The Pensacola Museum of Art (PMA) is pleased to announce "Facing Abstraction: Refiguring the Body in the Twentieth Century" on view in the Lewis Bear Family Galleries Friday, May 2 through Saturday, July 12.

"Facing Abstraction: Refiguring the Body in the Twentieth Century" presents work by world famous artists such as Picasso, Mark Rothko, Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder. This stunning exhibition focuses on artists' maneuvers around abstraction and figuration by considering their art alongside their writings. During the first two thirds of the twentieth century, avant-garde artists distorted and dissected faces and figures, abandoning mimesis, or imitation, as a model for representation. For critics who followed avantgarde trends, the success of such works were often measured in formal terms-the less representational an image appeared (until it finally disappeared), the more highly valued it was. Often absent from that critical dialogue, however, are artists' own perspectives on the abstracted body.

For more information about "Facing Abstraction: Refiguring the Body in the Twentieth Century" exhibition at the Pensacola Museum of Art, call 850-432-6247.