Guggenheim opens ‘Renoir to Rothko’

Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 | 8:33 a.m.

Now that "American Pop Icons" has ended, the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum is featuring an exhibit dedicated to pop art's notorious predecessors in "A Century of Painting: From Renoir to Rothko."

The exhibit, which opens today, begins with impressionism, then explores post-impressionism, modernism, surrealism, cubism and abstract expressionism.

There are 37 paintings featured. Artists include Cezanne, Chagall, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Rothko, van Gogh and others.

"Visually, it's kind of a 'ka-pow' sort of thing, a lot of color. We're really excited about this," said Elizabeth Herridge, managing director for Guggenheim Hermitage Las Vegas.

"American Pop Icons" was not as successful as the museum had hoped, Herridge said. But some of the pieces in "A Century of Painting," including Picasso's "Woman with Yellow Hair," are expected to draw crowds.

The collection begins with Pierre Auguste Renoir's "Woman with Parrot" and concludes with Robert Motherwell's "Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110." The paintings are from the Thannhauser bequest and are part of the Guggenheum's permanent collection.

This is the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum's fourth exhibit. Some of the works in "A Century of Painting" have been featured in prior exhibits.

However, Herridge said, "Thirty percent of the work we're showing has not been seen in the western United States before."

Regarding some of the paintings, she said, "There are travel restrictions on these works of art so they can't be lent frequently.

"You'd have to see them in New York."