Towards Modernity

Connaught Brown is delighted to present Towards Modernity, an exhibition surveying the transformational progression of Modern art from its inception under Impressionism and through its subsequent groundbreaking iterations.

The end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries gave rise to some of the most influential artistic movements in history. Artists such as Cézanne, Pissarro, Renoir, Vlaminck and Dufy broke with tradition to produce new and exhilarating work that inspired each other and the generations to come. They were ‘artistic disrupters’ in a period of great change.

Impressionism rejected the rigidity of academicism; Pointillism experimented with scientific theories; Fauvism celebrated pure colour, and Cubism distorted pictorial planes. Distinctly individual, these movements interlinked with and informed the next, creating a visual conversation and ideological interchange between these artists.

Through Impressionism Degas, Pissarro and Renoir developed a new way of addressing figuration, the Cubists Lipchitz, Marcoussis and Lhote redefined the concept of form while Chagall and Dufy embraced a unique and dream-like pictorial freedom. Together, the works in this show will demonstrate the changes which occurred during an extraordinary period of history, in which change was embraced and the norm challenged with an inquisitive spirit.