Which twentieth-century master would we rank as most influential, Matisse or Picasso? Both were potent translators of Paul Cézanne’s conceptions for later generations, each in a different way, but what about the resonance of their own work? Picasso’s audacious shattering of solid form and fearless reinvention of human anatomy made him a universally recognized eponym for modern art, but to experienced eyes, Matisse’s transubstantiation of space and mass as eloquent, economical shapes and incisive lines seems not only equally bold and fearless but perhaps also even more inventive. If we’re thinking about color, there’s no contest. Matisse turned unexpected chromatic relationships into powerful equivalents for emotion, light, and space; Picasso used color, for the most part, to separate one thing from another. Of course, if we consider both artists’ exploration of sculpture, we have to admit a draw.

Which twentieth-century master would we rank as most influential, Matisse or Picasso?

Picasso’s example was clearly exciting and inspiring for countless hopeful American modernists, including some of our most celebrated artists. Most ambitious, forward-looking American painters and sculptors who came of age in the first half of the twentieth century felt compelled to come to grips, one way or another, with the implications of Picasso’s protean conceptions. Some did so with great individuality. Witness Stuart Davis’s translations of Cubism into American slang, Willem de Kooning’s Cubist-inflected accumulations of fluctuating planes, Robert Motherwell’s Picasso- (and Braque-) inspired collages, or David Smith’s reinvention of Picasso’s (and González’s)