"Milestones of Modernism 1880-1940: Selections from the Norwest Collection"
1999-07-07 until 1999-09-12
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Minneapolis, MN, USA United States of America

With Milestones of Modernism, the Institute marks the debut of the celebrated Norwest Collection, the world’s most significant collection of Modernism. Donated to the museum in February 1999, it includes works by Gerrit Rietveld, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, Georg Jensen, Emilé Galle, Russell Wright, William Morris, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Comfort Tiffany and many others.

More than 200 objects are included in the exhibition—furniture, metalwork, ceramics, glass and works on paper. Created between 1880 and 1940, they represent a survey of the major movements of the period: Arts and Crafts (1875-1915), Art Nouveau (1880-1910), Wiener Werkstätte (1903-1933), De Stijl (1917-1928), Bauhaus (1919-1933) and Art Deco (1920-1940).

Exhibition highlights include Josef Hoffman’s reclining armchair (about 1905); an Egyptian onion flower-form vase made of favrile blown glass (about 1900) by Louis Comfort Tiffany; Mies van der Rohe’s MR 20 armchair (about 1931), an icon of 20th-century design; and Ilonka Karasz’s Desk (about 1928), a unique work designed for the artist’s studio.

The works on paper will highlight the simplicity, immediacy and experimentation that characterized the period. Among the posters being exhibited are Josef Sattler’s 1895 poster, Pan; William H. Bradley’s woodcut, The Kiss, 1896; Berthold Loffler’s 1908 poster, Kunstschau Wien; Robert Bonfil’s 1925 poster, Paris; and M.A. Miles’ 1933 poster, For the Zoo.

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