Cantor Arts Center Announces European Masterworks Exhibition; West Coast Premiere Draws Record Attendance.

News Editors/Arts Writers

STANFORD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 23, 2001

An exhibition of 58 masterworks of late 18th- to early 20th-century European painting and sculpture has attracted record crowds since its July 11 opening at Stanford University's Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts. The exhibition brings great names of art history -- Degas, Cezanne, Corot, Gauguin, Manet, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Rodin, Seurat and more -- to the Bay Area for its West Coast premiere and only California showing. The exhibition's presentation at Stanford, which continues through Sept. 23, is made possible by a generous grant from Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown.

Entitled Corot to Picasso: European Masterworks from the Smith College Museum of Art, the exhibition is drawn from one of the nation's foremost teaching collections. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, organized Corot to Picasso from the nearly 25,000 artworks collected by the college over its 126-year history. While the museum is closed for expansion in 2001 and 2002, the exhibition will travel to major museums across the U.S.

Free to the public at the Cantor Arts Center, Corot to Picasso features a jewel-like study by Georges Seurat for A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Oil paintings by Impressionist Claude Monet include two landscapes and a view of the Rouen Cathedral. Three works by Pablo Picasso indicate the range of his art: a Blue Period painting, a classical nude and a Cubist masterpiece, considered one of the icons of 20th-century art.

The exhibition, curated at Stanford by the Cantor Arts Center's Chief Curator Bernard Barryte, is particularly rich in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. In addition to the paintings by Monet and Seurat, there are canvases by Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Renoir, Henri Fantin-Latour, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cezanne, Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin.

Other 19th-century artistic traditions include the Barbizon School, with landscapes by Jean Francois Millet, Theodore Rousseau, Diaz de la Pena and Camille Corot. Paintings by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson and by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres show Neo-classicism's emphasis on line and sculptural quality. One canvas by Theodore Chasseriau and another attributed to Eugene Delacroix demonstrate the sweep and dash of the romantic movement. Sculptures by Degas, Auguste Rodin, Constantin Meunier, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse round out the display of 19th-century masters.

In addition to the paintings by Picasso, innovations of the early 20th century are illustrated in works by Henri Rousseau, Pierre Bonnard, Wassily Kandinsky, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, and Vanessa Bell. The great German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is represented by the large, vibrantly-colored painting of Dodo and her Brother (1908-20).

Soon after its 1875 founding, Smith College began emphasizing the study of art. "Unfinished" works were acquired because they allow immediate insight into the working methods of the masters. These include two monumental paintings in the exhibition. One by Gustave Courbet, once titled Preparation of the Bride (circa 1850-55), was originally intended to portray a more somber subject. The second is Degas's history painting Jephthah's Daughter (1859-60). In addition, the exhibition's superb Paul Cezanne painting La Route Tournante a la Roche Guyon shows the pencil drawing below the painted composition.

Docents provide free public tours of Corot to Picasso on Thursdays at 12:15 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tours do not require a reservation for groups of 10 or fewer; call 650-723-3469 to request tours for larger groups. The Center is open Wednesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday until 8 p.m. Admission is free. Call 650-723-4177 or visit the Center's web site at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/ccva/ for directions, parking instructions, and information about events, other free tours, and exhibitions in the Center's 23 other galleries.

Smith College, an undergraduate liberal arts college founded in 1875, began collecting art in 1879. The museum's first director focused collecting on "the Development of Modern Art," and Smith College Museum of Art now owns nearly 25,000 objects. After its Stanford venue, the exhibition continues to the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (11/12/01- 1/20/02); the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2/16/02-5/1/02); and the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington (6/20/02- 9/5/02).