Colnaghi and Colnaghi Elliott Master Drawings are pleased to announce Cross Routes, a selection presented for Master Drawings New York 2026.
Bringing together rare works on paper and paintings from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the exhibition explores how artists have responded to encounters across cultures, geographies, and artistic traditions.
Together, the works in Cross Routes underscore drawing as a historically mobile medium fundamentally conditioned by the displacements of artists, the circulation of visual models, and the transmission of cultural forms. They reveal how cross-border encounters have, across centuries, reshaped the descriptive, documentary, and imaginative functions of draftsmanship.
In addition to Cross Routes, a distinct group of works on paper will also be on view. Highlights include a pen-and-ink study by Raymond Lafage reflects the artist’s assimilation of Italian models during his Roman sojourn and bears a distinguished provenance including the collection of Henry Moore. The exhibition also features a concise group of drawings by Virginie Demont-Breton, whose realist depictions of coastal life in northern France demonstrate her forceful and economical draftsmanship, qualities which have recently led to acquisitions by the Musée d’Orsay and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.