Alma Mahler, 1913



Another relic
of the famous romance
between a young artist
and the widow of Gustav Mahler.

There's something so...
damp
about it.






Kurt Schwitters 1942


There seems to be a story here.
With a little modification,
it could be one of the side panels
done by Duccio.


Which is why I like these
early 20th C. Expressionists,
even if there's a straight
(and descending)
line
from their artworld celebration of miserable self
to the contemporary art
that followed them.