The first in a new series of ongoing displays dedicated to Mudam’s Collection presents a selection of paintings created by 12 artists from Europe, North and South America. The artists share an open approach to painting as a medium coming at a time after Pop and Conceptual art. Artists like Julian Schnabel or, �a decade later, Fiona Rae explored the possibilities offered by the medium in �view of the history of painting. For others, like Bernard Frize or Jonathan Lasker, formal experimentation was important, while some developed a language of appropriation of earlier painting styles, of gestural abstraction and formalism, as shown in the works of Michel Majerus or Günther Förg. This new display also throws light on the collecting practices of the time. The artists whose works were acquired in the mid-1990s were, for the most part, male, European or North American; the exception was the Luxembourg artist Tina Gillen, whose serial approach to painting was in contrast to the self-conscious use of gesture by �her European counterparts. Subsequent acquisitions reflected a regard for the works of artists from other parts of the world.

The Mudam Collection is the most important collection of contemporary art in Luxembourg. Resolutely international in its scope and ambition, the collection's holdings consist of close to 700 works of art in all media by artists from Luxembourg and around the world. The constitution of the collection traces back to the first acquisitions for the museum in the 1990s, the creation of the Museum of Modern Art Grand-Duc Jean Foundation in 1998, and the opening of the Museum in 2006. The majority of works in the collection date from 1989 to the present.