Dutch 20th-century masters (1945 - 1985)

An exhibition from the collection of the Stedlijk (City) Museum of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has opened in the Alexander Hall of the State Hermitage. The exhibition features 33 works by Dutch artists who are exponents of Abstract Expressionism, one of the main tendencies in Western art in both Europe and the United States in the second half of the 20th century.
The exhibition includes works by the COBRA group (the name derives from the initial letters of three northern European capitals: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam): the Dutch artists Karel Appel, Constant and Lucebert, the Belgian Corneille, as well as works by followers of COBRA - Eugen Brands, Gerrit Benner, Ger Latatster and Willem Hussems. The Russian public has had little acquaintance with the work of Dutch artists of the second half of the 20th century and this exhibition is intended to reveal to them a new, modern page in that country's art.
The exhibition has been organized with the support of the Hermitage Friends Foundation in the Netherlands and the Ingosstrakh - Sankt-Peterburg insurance company. The State Hermitage in conjunction with the Slavia publishing-house (St Petersburg) has produced and published a scholarly catalogue for the opening of the exhibition. The author of the catalogue is Rudi Fuchs, the director of the Stedelijk Museum. The catalogue has a foreword by Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage, and an introduction by M.A. Anikin, senior researcher in the Department of the History of Western European Art at the State Hermitage, who is the organizer of the exhibition.

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