In the wake of the renovation of its exhibition spaces, the Museum is offering a new visitor itinerary punctuated by encounters with the unexpected.

Breaching the boundaries between traditional art movements, this presentation highlights such flagship items as Pierre Bonnard’s Nude in the Bath and Henri Laurens’ Spanish Dancer; works by Robert Delaunay, Foujita, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, František Kupka, Raoul Dufy and others; and rarely exhibited pieces by artists including Laure Garcin, Natalia Goncharova and Chana Orloff. Interacting with the collection’s founding works are the latest acquisitions, by Otto Freundlich, Etienne Cournault, Léon Tutundjian, Karel Appel, Jean Atlan, Lucio Fontana, Man Ray and Willi Baumeister. The itinerary is also interspersed with signature single artist segments: Picabia, Giorgio de Chirico and the entire Vollard Suite of 100 Picasso engravings from 1930 – 1937.

The contemporary itinerary is based on the following themes: The New Realism, whose artists – among them Arman, Gérard Deschamps, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri and Jacques Villeglé – have in common fresh approaches to reality via ordinary everyday objects.

Geometrical Abstraction (Martin Barré, François Morellet, Aurélie Nemours and others), which rejected individual emotion and the spontaneous creative act in favour of an interrogation of art’s fundamental givens: format, series, support and the material character of the artwork.

Conceptual Art (Victor Burgin, Hamish Fulton, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Lawrence Weiner and others) whose works were defined not by aesthetic properties, but by their underlying concept, which came to be the necessary – and often sufficient – prerequisite for the work’s existence.

The final focus is on the revitalisation of painting since the 1980s. Painters like Per Kirkeby, Markus Lüpertz, Albert Oehlen and A. R. Penck have taken a personal stand in a return to the medium’s expressive capacity and the achievements of the past.