Sophie Taeuber-Arp is one of the most important representatives of Classical Modernism and is considered a pioneer of abstraction.

Alberto Giacometti was in Geneva during the Second World War. In 1945 he returned to Paris. His old studio was still intact and he could have simply continued working.

Secluded, Giorgio Morandi lived and worked in Bologna. He specialized in still lifes on small format canvases.

The Alsace artist, Hans Arp, had already played a central role as artist and poet in the Dadaist movements in Zürich and Paris. Humour and irony also characterised his later work, especially the reliefs.

In 1926 Alexander Calder left America and went to Paris where the most important new artists of the time were working. His encounter with the Dutchman Piet Mondrian was groundbreaking.

The Italian Giorgio de Chirico painted his mysterious pictures in Paris before the First World War. He called his art “Pittura metafisica,” a style that had great influence on European painting.

The presence of Cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque was exceptionally strong even before the First World War. The Spaniard Juan Gris discovered the foundations of his work within them, but nevertheless developed his own, quite individual style, which led him to a strictly classical pictorial design.

In the years preceding the First World War Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso developed cubism.This was a new type of portrayal of reality

Fernand Léger was not a painter of finely nuanced colour tones like Robert Delaunay, and he also wasn’t a strict Cubist like Braque and Picasso. Léger was a painter of expressive contrasts: colour, line and form come into direct conflict in his pictures.

Robert Delaunay painted numerous views of Paris. The view of the city through a window is the subject of a series of pictures that he painted in 1912.

Alongside Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard became the leading painter of intimate interiors at the beginning of the 20th century. They had a mutual interest in the refined use of colour in the rooms.

All his life Edouard Vuillard’s studio was in the apartment that he shared with his mother. Life and painting were closely related and his choice of models was no exception.

In around 1890 some young painters came together under the name of the “Nabis,” among them were, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton and Edouard Vuillard. They sought new ideas for the art of painting.

Odilon Redon was one of the great loners among French painters. His path was set apart from Realism and Impressionism.

In around 1900 the sculpture underwent profound changes; both material and space were treated in a new way. One of the great innovators in this was Auguste Rodin.

Camille Pissarro was one of the pioneering Impressionist painters.

During his search for appropriate motifs Claude Monet moved to Normandy in the winter of 1882.

After the First World War Fernand Léger's work changed; the animated, fragmented compositions made way for a new form. A cool order determined his works.

In 1926, at the age of 60, Pierre Bonnard moved into a villa in the Côte d’Azur, above Cannes.

Pablo Picasso was fond of painting the motifs he was working with in a series. Every day he would take the subject in hand and paint a new version of it.