When Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group in late 1911, the artists predicted a watershed in the arts, a große Umwälzung (great upheaval) that would radically challenge traditional artistic production. Undoubtedly, tremendous creativity and innovation characterized the years leading up to World War I, especially 1910–14. Cubism achieved recognition in Paris, sparking new artistic directions in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Russia. Art’s more expressionistic manifestations were at an equally momentous stage in Germany and Austria; Kandinsky wrote his influential treatise On the Spiritual in Art in late 1911 (published 1912), and abstraction took hold.

This fall the Art Gallery of Ontario presents The Great Upheaval: Modern Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection, featuring nearly 70 works from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s holdings. Focusing especially on the years from 1910 to 1918, the exhibition affirms a period of collaboration, interchange, synthesis, and innovation, as artists grappled with themes of social fragmentation, technological development, and the spectacle of the modern city. Many experimented with new forms of art, giving rise to a host of radical new styles. Beginning with works by critical precursors who laid the groundwork for various avant-garde movements—such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Rousseau—this chronological exhibition will trace the artistic developments of the prewar years through paintings and sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and others.

The exhibition is curated by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Associate Curator, Collections and Provenance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and was originally presented at the Guggenheim in New York from February to June 2011.

Franz Marc, Stables (Stallungen), 1913. Oil on canvas, 73.6 x 157.5 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 46.1037