‘Monet To Matisse,' Collection Of Masters, Comes To California For First Time At San Diego Museum Of Art

By Editor, Times of San Diego

March 19, 2022

Art lovers are about to get a treat – one never before seen in California.

The San Diego Museum of Art will open the exhibit, Monet to Matisse: Impressionist Masterpieces from the Bemberg Foundation, at noon Saturday, featuring more than 60 works from some of the most significant names in European painting.

This marks the first time the foundation’s Impressionism collection, which rarely leaves its permanent home in France, has traveled to California, and is one of only two showcases ever to take place in the U.S.

Organized by the Bemberg Foundation, based in Toulouse, the exhibit includes works produced from the 1870s to 1930s.

Aside from Monet and Matisse, the show includes some of the starriest names in art history – painters Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and many more.

“It is a privilege to once again collaborate with the Bemberg Foundation and be one of the few institutions in the world to showcase these incredible works,” said Roxana Velásquez, the museum’s executive director and CEO. “This is an extraordinary opportunity to view masters in Impressionism who completely defined the movement.”

General admission to the Balboa Park attraction costs $20, but there will be a $5 surcharge for the Bemberg exhibit, which continues through Aug. 7.

Monet to Matisse will feature two exclusive works not available in Houston, the only other city in the U.S. to feature the collection. Highlights include:

• Claude Monet’s Boats on the Beach at Étretat, 1883;
• Camille Pissarro’s Portrait of the Artist’s Son Felix Dressed in a Skirt, 1883;
• Edgar Degas’ Woman at a Dressing Table, 1889, and
• Paul Cezanne’s Mountainous Landscape near Aix, 1890-1895.

The exhibit is co-curated by Philippe Cros, the former director of the Bemberg Foundation, and Michael Brown, Ph.D., curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art.

Georges Bemberg (1915–2011) was an Argentina-born French writer and musician who amassed a collection of Western art dating to the end of the Middle Ages.

He made an auspicious beginning as a young Harvard student when he bought his first painting, by Camille Pissarro, on a visit to New York.

From these beginnings, Bemberg went on to collect the major contributors to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements, ranging from Monet and Cezanne, to later giants such as Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard.

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