Tokyo-Paris Masterpieces from Bridgestone Museum of Art, Collection Ishibashi Foundation

Exhibition Catalogue Tokyo-Paris Masterpieces from Bridgestone Museum of Art, Collection Ishibashi Foundation, presented at the musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (4 april - 21 august 2017).

The founder of the Bridgestone company, Shojiro Ishibashi (1889-1976), demonstrated early on in his career a passion for arts, and more particularly Western arts, which he began to collect as of the late 1930s.

In 1952 he commissioned the building of a museum at the heart of Tokyo to house his collection. The museum displays Impressionist pieces as well as Western and Japanese works of modern art to the public. This collection was gradually enriched with each generation. The Ishibashi Foundation today conserves more than 2,600 works.

During the current renovation work at the museum, the masterpieces of the collection are on display for a unique exhibition in the West at the Musée de l'Orangerie for the spring/summer 2017 season.

The exhibition gives pride of place to works ranging from Impressionism to western and eastern post-war abstraction, from Monet to Renoir, and from Caillebotte to Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Pollock and Shiraga.

One of the pivotal points of the exhibition is also the permanent link established between the works, their buyers and the history of modern Japan, in order to give visitors background information. Lastly, this exhibition finds a mirror effect at the Musée de l'Orangerie, where a private passion for art has been transformed into a collection open to all audiences.