When I visited Budapest last week I was lucky to see two important exhibitions, just a few days before their ending. “From Degas to Picasso”, at the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, plays host to 60 impressionist and modernist works from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. The exhibition, which includes pieces by some of the most well-known practitioners of the period including Gauguin, Manet, Picasso, Degas, Courbet, Cézanne, Rousseau, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Monet, is based on the collection of two prominent Russian collectors: Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) and Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936).
But it was the second exhibition that impressed me and touched my soul: “Earthly Paradise” from the National Gallery (the art collection of Elizabeth and Alexander Kasser , 102 works by 53 different artists such as Monet, Paul Signac, Renoir, Braque, Edmond Cross, André Derain, Alexej von Jawlensky, Alfred Sisley or Cézanne, Renoir, Maillol, Henry Moore, Modigliani, Matisse, De...