Few women have enjoyed careers as fruitful and accomplished, as avant-garde and original as hers. Far ahead of her time and fascinated by all forms of aesthetics, Helena Rubinstein started collecting primal art as early as 1908 in London, posed for Raoul Dufy, Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, wore the creations of the greatest couturiers - Poiret, Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent – and divided her time between New York, London and Paris, the city she particularly loved. In Paris, in 1912, she began amassing her eclectic art collection that included works by artists such as Picasso, Chagall, Kikoïne, Utrillo, de Chirico, Léger, Modigliani, Brancusi and Marcoussis. It was also in Paris that she developed friendships with the many artists for whom she became a considerate patron.

The exhibition has been organized in partnership with the Jüdisches Museum in Vienna, which presented the show "Helena Rubinstein. Die Schönheitserfinderin" ("Helena Rubinstein. Pioneer of Beauty") from October 2017 to May 2018. The mahJ exhibition has been considerably enriched with works and documents relating to Helena Rubinstein’s Parisian period. It spotlights in particular her collections of modern art and primal arts, her furniture and clothes, as well as her Parisian residences, iconic examples of modern architecture, notably by Bruno Elkouken and Louis Suë.