1920s Paris

Paris is the City of Light in all its facets. In the 1920s La Ville des lumières gleams especially bright and becomes a magnet for creative people from around the world. This is the decade of Coco Chanel and Josephine Baker, Art Deco and Surrealism, café culture and cabaret. The most famous artists of the epoch, later called Classic Modernism, are in close contact and have lively exchanges with one another – including Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, René Clair, Sonia Delaunay, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. The creative life and all its excesses flourish – bohème is the word for this way of living. Composers like Igor Stravinsky, writers like James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway and exiles from Eastern Europe like Constantin Brancusi or Marc Chagall enrich the illustrious scene on Montparnasse. The pulsing bars and dance halls of Montmartre are captured by photographers André Kertesz and Brassaï. The French economy is booming and luxury department stores like La Samaritaine open their doors. Coco Chanel creates her own perfume and designs the little black dress.

More than 30 outstanding works of architecture, painting, sculpture, film, photography, design and fashion are presented, including Giacometti’s Surrealist Suspended Ball and the film Un chien andalou by Dalí and Buñuel. To this day, the burgeoning creativity, diversity and savoir vivre make Paris a place of longing for night owls, bons vivants and aficionados of the fine arts.

Rainer Metzger studied art history, history, and German literature in Munich. In 1994, he earned his Ph.D. on the subject of Dan Graham, and subsequently worked as a fine arts journalist for the Viennese newspaper Der Standard. He has written numerous books on art, including volumes on van Gogh and Chagall. Since 2004, he has worked as Professor of art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe.