Beach with Five Piers at Domburg is an important example of Piet Mondrian’s earlier work from a critical moment in his search to find his own visual language. Mondrian experimented with color, style, and technique, ultimately deciding to focus on the horizontal and vertical. This painting is part of a remarkable gift from the estate of Conrad and Maria Janis, which comprises nearly two hundred works in total, including 34 paintings and works on paper by Mondrian. The Janises are recognized as Millennial Benefactors for their 2009 gift of Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red (1927), the first Mondrian painting to enter the MFA’s collection.

Oil on canvas on board.

Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

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For more than forty years artist Wallace Chan has worked to recapture the butterflies, or “flying colors,” of his youth. In addition to symbolizing universal themes of beauty and transformation, in China the butterfly is an emblem of eternal love. In “The Butterfly Lovers,” a Romeo and Juliet–like Chinese tale, two ill-fated lovers live forever in the form of butterflies. Chan captures the spirit of that story in Forever Dancing, and his pioneering use of materials, like anodized titanium, and creative fabrication techniques, offers something new from every angle. As brooches, Chan’s butterflies offer wearers endless possibilities for creative expression.

Yellow diamond, fancy-colored diamonds, rock crystal, mother of pearl, butterfly specimen, pearl, and titanium.

Gift of Christin Xing and Rex Wong. Reproduced with permission.

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For more than a decade, most of Fukase Masahisa’s photographs obsessively focused on his second wife and muse, Yōko. When Fukase faced the irreparable breakdown of his marriage in the mid 1970s, he fled to his homeland in the north of Japan and embarked on a series of images of ravens that explored his feelings of loneliness and grief. The MFA has acquired two photographs from this haunting series, including this signature image, which was printed on the cover of a photo book that accompanied the project.

Gelatin silver print.

Charles Bain Hoyt Fund. © Masahisa Fukase Archives.

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In the fall of 1953 Charles Sheeler photographed several barns in North Central Massachusetts while visiting his friend, the collector William H. Lane. Sheeler experimented with different compositions by layering multiple photographs over one another, much as other artists use sketches. The resulting painting emphasizes formal relationships—the geometry of the barns—while also attending to the distinctly regional qualities of the architecture and building materials. Lane ultimately acquired the painting from New York’s Downtown Gallery, owned by the charismatic champion of modernist painting Edith Halpert.

Oil on Canvas.

The Lane Collection.

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Artist Sam Doyle created this image of Jackie Robinson, the American sports figure who broke the racial apartheid system in Major League Baseball, with house paint on salvaged roofing tin. Living and working on St. Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina, Doyle used discarded local materials to document people from his local community, like the first midwife and undertaker on the island. He also drew inspiration from images in the newspaper, painting famous figures from civil rights leaders to celebrities.

Paint on found, weathered, corrugated roofing tin.

M. Theresa B. Hopkins Fund, Harry Wallace Anderson Fund, and Robert Jordan Fund.

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With a brilliant career spanning more than six decades, Rachel Ruysch ranks amongst the most talented flower painters in European art. An example of her late work, this still life features a bouquet with peonies, forget-me-nots, and chess flowers. The artist indicated her pride in her long career by adding the date of 1742 and her age of 79 to her signature. The painting was purchased with funds donated by Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, Visionary Benefactors and President’s Circle Patrons, who in 2017 made a commitment to give 86 Dutch and Flemish paintings to the MFA.

Oil on panel.

Museum purchase with funds donated by Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art.

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Jewish communities along the Mediterranean basin as well as in Asia house the Torah scroll in a wooden case called a tik. This example, created in Iraq, is covered in silver, richly decorated, and mounted with two silver Torah finials, or rimonim in Hebrew. It was commissioned by Aaron Shalom Gabbai, a prominent Baghdadi living in India, who donated it to a synagogue in Calcutta in memory of his son, who died prematurely. Although the MFA’s Judaica collection is diverse in its geographic span, this tik is the first object from Iraq—home to the earliest forced Jewish diaspora in the world.

Wood, silver, partially gilt.

Jetskalina H. Phillips Fund.

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Pop artist Chiho Aoshima combines the aesthetics of shōjo, a genre of Japanese manga geared toward young women, and the superflat style—a colorful, bold, flattened graphic movement founded by Takashi Murakami (whose Kaikai Kiki Collective includes Aoshima as a member). Aoshima synthesizes these more contemporary artistic influences with traditional ukiyo-e compositions, especially Hokusai’s representations of yōkai, supernatural spirits, which are a clear visual antecedent to the serpentine figures haunting the lower-left corner of this print.

Offset lithograph.

Edward S. Morse Memorial Fund. ©2003 Chiho Aoshima/Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Challenging both prejudices and omissions, John Wilson’s work is about refusing invisibility, a counterpoint to the historical absence of the Black figurative image. This striking drawing is a profile study of Roz Springer, a frequent model for the artist. Wilson compared the young woman to “living sculpture” and drew inspiration from her features for his signature work, Eternal Presence, a monumental sculpture on the grounds of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. The MFA acquired a reduced-scale version of that sculpture in 2022.

Black-and-white pastel and charcoal on paper.

Virginia Herrick Deknatel Purchase Fund and Lee M. Friedman Fund. © Estate of John Wilson.

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Julie Buffalohead’s work delves into stories and traditions of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, often depicting the coyote, a mythic symbol of wisdom and cunning. Here, she uses a mirror image of two coyotes to address the politicization of mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to comment on the increasing polarization of American politics. The coyote at right holds up a mask saying “help,” a reference to the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on Native American communities. The opposing coyote brandishes a placard that says “Tone Deaf,” and is covered with American flags—it represents the position that masking limits individual freedoms and rights.

Lithograph, screen print and collage.

Lee M. Friedman Fund. © Julie Buffalohead.

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In recent years, Rashid Johnson’s paintings of gridded, wide-eyed faces shaped with looping calligraphic strokes respond with all the awe, horror, and wonder that the present may evoke. Made during the COVID-19 pandemic and with haunting specters of racial disparity in mind, the artist’s Bruise Paintings use the tonality of a subdermal wound to summon, as the artist notes, “What it felt like to be living after a blunt force trauma of some sort.” The black-and-blue hues shift like a bruise—a metaphor for a body and soul still healing in unpredictable times.

Oil on linen.

Museum purchase with funds donated by Sandy and Paul Edgerley. © Rashid Johnson, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

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