Works from the CAM Collection exhibited in the Guggenheim
‘Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930’ is the first major exhibition in the United States dedicated to this artistic movement combining abstraction and chromatic lyricism. The exhibition brings together more than 90 works, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, design, bindings and ephemera.
The two works by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887–1918) featured in the exhibition – Title Unknown and ‘Étude B / Estudo B‘, both dating from 1913 and belonging to the CAM Collection – reflect the artist’s practice in line with the principles of Orphism, as well as his ability to transcend artistic categories, establishing a dialogue between the international modernist trends and Portuguese modernism.
Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso’s paintings appear alongside works by other key artists of the movement, such as Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Mainie Jellett, František Kupka and Francis Picabia, as well as the synchromists Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell. As interpreters of this vibrant artistic trend, which emerged in the early 1910s, these artists explored the interplay of light and rhythm, harmoniously synthesising themes and forms that were both abstract and figurative, which simultaneously contrasted with a Europe on the brink of the First World War.
Open to the public since 8 November, ‘Harmony and Dissonance’, according to curators Tracey Bashkoff and Vivien Greene, proposes a less canonical approach to the Orphist movement that goes beyond the definitions established by Apollinaire, as well as highlighting the twentieth-century avant-garde of abstraction. Featuring a selection of artists that includes not only those directly associated with Orphism, but also those who were part of the same Parisian scene and adopted similar approaches to abstraction, the exhibition is on display in the iconic Guggenheim rotunda, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.