Chagall, Picasso, Mondrian and others: Migrants in Paris

In the early 20th century, Paris attracted artists from around the globe. The city offers them freedom and opportunities. Chagall, Picasso and Mondrian embarked on their careers in Paris. But their fame overshadows the fact that although all three were from different backgrounds, Chagall, Picasso and Mondrian were migrants. And, despite their success, often faced hardships because they were not French nationals. This publication also sheds light on artists who garnered less fame during their sojourn in the French capital. Like Joaquín Torres-García, who traveled form Uruguay to Europe, founded an artists’ group and journal in Paris, and eventually returned to Uruguay. There, he promoted the development of Latin-American art. Or Nicolaas Warb, whose name was actually Fine Warburg, to be taken seriously by French critics, assumed a less German-sounding male pseudonym.

There is Baya, who later in life will blossom as one of Algeria's most important artists but who, until today, was best known as the 16-year-old orphan girl whom Picasso and André Breton took under their wing. And there is the Afro-Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam, who writes to his wife from Paris in 1946 that he feels like a phony there, like some exotic thing, like some Oceanic statue confined to a sterile existence, a curiosity in a museum. These are the stories told in the exhibition Chagall, Picasso, Mondrian and others: Migrant Artists in Paris and encapsulated in this catalog with a selection of a number of intriguing works. Poet Radna Fabias also wrote a new poem, especially for this publication.

Chagall, Picasso, Mondrian and others: Migrant Artists in Paris, designed by Hilde and Janna Meeus, 72 pages, 21 x 17 cm, paperback with a ring binder, ISBN English: 978-90-5006-210-7.

Available in Dutch and English, €14,95 in the museumshop.