Pivotal: Drawings And Works on Paper From Artists of the XXth Century Avant-Garde

Hans Bellmer, André Breton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Serge Charchoune, Paul Citroen, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp, Max Ernst, Albert Gleizes, Arshile Gorky, Paul Joostens, On Kawara, Edward Kienholz, Frantisek Kupka, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Wolfgang Paalen, Francis Picabia, Ed Ruscha, Kurt Schwitters, Tom Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Tom Wesselmann, Adolf Wolfli

Galerie 1900-2000 is pleased to begin our 2024 exhibition program with a group show of works on paper, organized in conjunction with Master Drawings New York.

Pivotal features works on paper by the protagonists of some of the most significant twentieth-century avant-garde art movements, Dada, Surrealism, Art Brut, as well as representations from the early Pop and Conceptual Art periods.

Selected artworks such as L’Enfer (above) foretell the future of Francis Picabia's bodies of work that would later come to be. Picabia’s painting on paper is one of the first depictions of his “monsters;” the ghostly faces with many eyes and the dashed lines are recurrent motifs found in this body of work.

Works on paper can indicate a pivotal moment in an artist’s career. A 1915 drawing by the American Dada artist Man Ray titled Exhibition at the Daniel Gallery (left) is an example of this. The ink drawing announces the artist's first solo exhibition with the historic New York gallery. It was during this time that Man Ray's work began to be shown in the context of his progressive American and European contemporaries with established reputations. With the need to manage his ever-expanding inventory, Man Ray began to use the camera as a tool for documenting his artworks. This archival solution quickly gave way to further experimentation with the camera as an artistic tool and ultimately his creation of the Rayograph.