From Matisse to Picasso: Hotel Plaza Athénée in New York launches ART IN MOTION

“We always want to create unique experiences for our guests in partnership with one of our Manhattan Upper East Side neighbors,” explained the General Manager of the Hotel Plaza Athénée Anne-Juliette Maurice. “We thus decided to present in our top suites with some of the most beautiful lithographs of the Mourlot Collection and to create a home-like personal art decoration for our most exclusive guests staying in those suites, including the famous Thai and Presidential suites as well as our two Penthouse Duplex.”

In addition to the lithographs shown in the suites, the hotel is exhibiting two rare Picasso lithographs and two Matisse pochoirs in the Lobby and the Bar Seine, part of the Mourlot Collection.
The guests of the suites are all invited to visit the Matisse exhibition at MoMa (open through February 8th, 2015).

Guests will also have the opportunity to meet in person with Eric Mourlot, the grandson of Fernand Mourlot who was the lithographer of Picasso, Matisse, and Miro among others. “What better way to learn more about lithographs than with one of the world’s top specialists who himself met with Picasso and Chagall when he was a child,” Anne-Juliette Maurice added.

Personal meetings with Eric Mourlot will be held at the Plaza Athénée or at his galerie on 79th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue.

“The art world is changing,” explains Eric Mourlot. “There are new ways of exchanging thoughts with art collectors and people who are passionate about the works of true masters.”

Mourlot, whose clients are among the worlds’ top collectors as well as museums, including MoMa and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, launched a partnership last summer with Ethan Allen to make lithographs and lithographic posters from the Mourlot Collection available to Ethan Allen’s customers. “With the Hotel Plaza Athénée, we can invite the American and international guests to experience a moment of life with an artwork that might be different form their own collection and / or exclusive.”

Two Matisse pochoirs (Stencils) are also exhibited in the lobby of the Hotel Plaza Athénée. These two works were produced between 1943 and 1947 for the famous and groundbreaking illustrated book Jazz. Teriade published this portfolio in a limited series of 250. The complete set of Jazz is also currently exhibited at MoMa.

In the lobby of the hotel, two very rare lithographs by Picasso are exhibited through “Art in Motion:” Jacqueline Lisant (1958) numbered 46/50 and signed in pencil by the artist, and Le Taureau Noir (1947), one of six proofs reserved for the artist and the printer (stamped on the verso by the Marina Picasso estate).

The lithographs exhibited in the suites include works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Raoul Duffy, Max Ernst, Ellsworth Kelly, Le Corbusier, Roy Liechtenstein, Henri Matisse, Marino Marini, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, and Kees von Dongen.

The lithographs were all created at the Mourlot Studios, a print shop founded in 1852 by the Mourlot family and located in Paris, France. It was also known as Imprimerie Mourlot, Mourlot Freres and Atelier Mourlot. Founded by Francois Mourlot, it started off producing wallpaper. Later, his son Jules Mourlot would expand the business to handle the production of chocolate labels for companies such as Chocolat Poulain, as well as ledgers, maps and stationary. Starting in the 1920s, Jules' son, Fernand Mourlot, converted one of the locations into a studio dedicated to printing fine art lithography. Invented in 1796 by German author Alois Senefelder, lithography is a printing method using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface.

During the 20th century, a group of celebrated artists, including Calder, Chagall, Dufy, Léger, Matisse, Miró, and Picasso, rediscovered the largely undeveloped art form of lithography thanks to the Atelier Mourlot. The founder's grandson, Fernand Mourlot, invited a number of these artists to explore the complexities of fine art printing. He encouraged the painters to work directly on lithographic stones in order to create original artworks that could then be executed under the direction of master printers in small editions. The combination of modern artist and master printer resulted in unique and visually striking lithographs. In 1967, and following a retrospective of its output at the Smithsonian Institute four years earlier, the Mourlot Studio opened a branch on Bank Street in New York City and began to work with American Artists such as Lichtenstein, Kelly, Katz, Oldenburg and Rosenquist.

Art in Motion at the Plaza Athénée will last until February 8th, 2015. All lithographs exhibited in the suites might be replaced by new ones at any time.

Visit website: www.plaza-athenee.com