“Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur,” Georgia O’Keeffe, 1930. Oil on canvas from a private collection.

PORTLAND, ME. – “Degas, Rodin, and Moore: Bronzes by European Masters” will be on view at the Portland Museum of Art May 26 through September 23.

This exhibition will highlight some 40 bronze sculptures by more than 20 European masters working in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. The pieces in the exhibition are drawn primarily from the collection of the Otten family and Scott M. Black. Rarely seen works on paper by these artists will complement the three-dimensional representations.

The exhibition offers a varied sampling of bronze sculpture, mostly small-scale and predominately French and German, that chronicles nearly a century of activity. The earliest bronzes to be included date to the 1880s, such as Degas’s “Fourth Position Front, on the Left Leg”; Jean-Alexandre-Joseph Faliguiere’s “Bust of Diana”; and numerous works by Rodin. The most recent pieces were created in the 1960s, Jean Arp’s “Shadow of the Orient” and Ossip Zadkine’s “The Reclining Musician”.

Especially evident in this grouping of objects is a continuing tension between naturalism and abstraction, most notably in the first decades of the Twentieth Century, when classicizing nudes (such as those by Maillol) and realistically rendered animals (like Francios Pompon’s “Wild Goose”) stood alongside abstracted representations (like Emil Nolde’s “The Prophet” of 1914 and works by Jacques Lipchitz). Sculptures from later decades reveal even more highly abstracted forms (like Fernard Leger’s “The Cock”) and non-representational creations (such as Jean Arp’s “Plaster” of 1940).

The Portland Museum of Art is located at Seven Congress Square and is open 10 am to 5 pm, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, and 10 am to 9 pm on Thursday and Friday. Memorial Day through Columbus Day, the Museum is open Mondays 10 am to 5 pm. For information, 207-773-ARTS.