Copertina: The Collection of the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation. Post-war and contemporary art 1946 to the present
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The Collection of the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation

Post-war and contemporary art 1946 to the present

Info
  • Edited by Marie Koutsomallis Moreau
  • Size 24x28 cm
  • Binding Cartonato
  • Pages 608
  • Illustrations 450
  • Language English
  • Year 2022
  • ISBN 9788842225652
  • Price € 70,00
Synopsis

"Postwar and Contemporary Art. 1946 to the Present" is the second volume of the general catalog devoted to The Basil & Elise Goulandris Collection. Among the most important of those created in the second half of the 20th century, the collection is now on display in the rooms of the Foundation named after the couple, an extraordinary museum opening in 2019 in Athens.

Curated by Marie Koutsomallis-Moreau, the volume reproduces on its cover a detail of Jacskon Pollock's Number 13, a 1950 dripping, part of a cycle of thirteen oil paintings on masonite. In the mid-1960s, when they already owned works by El Greco, Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, and Bonnard, Basil and Elise Goulandris decided to venture beyond their comfort zone and open their doors to living artists. The first works of postwar art to enter the collection are Max Ernst's painting While the Earth Sleeps and seven compositions by Jean Fautrier, all purchased in 1966 at Galerie Europe in Paris. In 1968 it was the turn of Ben Nicholson's 1967 (Green Quoit), which came from Ernst Beyeler's Swiss gallery. Over time, decade after decade, the collection grows, taking in works by Arp, Michaux, Balthus, César, Bacon, Giacometti, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Kiefer, Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle, Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

As in the first volume, the history of each work is analyzed by a timely and extensive monograph sheet, which reconstructs its location within of the artist's research phases, exhibition itinerary and critical reception. Lavishly illustrated, the volume is interspersed with numerous period photographs depicting the painters and sculptors in moments of complicity, in groups or at work in their studios.