OTTAWA.- Power, pathos, beauty and destructive force are all words that characterize the National Gallery of Canada’s (NGC) summer exhibition, The 1930’s: The Making of “The New Man.” Presented by the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, this rich and thought-provoking exhibition comprises 206 works, created by some the most celebrated artists of the 20th century.
Opening to the public on June 6, it will be on view exclusively at the NGC until September 7, 2008. Many of the works featured have rarely been on public display and it is the first exhibition to explore the link between art and biology during the turbulent times of the 1930s. For more detailed information, please visit the exhibition’s site at www.gallery.ca/1930.
The 1930’s: The Making of “The New Man” brings together paintings, sculptures, and photographs by 103 European and North American artists including Jean Arp, Vassily Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalί, Alberto Giacometti, August Sander, Diego Rivera, Alex Colville, Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Ivan Albright and Walker Evans. These works are grouped together under nine themes: Genesis, Convulsive Beauty, “The Will to Power,” The Making of “The New Man”, Mother Earth, The Appeal of Classicism, “Faces of our Time,” “Crowds and Power,” and The Charnel House.
Over 95% of the works presented in this exhibition are loans secured from some of the most prestigious public and private collections in Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Spain, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the United States and Canada.
The organizing committee was chaired by NGC Director, Mr. Pierre Théberge. Its members comprised curators from internationally recognized institutions: Jean Clair, Commissaire of the exhibition and former director of the Musée Picasso, Paris; Didier Ottinger, Senior Curator of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou; Constance Naubert-Riser, Honorary Professor of Art History at the Université de Montréal, Ann Thomas, Curator of Photographs at the NGC, and Mayo Graham, Director of National Outreach and International Relations at the NGC.
