Ceramic artists in Europe at the turn of the century sought to break from the past by developing new, distinctive modes of making. With a renewed interest in the natural world as a source of artistic inspiration, they experimented with decoration, forms, and ideas to make their art modern.
Making It Modern: European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection celebrates Dr. Martin Eidelberg’s gift to The Met of approximately 80 ceramic works dating from the 1880s to 1910s. Although the years in which the Eidelberg ceramics were produced coincided with the emergence of the popular Art Nouveau movement in which artists brought abstracted forms from nature into their work, few of these pieces align closely with the common conception of that style. Instead, these ceramics reflect the desire for individual artistic expression and the enormous creativity that make this period such a rich chapter in European ceramic history.
The exhibition is made possible by the generous endowment of the Wrightsman Exhibition Gallery by Jayne Wrightsman.
This exhibition is accompanied by an issue of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin.
The Met’s quarterly Bulletin program is supported, in part, by the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, established by the co-founder of Reader’s Digest.