Jun.7 (Sat), 2003 – Sep.23 (Tue), 2003

From the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, Paris developed dramatically both economically and culturally. With this development, the landscape of the modern city of Paris and its suburbs, as well as the lives of its inhabitants, became important themes for painters. From the 1910s to the 1930s, a large number of aspiring young artists from various countries flocked to this “capital of art,” which had given rise to successive new artistic movements ever since the emergence of the Impressionists. Basing themselves in Montmartre or Montparnasse, these artists, who came to be called the Ecole de Paris, worked diligently, even while battling homesickness, and their unique talents flowered amid the appealing freedom of Paris. Many painters went to Paris from Japan as well to study painting; some continued to live and work there for many years.

The exhibition, Paris, City of Artists, featured approximately seventy of the paintings in the Pola Museum of Art. Included art paintings by the leading artists of the Ecole de Paris, as well as those depicting such features of the modernizing city of Paris as railroads and train stations, and landscapes of Paris by Japanese artists. Through these works, we aimed that viewers could perceive the appeal of Paris and the diversity of the art to which it gave rise.