PARIS.- Similar to some of the largest private European collections from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the Alicia Koplowitz Collection – Grupo Omega Capital is remarkable for its broad range and the impeccable taste of its owner. Devoted to antique, modern and contemporary art, this collections bears witness to Alicia Koplowitz’s refined taste and her keen eye. Each new acquisition finds its place in this collection, like the missing piece of a puzzle that brings meaning and splendour to the whole.

This exhibition takes us on a very personal journey and is presented as a chronological voyage through the collection, ranging from 16th-century Spanish painting to contemporary artworks, all handpicked by Alicia Koplowitz herself.

Room 1: Zurbarán, Goya… Spain in the Golden Age
The first room presents works by some of the leading Spanish artists from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Each work, in their own distinctive fashion, may be said to capture the essence of a Spanish culture that is unique but little known.

The exhibition opens with the delicate Pilgrim Virgin and Madonna with Hat also known as the Gypsy Madonna by ‘The Divine’ Morales (1509–1586). A second image expressing the discreet yet tender affection of the Virgin Mary towards the Christ Child can be seen in Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664).

Visitors are then drawn to the Portrait of Doña Ana de Velasco y Girón, Duchess of Braganza. The masterful skill of Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1553-1608), the official painter of Philip II and Philip III, can be seen in this magnificent court portrait commissioned by the Duke of Frías before his daughter’s marriage. The artist’s exceptional mastery in the rendering of the clothing, particularly the lace collar, highlights the political and social importance of the model, conscious of her status and noble destiny by means of her forthcoming union. The special attention paid to the facial expression allows the artist to reveal something of the personality of this beautiful young woman, and the emotions she must have felt before leaving her family for another. Of all the portraits executed during the Spanish Golden Age, this is undoubtedly one of the most moving.

Goya’s works represent several facets of Enlightenment Spain and are one of the finest ensembles in the Alicia Koplowitz Collection - Grupo Omega Capital. The painting Hercules and Omphale is an unusual piece in Goya’s overall oeuvre and symbolizes the submission of male strength to feminine beauty and intelligence. His Attack on a Coach is a surprising work: in an elegant, French-style landscape, in which the spectator may be expecting to find a gallant scene, reflecting the tastes of the day, he instead discovers a terrible and violent scene. The collection also houses the small Portrait of the Countess de Haro, daughter of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, on the eve of her wedding. A fragile, sensitive young woman, one can imagine her noble and privileged lifestyle. However despite her status, the subject would die the year following the execution of this painting.

Room 2: Tiepolo, Canaletto, Guardi … The Glories of Italy
In the second room visitors can admire a stunning collection of works by Italian painters who were appreciated, before Alicia Koplowitz’s time, by some of the leading Spanish collectors of the 18th century. Many Italian artists worked frequently in Spain, under the auspices of the royal family, such as Tiepolo and Antonio Joli.

Visitors can observe the differences between those works executed by Italian painters and those done by Italian painters working in Spain. The remarkable vedute painted by Canaletto (1697-1768) and the Venetian capriccios by Guardi (1712-1793) may be compared with the two admirable views of Madrid painted by Antonio Joli (1700-1777), taken from the collection of the House of Alba.

Four portraits painted by Pietro Antonio Rotari (1707-1762) offer a striking counterpoint to these landscapes. The artist captures the personality of each of his models, some dressed in rather ordinary clothing, others more opulent, but all with a seductive gaze. These intimate portraits of young women evoke Italian sensuality, French elegance and depict Russian women, through real and imagined models. The portraits truly capture the spirit of the eighteenth century.

Also to be seen in this room are graphic artworks by the Tiepolo family, who settled in Madrid in 1762 where Giambattista (1696-1770), the father, had been asked by King Charles III of Spain to create the fresco of The Apotheosis of Spain for the royal palace. From the finesse of drawings by Giambattista and Giandomenico (1727-1804), also executed in Spain, visitors can admire the vibrant colours of Lorenzo’s compositions (1736-1776). These two pastels depict ordinary, working-class figures of Madrid, sellers of oranges or vegetables and other majos. The works on display in this room are those of artists who made a name for themselves in the history of Spanish art and who were appreciated by the Spanish public and collectors alike. They also attest to the cultural exchanges and influences that existed between Italy and Spain.

Room 3: Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin … The Dawn of Modernity
In the third room, we travel from Spain and the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries into the modern age, and the artistic vitality that characterized the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Alicia Koplowitz has managed to acquire a masterpiece by some of the leading figures of Modernity, resulting in a rather remarkable ensemble.

This section opens with Vase with Carnations by Van Gogh (1853-1890), one of the artist’s later artworks. The painting’s force lies in its off-centre, quasi-unharmonious composition, and its extensive use of the impasto technique. Van Gogh succeeds in infusing the still life with a palpable feeling of vitality.

The evocative landscape Women on the Banks of the River painted by Gauguin (1848-1903) in 1892, during his first voyage to Polynesia, also appears to hum with vitality. The nature depicted here is lush, mysterious and enigmatic, like the woman at the centre of the painting, who is both radiant and absent.

An intimate yet moving atmosphere is conveyed by the surprising Young Girl Reading by Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). This depiction of the artist’s young neighbour is an example of the psychological depth which Toulouse-Lautrec added to his painting work and bears witness to the tender admiration he felt for his model. The young woman is captured in the privacy of her own home, framed from the waist up, simply dressed in white clothing, with her hair loose. Through her focused and pensive attitude, she seems to ignore the painter’s gaze who nevertheless attempts to capture the intimacy of her private life. The daring composition and use of vibrant complementary colours provide this portrait with a rare intensity.

The singularity of the feminine universe is also at work in the watercolour and wash work by Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Woman in a Blue Dress from 1911 does not have the sharp lines that tend to characterize Schiele’s erotic drawings and self-portraits. Here, the female figure provides an opportunity for the artist to ‘draw in colour’ in a quick and expressive fashion.

Room 4: Picasso, Gris … Spanish Modernism
Faithful to her roots, Alicia Koplowitz has always been attached to the work of the Spanish Masters, whether these are older figures like Zurbarán or Goya, or more modern and contemporary artists.

Unsurprisingly, Picasso (1881-1973) holds an important place in this exceptional ensemble, with three of his works presented in the exhibition. In the small Portrait of a Young Man from 1900, Picasso’s skill is already apparent, evident through his remarkable mastery of line and colour. In Semi Nude with Jug from 1906, painted in Gosol, in the Catalan countryside, Picasso makes use of the rose and ochre tones characteristic of his rose period. However, the painting may be said to contain the seeds of new elements, attesting to the unlimited inventiveness of the young artist. Lost in her thoughts, the monumental figure of Woman’s Head and Hand, dating from 1921, was painted during the artist’s neoclassical period: here greater emphasis is given to the line and Picasso fashions the volumes in such a way as to create a portrait that conveys a sense of equilibrium and interiority, contrasting with his work from the Cubist period.

The evolution in Picasso’s style is contrasted with a handsome Cubist still life by Juan Gris (1887-1927), dating from 1917. A friend and rival of Picasso’s, Gris was, according to Salvador Dalí ‘the greatest of the Cubist painters […], whose paintings were always technically accomplished and perfectly homogenous’. This may be seen here in Violin and Newspaper, where the contrasting planes fail to interfere with the readability of the composition.

Room 5: Van Dongen, Modigliani, de Staël … Painting in Paris
The layout of the artworks in this room may be said to reflect the sophisticated yet audacious tastes of Alicia Koplowitz and the conversation she likes to create, down through the centuries, between ancient sculptures and modern paintings. In this room, a particular focus is given to the works of Van Dongen (1877-1968), Modigliani (1884-1920) and de Staël (1914-1955) all exhibited here, who embody the different avant-garde movements that flourished in Paris during the first half of the 20th century.

Painted in 1906, the Woman in a Large Hat by Van Dongen combines a Fauvist palette with precise brushstrokes. The model, whose nudity is made even more provocative through the red lipstick and accessories, looks indifferently at the spectator. Standing out from the dark red background, the woman depicted here is both femme fatale and haughty idol.

The gaze of the Red-Headed Woman wearing a Pendant (1918) by Modigliani attracts the visitor’s gaze just as much, but here, a profound sense of melancholy is conveyed, accentuated by the lassitude of the model. This woman, whose flame-coloured hair stands out from the vibrant grey background, is no less mysterious or seductive.

While Nicolas de Staël also executed portraits, he abandoned figurative painting in 1942, moving towards the free expression of colour and form, often geometric shapes, surrounded by black outlines. However, it was above all the artist’s exploration of material, the superposition of colours and paint, which provided his Compositions, painted at the end of the 1940s, with the full force of their expressive power.

Rooms 6 & 7: Gonzalez, Rothko, Tàpies, de Kooning … International Abstraction
If the selection of ancient and modern art is remarkable, the Alicia Koplowitz Collection - Grupo Omega Capital also boasts an extensive collection of contemporary artworks from the second half of the 20th century, both Spanish and international. Faithful to the eclectic spirit of Alicia Koplowitz and her penchant for contemporary sculpture, the last section of the exhibition generates a dialogue between the works of the greatest artists of the last sixty years, in a subtle play of echoes and contrasts.

Whether paintings or sculptures, the works in rooms 6 and 7 stand out for their material exploration. In the figurative vein, artists pursue the same quest for an idealized beauty, which is expressed in a variety of ways. Using the impasto technique, Antonio López García (1936) captures the features of his wife Mari in a portrait reminiscent of Renaissance works. In a similar quest for pure lines, Julio González (1876-1942) provides his Feminine Bust in bronze with a smooth, gentle appearance, evocative of Greek statuary.

González’s formal research finds its full expression in his iron sculptures however, a material that offers him new technical and stylistic possibilities. Daphne, a unique and monumental iron sculpture from 1937, is an emblematic example of his work that draws its inspiration from Cubist sculpture, but to which he adds his own very personal interpretation. To evoke the nymph’s metamorphosis into a laurel tree so as to escape Apollo’s advances, González radically pares down reality to its essential elements. The artist had a significant impact on other sculptors working in the medium of iron, notably David Smith (1906-1965), whose Construction with Forged Neck from 1955 can also be seen here.

By the mid-1950s, Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012) began to explore and experiment with different artistic materials, combining traditional materials like oil paint with sand, earth and marble dust. On his canvases, marked with scratches and lacerations, the material is at work, indeed, becomes the work, as may be seen here in the painting Parallels (1962).

If the expressiveness of Tàpies’s canvases is due to their violent plastic vocabulary, it is by means of colour that the American Abstract Expressionists give their works their force. Again, techniques and languages vary: Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) practiced Action Painting to create a network of complex lines in his painting Untitled IV, while Mark Rothko (1903-1970) worked with flat surfaces of bright colours, in a style known as Color Field Painting. In his No. 6 (Yellow, White, Blue over Yellow on Gray), the colours bleed into each other, providing his work with a contemplative dimension.

Room 8: Giacometti, Freud, Bourgeois, Barceló … The exploration of materials
The last room of the exhibition focuses on artistic expression, through the scope of material and figurative exploration. The softness of Feuille (Leaf) by Germaine Richier (1902-1959) spawned the angular lines of Venice Woman I by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) for the French Pavilion at the 1956 Venice Biennale. Strong and fragile, archaic and modern, this bronze sculpture strikes spectators by the force of its enigmatic presence.

Just as enigmatic is Girl in a Fur Coat by Lucian Freud (1922-2011). Painted in hues of grey, white, yellow and pink, this portrait attests to the violence exerted by the painter’s gaze, and subsequently by the spectator, on its model. The artist scrutinizes with a particular acuity this woman who turns away from his gaze, so that the spectator is uncertain whether she is indifferent or disdainful. The thick texture, characteristic of the artist, captures the contours of the face, as if matter were transformed into flesh under the painter’s brush.

Like the works of Lucian Freud, those of Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) also inspire a certain malaise. Beginning in the 1990s, she created an ambivalent figure that would recur throughout her work: the Spider (Spider III, 1998). For the artist, the spider is a reassuring image that reminds her of her mother, to whom she was very close. However, she seems to ignore that this same figure can provoke a sense of anxiety in certain spectators. For Bourgeois, it is a question of transforming childish fears, turning anxiety into a form of aesthetic pleasure.

The last part of the exhibition is devoted to two monumental paintings by the artist Miquel Barceló (1957), one of the key figures of contemporary Spanish art. Influenced by the American Abstract Expressionists like de Kooning, his work has also been profoundly affected by his travels to Africa in 1988. Barceló returned there in 1990-1991, visiting the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, etc. Enriched by this experience, he painted Yellow Lake (1990) and Kula Be Ba Kan (1991), in which he gives free rein to a passionate material exploration that prevails over the subject matter itself.

It is this interest in the plasticity of forms that provides such a unique identity to this selection of paintings and sculptures, and to the Alicia Koplowitz Collection - Grupo Omega Capital as a whole.