'Remember that before being a war-horse, a nude woman,
or some anecdote, a picture is essentially a plane surface
covered with colours assembled in a certain order.'
- Maurice Denis, 1890

One of the most ambitious exhibitions the Art Gallery of New South Wales has ever undertaken, Paths to abstraction will include more than 150 pivotal works by some of the most influential pioneers of modernism, spanning 50 years when paintings, drawings and prints edged their way by degrees towards purely non-representational images.

Curator Terence Maloon has secured representative works of more than 40 of the leading artists of the late 19th and 20th centuries including Whistler, Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, Munch, Gauguin, Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee, Derain, Denis, Marc, Duchamp, Braque, Bonnard and Mondrian among others.

These works are from 59 institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Museu Picasso Barcelona; Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou; Tate Modern; Tate Britain; Kunstmuseum Bern; J Paul Getty Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum as well as private collections.

Full media release > (PDF, 4pp, 850 KB)

Sponsors statement
Ernst & Young is proud to be the principal sponsor of the Paths to abstraction exhibition. We have been a major sponsor of the Art Gallery of New South Wales since 2006. Our support for the Gallery is a key part of our visual arts sponsorship portfolio which spans nearly two decades, and allows us to help bring important works to a wider audience.