By IPS Correspondents
BERLIN, Feb 24 2004 (IPS)

A new exhibition of 200 masterpieces of the 20th century at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Berlin is expected to draw more than a million visitors over the next seven months.

The MoMA exhibition opened at the New National Gallery in Berlin Feb. 20, with large queues of people lining up to see the show – the most ambitious ever staged by the Gallery.

Outstanding works by, among others,Cezanne, van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Modigliani, Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, Hopper, Warhol and Lichtenstein, play a prominent role in the exhibition, which has been made possible by extensive renovation and by the New York Museum of Modern Art, owners of the valuable collection.

Getting the spectacular collection to the German capital cost close to 12 million dollars.

The show kicks off with the work of the "heroic painters" at the turn of the century. Paul Cezanne’s young man painting, ‘The Bather’ (c.1885), is presented next to Vincent van Gogh’s dynamic ‘Starry Night’ (1889) work, arguably the Dutch artist’s most famous painting, and Rousseau’s mysterious ‘Dream’ (1910).

Next comes a comprehensive set of works by the two main protagonists of 20th century art – Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Matisse’s famous 1909 ‘The Dance’ canvas is followed by Picasso’s equally impressive ‘Three Musicians’ (1921), and Leger’s outstanding 1929 painting, ‘Three Women’ (Le Grand dejeuner).

Picasso and Matisse (10 years his senior) were united by a life-long competitive friendship.

Simultaneously, the metaphysics of the century are on show, via Russian artist Kasimir Malevich’s ‘Suprematic Composition: White in White 1’ (1918), and Dutchman Piet Mondrian’s work titled ‘Composition No.1.’ (1926).

Surrealism marks another exhibition highlight in Berlin.

Alongside paintings by Miro and Tanguy and Dali’s ‘Persistence of Memory’ (La Persistance de lar memoire) from 1931, there is also Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Readymades’ and the extraordinary ‘Cup of Fur’ by Meret Oppenheim (1936), describing an absurd world in which everything and anything is possible.

It is the world from which the ‘New York School’ emerged – a product of the encounter between artists fleeing national socialism in Europe and young U.S. painters – which paved the way for the development of art in the second half of the convulsive 20th century.

Jackson Pollock’s ‘Number 1 1948′ work,’ Barnett Newman’s striking ‘Broken Obelisk’ (1963-69) sculpture – which greets visitors as they arrive at the National Gallery show – and Robert Motherwell’s ‘Elegy for the Spanish Republic’ have all in their own way made art history.

"Pop art" in the name of Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg and their contemporaries, illustrate the triumphant progress of American art up to the present.

The exhibition ends with the 1988 controversial cycle of work focussing on the terrorist ‘Rote Armee Fraction’ (RAF: Red Army Faction) movement by German artist Gerhard Richter, dated Oct. 18, 1977, which he sold to the New York museum some 15 years ago.

Peter Raue, the lawyer-chairman of the city’s Friends of the National Gallery Foundation, a key figure in securing the exhibition for Berlin, says the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Berlin National Gallery have long enjoyed close collaborative ties.

"We provide each other with generous loans, we cooperate on exhibitions, and both the directors and curators of the two museums know and respect each other well," says Rauhe.

This helped when, in early 2002, MoMA director Glenn Lowry announced that the New York-based Museum would have to undergo extensive renovation in 2004.

More than 3,000 valuable art works belong to the New York Museum collection, and for a spell Lowry had contemplated sending the world famous collection on a tour of Europe, with possible stop-offs in Paris, London and Frankfurt.

Raue wasn’t impressed and, over a glass of red wine one night in a Berlin restaurant, convinced Lowry that the best venue for some of the museum’s key masterpieces was the National Gallery. He argued that the building was an "architectural masterpiece" and a true "temple of Modern art."

Helping the Berlin overture was the fact that Lowry knew Alfred H Barr, MoMA’s founding director, had originally wanted to engage Mies van der Rohe, the last director of the Bauhaus, as architect for the New York museum building, which opened 75 years ago in 1929.

"It’s as if we have come full circle," says Raue. "No other city could match Berlin at the beginning of the 20th century as a centre for the art of what we now call Classical Modernism, and as a site of encounter and exchange."

Ultimately Lowry agreed to the seven-month loan to Berlin of 200 if its best works. Overall, the New York museum houses 3,200 masterpieces from the late 19th century to the present.

For weeks the city has buzzed with excitement about the MoMA show. Enormous advance publicity has preceded it, with many public buildings plastered with posters advertising its arrival.

At a Berlin press conference Peter Raue thanked the Museum of Modern Art in New York for granting Berlin "a unique art opportunity”.

Klaus-Dieter Hentrich, a retired Berlin insurance official, was one of the early visitors to the show. "For us Europeans, this is a really exciting moment," he said. "Most people have seen some of the famous paintings reprinted in art books. But here, for the first time, we get to see them ‘live’ in Berlin. It’s a great experience."

The New National Gallery had to be cleared for the project – even its sculpture garden, which is now studded with MoMA sculptures.

The exhibition is divided up according to the various art-historical periods, so as to guide visitors through the history of art in the 20th century "as though it were the most natural thing in the world," explains Raue.

The MoMA show runs from Feb. 20 to Sep. 19, 2004. Before arriving in Berlin, the exhibition was on display in Houston – its sole U.S. tour destination.

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