The first decade of the 20th century saw a revival of classical subjects among avant-garde artists. Starting with Aristide Maillol's sculpture Mediterranean (1905), the Symbolist painter Maurice Denis and Neo-Impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross created pastoral landscapes juxtaposed with traditional bathing nudes and figures in Greco-Roman costumes on the Mediterranean shore. The 1990 exhibition On Classic Ground at the Tate gallery revealed the characteristics of this type of classicism, Mediterranean classicism, in France, Spain, and Italy from 1910 to 1930. Based on the perspective provided by this exhibition, this paper aims to reconsider the relationship between avant-garde art and Mediterranean classicism, as well as how it was received in Catalonia. Chapter 1 discusses the development of Mediterranean classicism in France in terms of classicism as a national identity and primitivism as the criticism of academic art by avant-garde artists. By the end of this chapter, it would become clear that the modernist discourse, which attempted to see Post-Impressionist painters as precursors of both classicism and primitivism, was affected by Denis’ historical accounts about them. Chapter 2 examines how Mediterranean classicism in France influenced the formation of Catalan cultural identity through the regional movement Noucentisme that emerged in 1906. Alastair Wright's research on Henri Matisse connects the significance of Mediterranean classicism not to the discourse of modernist art history, but to the problem of identity in the subject of modernism. Chapter 3 explores the disruptive nature of Matisse's Le Bonheur de vivre (1905-6) against Mediterranean classicism according to Wright’s perspective. And the conclusion is that Mediterranean classicism attracted many avant-garde artists because it offered a clear vision to the French and Catalans of the early 20th century, who were facing an identity crisis caused by racial and cultural mixing, brought about by colonization and internationalization.