Pablo Picasso, Tête de trois quarts (Head in Three-Quarter View), 1907; Collection SFMOMA, bequest of Elise S. Haas; © Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

SAN FRANCISCO-The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibit Modern Masterworks from the Elise S. Haas Collection through July 20. It would be hard to overestimate the significance of the Elise S. Haas collection for SFMOMA. Made up of some 35 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, this group of stunning early modernist works highlights especially the art of Henri Matisse and Henry Moore but also includes pieces by such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and Barbara Hepworth. A student of art herself, Haas not only collected works by these great artists, but she also endeavored to get to know them personally. Though the collection now seems classic, it was one of the most cutting edge of its time, setting a forward-thinking example that continues to inspire the collecting practices of SFMOMA today.

In intensity and immediacy of expression, Matisse never surpassed Woman with a Hat, a portrait of his wife Amélie. The painting caused shock and outrage when it was shown at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905, and the painters were derisively labeled fauves ("wild beasts"). Matisse used "deliberate disharmonies" of red, green, orange, purple, and blue. Modeling in the face is created inversely, with green, the complementary of flesh tones. There is no drawing as such; contours are little more than ragged edges between planes of color, and the whole is brushed, especially in the background and toward the sides, with a crudity scarcely seen before. However, beneath the violence can be seen a plan in the progressions and recalls of color that betray the artist's instinctual sensitivity.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869—1954). Woman with a Hat, autumn 1905. Oil on canvas; 31 1/4 x 23 1/2 in. (79.4 x 59.7 cm) Bequest of Elise S. Haas. ©Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York