Strausbourg’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art has a very fine collection of some of Europe’s most recognized modernist artists, as well as examples of earlier works that ushered in the period that spawned Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstraction, and other movements, including Germany’s Blau Reiter, for example. Artists less frequently exhibited in American museums (such as Lothar von Seebach, Marcelle Cahn, or Maurice Marinot) have powerful works here,  juxtaposed to works by  Picasso or Gauguin. The modernist collection was initiated by Hans Haug, director of the museum from 1919-1963. His first acquisition was a 1923 still life by George Braque, the first cubist work to become part of a public collection. Other artists in the collection include Paul Klee, Archipenko, Kathy Kollwitz, Claude Monet, Max Ernst, Rodin, Alfred Sisley, Edouard Vuillard, Jacques Lipschitz, and René Magritte, just to name a few of the well-known masters. In addition,  the museum acquired as a gift in 2006 an exact reconstruction of Kandinsky’s Salon de Music c. 1923, reconstructed in 1975 with permission from Nina Kandinsky, then donated by L’Oreal, Paris. This salon plus three original maquettes were part of an exhibition of German architecture, the Bauausstellung organized by Mies van der Rohe and exhibited in Berlin between May 9 and August 2, 1931. Works by contemporary artists include A.R. Penchk, Lupertz and Immendorff as well as works from the movements of Arte Povera, Fluxus and Neo-Expressionism.

PHOTOS: Top Two: 1. Modernist gallery with two works of art: Painting by Auguste Herbin (1882-1960) Portrait of Madame Herbin, 1923. Oil on canvas. Sculpture by Alexandre Archipenko ( 1887-1964) Flat Torso, 1914. Bronze patina on marble. 2. Modernist gallery with two works of art: Painting by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Person Collecting Flowers, 1958, Oil on Canvas. Sculpture by August Rodin (1840-1917) The Thinker, 1904. Plaster on a wooden plinth. Middle: 1. Foreground:  Sculpture by René Magritte Madame Récamier de David, 1967. Bronze. Background: Paintings: left to right . A L’Interior de la vue , 1929. Oil on canvas by Max Ernst; Horses Attacked by the Fish, 1932, Oil on canvas by Andre Masson; a surrealist oil painting by Max Ernst. Bottom Two:  1. Guitar and Fan, c. 1926. Oil on canvas by Marcelle Cahn. 2. Woman in a Garden, 1907. Oil on canvas by Maurice Marinot (1882-1960).

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