cover image Twentieth-Century Modern Masters: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection

Twentieth-Century Modern Masters: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection

Jacques Gelman, Sabine Rewald. Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, $60 (355pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-1037-9

The Gelmans' art collection, now on exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum, includes seldom-seen works by Dali, Picasso, Miro, Kandinsky, Modigliani, Ernst, Klee and other first-rank artists. There are famous pieces as well, for example, Chagall's The Lovers and Matisse's Young Sailor . Even regular museum-goers will be amply rewarded by this catalogue of the superlative collection comprising 81 paintings, drawings and bronzes by 30 artists. Yves Tanguy's haunting imaginary landscapes, Francis Bacon's self-portrait tinged with self-loathing, Giacometti's lean bronze Cat, and Jean Dubuffet's ``furtive pedestrians'' navigating Parisian back alleys suggest the richness of this diverse assemblage. Introductory essays explore surrealism's celebration of the unconscious, Fauvism, Braque as metaphysician, Bonnard's attachment to the actual, cubism as a window into the creative process. (Mar.)