2022.10.8 ~ 2023.1.22

The National Museum of Western Art, 7-7 Ueno-koen, Taito-ku, Tokyo 110-0007, Japan

Regular close on Mondays

This exhibition presents a selection of 20th-century art, including works across Picasso’s entire oeuvre, from the Museum Berggruen’s unparalleled collection.

Beginning in 1948, the German-born art dealer Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007) began collecting art for himself as he operated an art gallery in Paris, building a world-leading private collection in the process. In 1996, his collection went on display in his hometown of Berlin in a building facing the Charlottenburg Palace. In 2000, the major works in his collection were purchased by the German government, and in 2004, the museum was renamed the Museum Berggruen. Today the museum is one of the Berlin State Museums and is world-renowned for its many outstanding exhibitions.

Until his final years Berggruen continued to acquire and sell or trade works as he strove to build on the collection’s particular characteristics. In the end he focused the collection’s strengths on works by his four favorite artists, namely, Picasso, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, and Alberto Giacometti. The resulting collection featuring carefully selected works by these four artists, along with those of Paul Cézanne, the patriarch of Modern Art, who they had all studied under, fully conveys the richly creative and vitality-filled arts of these 20th century Masters.

This exhibition, made possible by current renovations at the Museum Berggruen, presents 97 carefully selected works from this highly individualistic collection, joined by 11 works owned by or on deposit at Japan’s National Museum of Art institutions, for a total of 108 works on display. This is the first comprehensive introduction of the Berggruen collection outside its own facilities, and the debut showing in Japan of 76 of the 97 Berggruen collection works.