The Impressionists, the Symbolists and the Avant-garde

120 masterpieces from the Belgrade National Museum

For the first time in Italy the chance to see an extraordinary collection from the Belgrade National Museum, and to see works not usually on view on the traditional exhibitions circuit.

There are more than a hundred and twenty major works at Villa Olmo from the collection of the Serbian Prince Paul Karadordevic, representing many currents of European art from period from the nineteenth to the twentieth century and up to the birth of modernity. 

The exhibition starts with the landscapes of Camille Corot and a Still Life with Cherries from  Eugène Boudin. The age of Impressionism is represented by some of the movement’s key figures such as Claude Monet and his famous cathedrals paintings of  Rouen, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro. The essential stylistic elements of Impressionism are seen in the work of Paul Gauguin, of which the Belgrade Museum has some important examples, including three works painted in Tahiti to which the artist travelled in 1891, by Toulouse Lautrec and by Paul Signac. The change in direction from the impressionist poetic towards that of the Avant-garde is apparent in the Symbolist movement, represented here by such major artists as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon. 

A walk through the exhibition then leads to the artistic developments of the twentieth century and the fauvist movement and Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Georges Rouault. Cubism is represented by Picasso’s masterpiece, Woman’s head while the Nabis movement features works of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Villard. The paintings of Marc Chagall and Kees Van Dongen are testament to the stylistic quest of the Paris School. The exhibition comes to an ideal conclusion with two artists who in their different ways led the artist into new forms of expression, namely Piet Mondrian and Vassily Kandinsky.