Modernisme - Maleriets Fornyelse 1908-41

With the exhibition MODERNISM. THE RENEWAL OF PAINTING 1908-41, ARoS presents for the first time its unique collection of Danish modernists together with a number of their great foreign role models.

With loans from home and abroad, including the Guggenheim and Metropolitan in New York and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, visitors will have the opportunity to see international artists such as Paul Cézanne, Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay, alongside some of the finest Danish modernists such as Harald Giersing, Sigurd Swane, Vilhelm Lundstrøm and Edvard Weie.

When modernism emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, it caused outrage and amazement among the public. Modern art had a completely new and more abstract imagery and was the young artists' final showdown with naturalistic painting. Modernism, which we now consider classical art, was a completely new and provocative way of seeing and representing the world - a way we are still building on and which is highly relevant today.

The exhibition is a tribute to modernism, and through paintings, photographs and words, the works are presented in their national and international contexts - where inspiration and opinions meet and break.

Curator of the exhibition MODERNISM. THE RENEWAL OF PAINTING 1908-41 is probably Denmark's greatest authority on the subject, art historian Dr Lennart Gottlieb. Lennart Gottlieb, who has researched Danish modernism for more than 30 years, including in ARoS' fine collection. In the autumn, Lennart Gottlieb was awarded his doctorate for a dissertation on the Danish modernists.