Read about the introduction of the Modern Originals Collection, carefully curated on the walls of its home, White Chapel Somerset.
The show at White Chapel Somerset offers a thoughtfully curated exploration of artistic legacy and innovation, presented in a uniquely immersive setting. Seven wall spaces frame a large, open area furnished with iconic mid-century pieces by Ercol and Eames, arranged into homely dining and sitting spaces. Mid-century sideboards and plan chests are laden with art books dedicated to the featured artists, encouraging visitors to flip through and deepen their understanding of each creator’s oeuvre and historical significance.
The walls showcase twenty-four selected works, offering a diverse overview of the collection’s breadth and historic depth. Spanning decades, the pieces range from an 85-year-old Georges Rouault lithograph to more recent works by Louise Bourgeois. The arrangement fosters intimate moments with individual pieces while the expansive layout enables dynamic perspectives across the space. Hung in a predominantly linear fashion, the works are grouped into an anachronistic narrative that illustrates different aspects of the artists' endeavours to challenge the conventions of traditional Western painting.
The first wall displays three of the rarest pieces in the collection. Henri Matisse's, Roses de Noel et Les Huitres from 1940, reimagines the still life by saturating the background with a rich rose pink, flattening the spatial depth and drawing heightened attention to the central objects. Picasso’s dynamic group portrait from 1969 contrasts sharply with conventional formality, using bold lines and minimal colour to emphasise the fluid movement of bodies.
Rouault’s painting, depicting the head of a young woman, echoes the simplicity of a bust sculpture or Renaissance portrait. However, his thick, expressive brushstrokes, deep tones, and the subject’s closed eyes infuse the piece with a distinctly modernist intimacy and innovation.
Progressing from the first wall, the Modernist flux in figuration is displayed. In this double portrait titled Two Women or Two Sisters, Fernand Léger amplifies the physicality of the two figures. Their oversized limbs reflect his innovative Tubist style, which emphasises cylindrical forms and volume and contrast Picasso employs a Cubist approach which is illustrated by the 1954 Portrait of Sylvette beside Léger's peice. Picasso deconstructs the female form into geometric shapes within the picture plane. His use of flat areas of colour accentuates the abstraction while retaining an intimate connection to the subject, Sylvette, who he painted repeatedly for many years. Taking a different route, Alberto Giacometti, renowned for his spindly sculpted figures, explores gestural drawing. Titled The Tree, his energetic web of sketched lines reimagines the traditional nude life drawing, offering a dynamic and unconventional perspective.
From the body to landscape, the show displays a Parisian landscape by Chagall, featuring a self-portrait, and a vibrant countryside scene by Léger from 1955. Both works demonstrate the modern evolution of landscape painting. Chagall, like Matisse, uses a single dominant colour to emphasise the composition of the landscape’s elements. His magical realism imbues the work with a romantic, whimsical energy, heightened by the tender blue tones. Léger’s landscape bursts with dynamic figures and objects, defined by bold black outlines a subject informed by his fixation on the mechanical evolution that took place in the years before and after the wars. The lively colours that surround these forms evoke their playful use, characteristic of mid-20th-century European and American painting.
A group of works showcases five artists' distinctive approaches to mark-making in lithography. Calder employs bold lines and rich, solid areas of colour, while Bourgeois uses black lines to create texture within her existential forms, against stark white space. Meanwhile, Garache and Miró's works engage in a visual dialogue, where their red, gestural marks evoke forms that emerge gracefully from simplicity. Palazuelo’s work embodies pure abstraction with a graphic quality. Its deep palette and subtle composition create a simplicity that exudes a calm, contemplative energy.
The final wall hosts four pieces by the maverick painter, Francis Bacon. There are two complex portraits of the artist's lover Georges Dyer, a striking head and shoulders portrait of his friend Isabella Rawsthorne and an iconic triptych of Lucien Freud portraits. Francis Bacon’s exploration of portraiture includes the revelation of the human psyche. His distorted, depictions of the human form delve into the fragility of existence, reflecting broader anxieties of the 20th Century. Rooted in the tradition of modernist painting, Bacon’s work embraces abstraction and the flatness of the canvas. This flatness aligns with modernist priorities, while his use of abstraction amplifies the alienation and vulnerability central to his subjects. Bacon’s haunting, fragmented portraits ultimately redefined the expressive potential of the human figure in modern art.
By presenting these works in an intimate and accessible setting, the thoughtfully curated show allows each precious piece to speak for itself. Experience this unique dialogue between each works and perhaps even acquire one of the works for your own collection
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