Story of Art Lecture Series | The Triumph of Experimental Art: Cubism & the Birth of Abstraction
Description
Bassam Freiha Art Foundation is pleased to invite you to the next lecture in The Story of Art series, led by Dr. Michaela Watrelot, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at BFAF.
This upcoming session, titled The Triumph of Experimental Art: Cubism & the Birth of Abstraction, explores a defining turning point in the twentieth century, when artists radically reimagined the boundaries of art.
Moving beyond representation, artists began to experiment with form, perspective, and meaning in unprecedented ways. Through the works of Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dalí, and Marcel Duchamp, the lecture will examine how traditional approaches to painting and sculpture were challenged and transformed.
From the fragmentation of Cubism to the emergence of abstraction and conceptual practices, these artists revolutionised visual language and expanded what art could be. Their bold innovations laid the foundation for many of the movements that continue to shape contemporary art today.
Together, we will explore how these experimental approaches reshaped artistic expression and redefined the role of the artist in modern society.
Speaker
Dr. Michaela Watrelot
Dr. Michaela Watrelot is a curator, educator, and author with a PhD in History of Art from Charles University in Prague. At Bassam Freiha Art Foundation, she leads exhibition planning, education, and strategic partnerships. Her expertise spans 19th- and 20th-century art, public art commissions, and art market studies, and she is the author of Wilhelm von Bode and the American Art Market: The Rudolphe Kann Collection (Routledge, 2023).