Image: Pablo Picasso, The Yellow Sweater, 1939, oil on canvas. Museum Berggruen, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will close ‘Picasso–Klee–Matisse: Masterpieces from the Museum Berggruen’ on September 13, ending the Houston presentation of an exhibition devoted to three major figures of 20th-century art: Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse.
The exhibition is organized by the Museum Berggruen–Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A closing notice issued by the Houston museum describes the presentation as an opportunity to “lock eyes with 20th-century art rebels,” positioning the three artists together as a concentrated view of modern art’s transformations and challenges to established visual conventions.
The exhibition opened on May 20, 2026 and presents more than 95 works — paintings, watercolors, drawings and sculptures — on loan from the Museum Berggruen in Berlin, in what the museum describes as the U.S. debut of the collection. Alongside Picasso, Klee and Matisse’s cut-outs, it includes sculptures by Alberto Giacometti and works by Georges Braque and Paul Cézanne.
Assembled thematically rather than chronologically, the display combines focal areas — still life, portraits, the human figure and landscape — with in-depth presentations devoted to individual artists, tracing Heinz Berggruen’s relationship with the artistic community of postwar Paris and beyond. Berggruen amassed the collection between the 1940s and the 1990s, many works acquired directly from the artists, and a gallery is given to his own story; the collection passed to the German state in 2000 and is housed in Berlin-Charlottenburg as part of the Berlin State Museums. In Houston the exhibition is installed on Level 1 of the Beck Building.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is located at 1001 Bissonnet in Houston, Texas. The museum’s September closing announcement also lists the final dates for Ernesto Neto’s ‘SunForceOceanLife’ and Hew Locke’s ‘Passages’, but those exhibitions are separate presentations and are not part of the Picasso–Klee–Matisse exhibition.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The museum has also identified foundation, corporate and individual supporters for the presentation, including lead foundation underwriting from the Jerold B. Katz Foundation and major support from Bobbie Nau.
‘Picasso–Klee–Matisse: Masterpieces from the Museum Berggruen’ remains on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through September 13, 2026.
