“The Thannhauser Collection” at the Guggenheim Museum, opening May 28, offers visitors a beautiful new installation of this world-renowned collection.
Justin K. Thannhauser was the son of renowned art dealer Heinrich Thannhauser, who founded the Galerie Moderne in Munich in 1909. From an early age, Thannhauser worked with his father, building an impressive program of exhibitions of Impressionism and post-Impressionism and the art of the contemporary French and German avant-gardes. Their early commitment to such artists as Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Franz Marc paralleled the collecting interests of the Guggenheim Foundation’s originator, Solomon R. Guggenheim. Thannhauser bequeathed the Guggenheim much of his prized collection of Impressionist, post-Impressionist and Modern French masterpieces upon his death in 1976.
Among the works he gave are such incomparable masterpieces as Vincent van Gogh’s “Mountains at Saint-Rémy,” 1889, Edouard Manet’s “Before the Mirror,” 1876, and close to 30 paintings and drawings by Pablo Picasso, including his seminal works “La Moulin de la Galette,” 1900, and “Woman Ironing,” 1904.
Renoir’s “Woman with Parrot,” 1871, and Cézanne’s “Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug,” circa 1877, are two masterpieces in the collection that demonstrate Impressionism and Post-Impressionism’s key influence on subsequent art. The Impressionists’ liberation of painting from age-old academic genres and rote techniques was a pivotal moment in art history, later seen as the beginning of art’s Modern era.
With a sphere of influence centered in the flourishing artistic capital of Paris, the emergence of this rebellious avant-garde in the 1860s and 1870s made many groundbreaking Twentieth Century developments possible, such as Cubism and the purely abstract, or “non-objective,” painting in which the Guggenheim collection is particularly rich.
The Thannhausers presented the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter group, including Kandinsky, in 1911. Their 1913 Picasso exhibition included 76 paintings and 38 works on paper from the Blue Period through Cubism. The close relationship between Thannhauser and Picasso lasted until the artist’s death in 1973. Of the 73 works in the Thannhauser collection, 32 are by Picasso.
In 1963, Thannhauser gave a significant portion of his holdings to the Guggenheim Foundation. To house the gift, a space on the second floor of the monitor building was created, where the collection was placed on permanent view. The collection was legally transferred to the foundation in 1978, two years after Thannhauser’s death. A bequest of ten additional works was received after the death of his second wife, Hilde, in 1991, and the monitor building was renamed in honor of their legacy.
The museum is at 1071 Fifth Avenue. For more information, www.Guggenheim.org or 212-423-3500.
