A guide to the collection - Musée d'Art Moderne - Ville de Paris

André Derain
Three figures
seated on the
grass, 1906
© Musée d’Art moderne
de la Ville de Paris /
Roger-Viollet
© ADAGP
Gallery 1
Permanent collections Permanent collections
Fauvism and Cubism - Gallery 1
The tour begins with Fauvist masterpieces by Matisse,
Derain and Vlaminck and is complemented by a selection
of some thirty ceramic works which are the fruit of artists’
collaboration with André Mettey. In the same gallery,
works by Picasso, Braque, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris
establish a dialogue with other strands of Cubism, Golden
Section and Orphism paintings, of which the museum has a
representative collection.
Abstraction - Creation - Gallery 2
Robert Delaunay’s Rhythm No. 1 (1938) launched the trend
for abstract art in the inter-war era, with most artists
belonging to the Abstraction-Creation group which was an
umbrella for all non-figurative, geometric and biomorphic
art in the 1930s.
Pablo Picasso
Dove with green peas, 1911
© Musée d’Art Moderne / Roger-Viollet
© Succession Picasso 2009
Gallery 1
Decorative Arts Gallery
Jean Dunand,
Sports, 1935
André Arbus, Suite
of furniture for the
Society of Interior
Decorators’ pavilion
at the International
Exhibition, 1937
© Pierre Antoine
Decorative Arts - Gallery 3
One of the monumental galleries overlooking the Seine
displays a collection of decorative art from the 1930s
consisting of furniture and objets d’art. Around a painted
panel entitled Sports (1935), created by Dunand for the
steamship Normandie, is prestigious furniture designed
by Ruhlmann, Printz, Arbus, Chareau and Adnet testifying
to the City of Paris’ commitment to classic and modernist
decorative arts when the museum was established.
During the 1937 International Arts and Technology
Exhibition, the City of Paris purchased many high-quality,
lavishly-worked objects from leading ceramicists,
glassworkers, brass workers and metalworkers, which
pushed the existing boundaries of form and materials.