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Born in 19th-century Japan, the painter Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) spent about half of his 80 some years in France. On the 50th anniversary of his death, a grand retrospective surveying Foujita’s entire career will be held. An exhibition rich with highlights, it will feature his signature “milky white nudes” along with pieces never shown in Japan.
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Edvard Munch (1863-1944)—the great modern painter and creator of The Scream, one of the world’s best-known paintings. The oil and tempera version of The Scream now in the Munch Museum collection—one of several versions by Munch—will make its long-awaited first appearance in Japan.
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Whether shared picnic boxes or everyday lunch boxes, bento holds deep significance in our lives in Japan. This exhibition looks at Japan’s unique culture of “bento” and “eating” from the perspective of communication design, through works by contemporary artists. A see, hear, touch, and participate exhibition, fun for families and adults too.
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This project, operated in conjunction with Tokyo University of the Arts, is aimed at fostering an active, open art community with the Museum as a central stage. The project is led by art communicators (“Tobira”), who are given responsibility for growing a community.
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A program linking all 9 cultural facilities in Ueno Park to support children in their "museum debut." The program provides a "flat" learning environment where adults and children learn on an equal basis. Through experiences of seeing, listening, and speaking, children come to understand the fun and excitement of visiting an art museum.
Claude Lorrain
The Rape of Europe
1655, Oil on canvas
© The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
In the center foreground, a scene from a Greek myth unfolds. Zeus, enamored of the Phoenician queen, Europa, appears to her as a white bull as she picks flowers with her helpers. In contrast with the violent scene—Zeus abducting Europa—a beautiful natural landscape fills the background. The artist, minutely depicting windswept waves, large trees, and ships on the sea, has produced an ideal landscape. Landscapes were painted as backgrounds to stories from myth and the Bible until around the 17th century.
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Hubert Robert
Temple Surrounded by Water
1780s, Oil on canvas
© The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Depicted is a temple of Poseidon standing amid the ruins of the ancient Greco-Roman city of Paestum, visited by Robert in 1760. The lively activity of people in the foreground heightens the serenity of the tall ancient structure. Historical materials of the 18th century show the artist to have exaggerated the temple’s crumbling condition. When this work was painted, grand tours of Italy by aristocrats and artists from other nations were at peak popularity. Countless viewers were enthralled by the splendor of Robert’s imaginatively enhanced ruins.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir
In the Garden, under the Trees of the Moulin de la Galette
1876, Oil on canvas
© The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
After its mid-19th century renovation by Hausmann, Paris was reborn as a modern city. Numerous artists produced paintings of the city’s new townscapes and the everyday lives of its residents. Portrayed here are five men and a woman conversing enjoyably under the shade of trees, apart from the din. Their figures, like the background trees, are depicted with a gentle, thoughtful brush, and the gathering’s happy mood is clearly felt. According to an inscription on the work’s backside, the woman facing away from us is Renoir’s favorite model, Nini, while the man visible just beyond her is the artist Manet.
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Claude Monet
White Water Lilies
1899, Oil on canvas
© The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
In 1893, ten years after moving to Giverny, Monet purchased the land adjacent to his house and created a garden expressing his ideal of nature. Using fresh colors, primarily greens, he painted this landscape showing light at play on water in a pond encompassed by lush banks. From 1899 to 1900, Monet produced some 18 paintings of the pond with its Japanese bridge, this work among them. He continued to paint water lilies until his death in 1926.
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André Derain
Drying the Sails
1905, Oil on canvas
© The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
The bay of Collioure with a line of boats, sails drying in the sun, is depicted freely in bright colors with rhythmical brush strokes. The patches left unpainted on the white sails and water effectively express the dazzling sunlight. In 1905, Derain lived in this southern French harbor city near the Spanish border, at the invitation of Henri Matisse, and the two men together explored new approaches to painting. This work has the distinction of being among the paintings in gallery seven attacked as “fauves” (wild beasts) at the 1905 Salon d’Automne.
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Henri Rousseau
Jaguar Attacking a Horse
1910, Oil on canvas
© The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
A white horse, under savage attack by a jaguar, stares from the picture with an indescribable look on its face. Despite the cruelty of the scene, the humid air and dense forest greenery fill the entire canvas with a mystical silence. Rousseau once admitted that he had never traveled further than to the hothouses of a botanical garden. Yet, through pictorial books and the botanical gardens and zoos of Paris, he was able to enjoy contact with animal worlds in faraway countries. Deftly employing his imagination and limited chances, Rousseau created the tropical jungles he yearned for.
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