Four of Ilse Bing's photographs from MoMA's permanent collection are on view in the museum's ongoing exhibition The New Spirit in Paris (Floor 5), alongside works by Eileen Gray, Man Ray, Mondrian, Picasso, Modigliani, Suzanne Valadon, and others.
The exhibition traces the extraordinary creative energy of Paris between the two world wars, when artists and designers working in the French capital were simultaneously reclaiming tradition and constructing a dynamic new world. It was a city of boundary-crossing exchanges — between painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, photography, cinema, and design — and between artists arriving from across Central and Eastern Europe, South America, and beyond.
The four works are from Bing's Moulin Rouge series. Armed with a Leica at a time when the camera was still considered an instrument rather than an artistic tool, Bing brought to the iconic Montmartre cabaret the formal intelligence and visual daring that defined her practice.
