Gino Severini, Red Cross Train Passing a Village (Train de la Croix Rouge traversant un village), summer 1915 (detail). Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 116.2 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 44.944. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
A new exhibition devoted to modern art has opened at the Guggenheim in New York, titled The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection.
The exhibition, which focuses on the years 1910-1918, highlights just how active and pivotal this period was, as artists made their way towards abstraction in the light of World War I. The title itself makes reference to the Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group, which was founded by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, who made the prediction that a große Umwälzung (great upheaval) was upon the arts, that would radically challenge tradition.
The years leading up to, and during the First World War were a time of great productivity in the arts, and saw traditional modes of depiction and creation being left behind in the wake of the spread of a modern industrial age.
The Guggenheims founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, and his wife Irene Rothschild started to collect modern art, not long after the First World World War, after they became involved with German artist Hilla Rebay. Rebay was commissioned to paint Guggenheims portrait, but the relationship didn't stop there. Rebay took to guiding Guggenheim and Rothschild away from collecting the likes of the old masters and the French Barbizon school, and moving more towards collecting modern art.
In 1929 Guggenheim started to take a great deal more interest in the artists of his time and took to learning more about the motivations of artists that were active in the early part of the 20th century. As a result, Guggenheim collected the works of artists such as Robert Delaunay, Wassiliy Kandinsky and Albert Gleizes.
The Great Upheaval exhibition is arranged chronologically around the spiral of the Frank Lloyd-Wright building that houses the Guggenheim collection in New York, which aims to highlight the steps taken towards eventual abstraction. The exhbition runs until the 1st June, 2011 and full details are available on the
Guggenheim website.