'Greatest religious painter of 20th century' receives new interest, rare exhibit

What can a nearly forgotten set of 58 masterful etchings by a man once called one of the great artists of the 20th century tell us about the state of religious art in America?

At a rare showing of Miserere et Guerre (Mercy and War), a series by Georges Rouault, the pious and the curious will have a chance to judge for themselves. Rouault completed his expressionist landmark in the 1920s. New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among other top-notch museums, owns one of the 450 initial copies of the work and repeatedly celebrated an artist it called “the greatest religious painter of the 20th century.”

Yet the Parisian artist’s reputation has faded drastically in the course of a few decades. His last big American museum exhibit was in 1979. Not one of MOMA’s many Rouaults is up on its walls. Rouault’s entry in the standard text Janson’s History of Art has shrunk from a page and a half in 1971 to nothing by 2007.