The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905, has grown to become the leading museum in the southeastern United States housing more than 12,000 works in its permanent collection and boasting the title of being among the world's most-visited museums. Located in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia, its collection is known for including extensive pieces of 19th and 20th century American art, African art, modern and contemporary art, and has included a dedication to representing both Southern folk and self-taught artists. The High Museum has won awards for its strikingly contemporary architectural design which was overseen by Prtizker Prize winner Richard Meier in 1983, and Renzo Piano in 2002.
Beginning in October of 2011 and running through the end of April 2012, the High Museum is exclusively exhibiting around 100 pieces of art from some of history’s most notable artists including Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, and Warhol, among several others. The event is titled “Picasso to Warhol,” features fourteen modern masters and will be one of the largest southeastern shows to date that showcases modern art of such caliber. This particular grouping was chosen to represent the unconventional ways in which these artists approached traditional subjects such as still life, landscape, and figure. Of the artists chosen for the exhibit, the High Museum has stated “By inventing radically new modes of expression from Cubism to abstraction to the mobile; and by exploiting alternative media such as film, collage, and silkscreen, these artists forever changed the way we see and understand art.”
While the bigger names, Picasso and Warhol, have lent their names to the exhibition’s title, their celebrity sheds light on the potentially lesser known artists who have also greatly impacted the art world. Among these are Louise Bourgeois, an American artist who began her career as a painter but transitioned to erotic, emotionally charged mixed-media pieces (right), and Romanian born Constantin Brancusi who is said to have “changed the character of modern sculpture in the first half of the twentieth century.”
“Picasso to Warhol” is the second large scale exhibit the High Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York have collaborated on. This showing of artistic genius is an unprecedented event that should not be missed. For ticket information visit High.org
