Diplomatic World_nummer 55

EXHIBITION
MODIGLIANI, SOUTINE, AND OTHER
LEGENDS OF MONTPARNASSE
November 25, 2017 — March 25, 2018
Fabergé Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
In November 2017, the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg
opened its exhibition titled Modigliani, Soutine, and Other
Legends of Montparnasse, thus continuing its series of shows
on the most famous and influential artists of the twentieth
century. This will be the third major showing at the Fabergé
Museum in the last two years, following the immensely
successful Salvador Dali exhibition this year, and Frida Kahlo
the year before that.
of pilgrimage: in the 1910s, the regulars in its many cafés
were all leaders and ideologists of the European Modernist
movement. Ilya Ehrenburg wrote about the famous café “de la
Rotonde” located on the Montparnasse Boulevard: “Starting
early in the morning, in the hot, stuffy, smoke-filled back
room, at four or five tables sat Russians, Spaniards, Latin
Americans, Scandinavians, people from all corners of the
Earth, utterly destitute, wearing god-knows-what, starveling,
In the exhibition, the Russian audience can see for the first
time a unique collection of paintings by leading artists of
the School of Paris from the first third of the twentieth
century, a collection assembled by their contemporary and
patron Jonas Netter. Works by the most famous names and
the most important showpieces of Netter’s collection are on
display: paintings by Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine,
Maurice Utrillo, and also works by Moïse Kisling, Maurice
de Vlaminck, André Derain, Suzanne Valadon, and other
legendary masters of Montparnasse.
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Montparnasse is a district in Paris that became the center
of its artistic, intellectual, and worldly life shortly before
the First World War, and retained this unique atmosphere
until the outbreak of World War II. An integral element of
Parisian life during this period was internationalism: artists,
writers, politicians, and businessmen from all over the world
gathered there, and many ended up living there. For artists
and poets who wanted to immerse themselves in the latest
schools and trends in art, Montparnasse was a genuine place
© Barbara Dietrich