From Pop to Now: Selections from the Sonnabend Collection

Taking one of Andy Warhol's famous Campbell soup can paintings as its starting point, From Pop to Now presents a definitive survey of works collected by international gallery owners Ileana and Michael Sonnabend over the last four decades. For more than half a century, the Sonnabends have been a seminal force in the contemporary art world, often showing bold new work considered impossible to sell or too difficult for the times. In Paris from 1962 to 1973 and in New York from 1970 to the present, the Sonnabend galleries' shows have showcased a virtual who's who of contemporary art, spanning the full gamut of artistic exploration, from Pop Art to Minimalism and Conceptualism, from painting and sculpture to video and photography. During the height of the Pop movement, Ileana was dubbed the Mom of Pop Art, and the impact made by her artists at the time -- among them Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist -- is now as legendary as Sonnabend's passion for collecting contemporary art. Committed to exposing audiences in Europe and the United States to the most exciting contemporary work on both continents, the Sonnabends brought to New York the works of Italian Arte Povera artists -- Mario Merz, Gilberto Zorio, Jannis Kounellis, and Pier Calzolari -- and other Europeans, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Christian Boltanski, and Anselm Kieffer. More than a collection, From Pop to Now looks at a pivotal time in contemporary art history, bringing together not only the names that have made history but also the seminal artworks that have defined a generation.