France’s national collection of modern art – almost 75,000 works in all – fills the bright and airy, well-lit galleries of the National Museum of Modern Art covering two complete floors of the Pompidou. All the major movements and artists of modern art (from 1905 to 1960) are well represented on the 5th floor, including Fauvist Matisse (don’t miss his cut-outs Deux danseurs; 1937–38), cubists Braque and Picasso, and surrealists Max Ernst, Dali, Miro and Man Ray. One floor down on the 4th, works created from 1960 to present take centre stage. Highlights include Ten Lizes (1963) by pop art–wizard Andy Warhol and Yves Klein’s monochromes (including a 1960 marine-blue monochrome that gave rise to the term ‘Klein blue’).
