Category: Exhibitions
Spanish and Italian Drawings at the National Library of Spain
October 14 2021
Picture: bne.es
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Library of Spain in Madrid are opening a new exhibition tomorrow on Spanish and Italian Drawings of the Sixteenth Century. Drawing from their own collections consisting of more that 77 folios, many of the works on display have never been exhibited to the public. Spanish artists represented in the exhibition include the likes of Damián Forment, Pietro Morone, Luis de Vargas (Angelino de Medoro); Gaspar Becerra, Blas de Prado, Francisco Pacheco and El Greco. The Italian drawings are represented by works by Niccolò Circignani, Ludovico Cigoli, Jacopo da Empoli, Alessandro Casolani, Pietro Sorri and newly attributed works to Orazio Samacchini, Nosadella, Camillo Procaccini and Bartolomeo Passerotti, Agostino Carracci and Guido Reni.
The show will run until 16th January 2022.
Curator Talks on Vermeer
October 14 2021
Picture: Dresden Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (Network of Curators of Dutch and Flemish Art) have drawn attention to a series of online lectures (in various languages) presented by leading curators on various subjects relating to Vermeer. These lectures will be scheduled between October and December, coinciding with Dresden's current Vermeer exhibition.
Among the lecturers included will be the likes of Uta Neidhardt, Gregor Weber, Betsy Wieseman, Silke Gatenbröcke, Xavier Salomon, Friederike Schütt, Katja Kleinert, Bart Cornelis and Uta Neidhardt.
Attendance is free although registration is required.
Whistler: Art & Legacy - Limiting Collections
October 13 2021
Picture: The Hunterian
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Hunterian Museum in Glasgow's exhibition Whistler: Art & Legacy will be closing at the end of this month. However, the museum are putting on a fascinating panel discussion on 19th October 2021 on the topic of 'Historical limitations on the use of museum collections: the ethics of change'. The inspiration came from the bequest rules surrounding the Hunterian's vast collection of Whistler works, which limit their display to Glasgow only.
The panel will include Dr Xavier Bray, Director of the Wallace Collection, London, Duncan Dornan, Head of Museums and Collections at Glasgow Life, Dr Grishka Petri, Honorary Research Fellow (University of Glasgow, School of Culture & Creative Arts), Dr Elena Cooper, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, CREATe, University of Glasgow.
One can imagine the panel will represent a majority of those in favour of change, especially as the panel contains representatives of institutions who have successfully overturned rules of bequests in recent times.
Experience Goya in Lille
October 13 2021
Video: PBALILLE
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Palais des Beaux-arts de Lille will be opening their latest exhibition later this week. Experience Goya will feature more than 80 original works, half by the artist, in what it describes as an 'immersive, aesthetic and sensory experience [with] (videos and soundscapes etc.)'. The exhibition will also include later piece that show a response to Goya's work, including examples from Delacroix, Manet, Dali and many other artists running up to the present day.
The show will run until 14th February 2022.
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Speaking as someone who is rather sensitive to music, I do wonder if the soundtrack to the video above is enhancing or off putting...
Young Poland at the William Morris Gallery
October 12 2021
Video: William Morris Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The William Morris Gallery in London has recently opened their latest exhibition entitled Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918).
According to the gallery's online blurb:
Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918) is the first major exhibition to explore the decorative arts and architecture of Young Poland (Młoda Polska), an extraordinary cultural movement that flourished in response to Poland’s invasion and occupation by foreign powers.
Originating in Kraków and the nearby village of Zakopane at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, Young Poland sought inspiration in local folk traditions, wildlife and craftsmanship while collapsing the distinction between the fine and applied arts. Developing themes explored in a critically acclaimed book by its curators (Lund Humphries, 2020), the exhibition is the first in the world to position Young Poland as an Arts & Crafts movement, revealing strong stylistic and philosophical affinities with the work of William Morris and John Ruskin.
The show will run until 30th January 2022.
Holbein: Capturing Character
October 12 2021
Picture: Getty Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles will be opening their latest Old Masters exhibition next week. Holbein: Capturing Character has been co-organised in partnership with the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.
According to the exhibition's blurb:
Holbein: Capturing Character is the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist in the United States. Spanning Holbein’s entire career, it starts with his early years in Basel, where Holbein was active in the book trade and created iconic portraits of the great humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536). Holbein stayed in England in 1526–1528 and moved there permanently in 1532, quickly becoming the most sought-after artist among the nobles, courtiers, and foreign merchants of the Hanseatic League. In addition to showcasing Holbein’s renowned drawn and painted likenesses of these sitters, the exhibition highlights the artist’s activities as a designer of prints, printed books, personal devices (emblems accompanied by mottos), and jewels. This varied presentation reveals the artist’s wide-ranging contributions to the practice of personal definition in the Renaissance. Works by Holbein’s famed contemporaries, such as Jan Gossaert (ca. 1478–1532) and Quentin Metsys (1466–1530), and a display of intricate period jewelry and book bindings offer further insights into new cultural interests in the representation of individual identity, and highlight the visual splendor of the art and culture of the time.
The exhibition catalogue, edited by Anne T. Woollett, with contributions by Austėja Mackelaitė, John T. McQuillen, and others, is available here.
The show will run from 19th October 2021 - 9th January 2022 and will then move to the Morgan Library and Museum between 11th February 2022 - 15th May 2022.
'Les Animaux du Roi' at Versailles
October 12 2021
Video: Château de Versailles
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Palace of Versailles have opened their latest exhibition today entitled Les Animaux du Roi.
According to the website's blurb:
The exhibition aims to illustrate the bond between the Court of Versailles and animals, whether “companion animals” (dogs, cats and birds, mainly), exotic beasts or “wild” creatures. No study of the Palace during the reign of Louis XIV would be complete without considering the Royal Menagerie, which the Sun King had installed close to the Grand Canal. It was home to the rarest and most exotic animals – from coatis to quaggas, cassowaries to black-crowned cranes (nicknamed the “royal bird”) – constituting an extraordinary collection in which the king took ever greater pride.
The exhibition, which seems to feature a great deal of old master paintings, will run until 13th February 2022.
Titian's Vision of Women in Vienna
October 8 2021
Video: KHM
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna opened their latest exhibition this week. Titian's Vision of Women: Beauty, Love, Poetry focuses on images of Venetian Women in the context of sixteenth century ideals and contemporary society.
One of the great successes of the exhibition is the reunion of three of Titian's most iconic images including "La Bella" from Florence, the Hermitage’s "Young Woman with a Plumed Hat" alongside the Kunsthistorisches Museum's "Young Woman in a Fur" :
The exhibition will run until 16th January 2022.
Hunting for Butterflies at the Galleria Carlo Orsi
October 7 2021
Picture: Galleria Carlo Orsi
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Galleria Carlo Orsi in Milan have recently opened a curious sounding exhibition on the reasons that people collect works of art. A caccia di Farfalle. Lo spirito del collezionista (Hunting for Butterflys - The Spirit of a Collector) features works by Pompeo Batoni (Lucca, 1708 - Roma, 1787) (pictured) Lorenzo di Credi (Firenze, 1456/1459 - 1536) and Giorgio Gandini del Grano (Parma, inizi XVI secolo - 1538) and reflects on themes such as joys, obstacles, stumbles, passions, loves and mistakes.
Although the exhibition will run only till 5th November 2021 the exhibition catalogue has been published online for free (in Italian).
First Reviews of Poussin Exhibition
October 6 2021
Video: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The first reviews have arrived for the National Gallery's upcoming exhibition Poussin and the Dance.
The Guardian's Jonathan Jones has given the show 5/5 stars, expressing that:
The National Gallery has cracked art’s most elitist code. Its liberating new exhibition unleashes a Poussin who is human, passionate and high on ancient history. This it achieves with a razor-sharp focus on his first 10 years living in Rome and feasting on its pleasures.
Alaistair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph has gone the other way giving the show a mere 2/5 stars, explaining:
Well, check out these wild and naughty pagan pictures filled with drunkenness and dacing and sex: they demonstrate that Poussin, as a young man at least, could let his hair down. For all his formality, Poussin was also "fun". I'm not buying it (...) But if this exhibition makes him come off as anything, it is as a colossal nerd.
Laura Freeman in The Times is more positive:
Poussin, the classicist’s classicist, has a reputation for chilliness, for pictures more intellectual than instinctive, for a certain Latin-primer formality. Not so, say the curators who have borrowed more than 20 paintings and drawings that show Poussin at his riotous, bibulous best. You know how millennials talk about going out-out? Well, this is Poussin out-out, Poussin in his toga glad-rags, Poussin on the town with “the lads”, the lads being Bacchus, Silenus and that old goat-god Pan. This is the Poussin of satyrs and maenads, of boozy putti and Priapic worship.
The exhibition runs from 9th October 2021 till 2nd January 2022.
Old Master Drawings at the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis
October 6 2021
Picture: @museunacionalsoaresdosreis
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis in Porto, Portugal, has recently opened their latest exhibition Drawings by European Masters in Portuguese Collections. The exhibition contains 100 works loaned from private and national collections including 'the only Leonardo existing in Portugal'.
The show will run until 31st December 2021.
'Remember Me' at the Rijksmuseum
October 1 2021
Picture: The Rijksmuseum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Rijksmuseum have a new exhibition of Renaissance Portraits at the moment. Remember Me: Stories about Portraiture in the Renaissance focuses on nine themes including Ambition, Admire Me, Pray for Me, This is Me, Learned, Authority, Cherish Me and Down the Generations.
The Guardian have picked up the story that the show contains some of the earliest European portraits of African men. The article suggests that recent political events have had an impact on how curators of the museum have approached the subject.
Artemisia at the Wadsworth Atheneum
October 1 2021
Picture: @TheWadsworth
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut opened their latest exhibition By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artist in Italy, 1500-1800 yesterday.
According to the blurb on their website:
Women artists played a vibrant yet overlooked role in Italy around 1600. The first exhibition solely dedicated to Italian women artists at the Wadsworth, By Her Hand explores how important women artists succeeded in the male-dominated art world of the time. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–after 1654), one of the most fascinating seventeenth-century Italian painters, takes center stage.
The Wadsworth’s Self-Portrait as a Lute Player is compared with a related painting from the National Gallery, London—a rare opportunity to see these paintings side by side. Gentileschi’s pioneering depictions of strong women, such as her Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes from the Detroit Institute of Arts, will also be on view.
Beyond Gentileschi, the accomplishments of a diverse and dynamic group—from the court painter Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625), to the Venetian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), among other talented and virtually unknown Italian women artists—are introduced and celebrated.
The show will close on 9th January 2022.
CLASS SOCIETY: Everyday Life as Seen by Dutch Masters
September 27 2021
Picture: Hamburger Kunsthalle
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Hamburger Kunsthalle will be opening their latest exhibition on Dutch seventeenth century paintings in November. CLASS SOCIETY Everyday Life as Seen by Dutch Masters will include works by the likes of Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard ter Borch, Jan Steen, David Teniers and include a modern response from artists Stefan Marx and Lars Eidinger.
According to the gallery's website:
With Class Society. Everyday Life as Seen by Dutch Masters, scheduled from 26 November 2021 to 27 March 2022, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is devoting a comprehensive show comprising some 150 works – paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and videos – to a chapter of an extremely multifaceted epoch of European art history. The exhibition is primarily based on the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s superb holdings of Dutch 17-th century paintings, which at the same time are the main emphasis of the museum’s Old Masters Collection and are meant to be acknowledged accordingly with this show. Another essential part of the presentation is dedicated to overarching aspects and, based on socio-cultural developments and political factors, it draws up a characteristic image of Dutch society in the 17th century that the selected artists seem to have portrayed in their paintings.
Beyond this, the exhibition evaluates the representations on display according to socio-critical issues of the 21st century and thus links them to our own everyday reality. The art of the Old Masters, as well as the context it was created in, often appear far removed from current debate, as their original intention seemingly has nothing in common with the complex contexts and topics concerning our society today. The exhibition wants to break with these prejudices by discussing controversial theses.
The show will run from 26th November 2021 - 27th March 2022.
Lucy and Catherine Madox Brown at the Watts Gallery
September 23 2021
Picture: @WattsGallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey, will be opening their latest exhibition Lucy and Catherine Madox Brown next week.
According to their press release:
‘Uncommon Power’: Lucy and Catherine Madox Brown is the first exhibition dedicated to the life, art and feminist legacies of sisters Lucy Rossetti (1843-1894) and Catherine Hueffer (1850-1927).
Commonly referred to as the daughters of Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893), these two creative women grew up at the heart of the Pre-Raphaelite world and, as this exhibition demonstrates, became talented, professional artists in their own right.
Bringing together Rossetti and Hueffer’s rarely exhibited works - notably Ferdinand and Miranda Playing Chess (1871, Private Collection), A Deep Problem: 9 and 6 make – (1875, Birmingham Museums Trust) and the recently conserved The Fair Geraldine (or The Magic Mirror, 1871, Private Collection) - with archival material, including a family photograph album, personal correspondence and painting palettes, the exhibition explores themes of their Pre-Raphaelite upbringing, artistic training, kinship, female friendship and creative motherhood.
The show will run from 28 September 2021 - 20 Februrary 2022.
Murillo Exhibition at the Prado
September 23 2021
Video: Museo del Prado
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museo del Prado in Madrid opened their latest exhibition this week entitled Murillo’s The Prodigal Son and the art of narrative in Andalusian Baroque painting. Notably, the exhibition includes recently conserved works on loan from the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
According to their website:
During the central decades of the 17th century a type of painting was produced in Andalusia that was notably representative of both the high levels achieved by the principal painters of the region and the expectations and tastes of one of the most active sectors of their clientele. These are works structured as series, most of medium size and commissioned by private individuals for domestic interiors or private oratories. They depict a “story” taken from the Bible or the hagiographies, either in the form of an individual’s life story recounted in greater or lesser detail, or the different stages within one biographical episode. The format allowed artists to display not only their use of compositional devices but also their skills as narrators of sequential episodes.
The content of the series and the way the artists chose to depict the subjects often reflect the contemporary world of the individuals who commissioned them, their codes and aspirations, while also providing us with an insight into part of their material culture.
With the aim of learning more about these works and structured around the series of six, recently restored canvases of Murillo’s “Prodigal Son” series, generously loaned by the National Gallery of Dublin, the exhibition includes the four paintings in the collection of the Prado associated with that series by Murillo; the “Story of Joseph” series by Antonio del Castillo, which has survived complete; and most of the paintings from the series on “The Life of Saint Ambrose” by Juan de Valdés Leal. A comparison between these works by three of the leading names in Andalusian Baroque painting reveals both affinities and differences with regard to technique, style and approach to narrative.
The show will run until 23rd January 2022.
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It is a little obvious that the poor marketing department of the museum didn't have much money to spend on this video Still, it does the job I suppose!
Charleston: The Bloomsbury Muse at Philip Mould & Co
September 23 2021
Video: Philip Mould & Co
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The London dealers Philip Mould & Co have opened their latest free exhibition Charleston: The Bloomsbury Muse.
The exhibition will run until 10th November 2021.
Here are reviews from The Telegraph and The Evening Standard.
Nature in Image: Austrian Baroque landscapes
September 17 2021
Picture: domquartier.at
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Residenzgalerie in Salzburg, Austria, opened a rather interesting exhibition over the summer. Nature in Image: Austrian Baroque landscapes examines Austrian landscape paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
According to their website:
Nature as fine art. Landscape as motif. Trees bowed by the wind, the play of colours through the leaves of forests bathed in light, an approaching storm, the hazardous path over a mountain pass, the hunting party resting in a secluded spot, the cheerful bustle of a country fair set in a landscape – Austrian baroque painters between 1600 and 1800 captured all this and much more on canvas, copper plates and wood panels. The formats ranged from postcard-sized cabinet pieces to canvases more than 2m wide. 18th-century collectors from aristocratic, ecclesiastical and bourgeois circles were great admirers of these diverse renderings. The presentation is rounded off by a comparison with Dutch, Italian and French models, and examples of the change in style around 1800.
The first comprehensive exhibition of Austrian baroque landscapes takes into account the increased interest in the subject shown in recent years.
The exhibition will run until 31st January 2022.
Rembrandt in Print in Cork
September 17 2021
Picture: Crawford Art Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland, have recently opened their latest exhibition Rembrandt in Print.
According to their website:
Rembrandt in Print presents 50 of the finest works from the Ashmolean’s world-class collection of over 200 etchings and drypoints by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669).
Widely hailed as the greatest painter of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt was also one of the most innovative and experimental printmakers of the seventeenth century. This touring exhibition will present Rembrandt as an unrivalled storyteller through a selection of fifty outstanding prints ranging from 1630 until the late 1650s. These works demonstrate Rembrandt’s inventive techniques and extraordinary skills. They are displayed together for the first time.
Rembrandt in Print is accompanied by a special Print Studio in collaboration with Cork Printmakers.
The exhibition will run from 17th September 2021 till 9th January 2022.
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While you're there, make sure you go and take a glance at this brilliant unfinished George Romney. It was hanging by the staircase the last time I visited the gallery.
Venetian Drawings at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan
September 16 2021
Picture: lamilano.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A new exhibition of Venetian drawings from the eighteenth century has opened in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. The exhibition contains 48 works by the likes of Giovanni Battista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Antonio Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto. The works have been drawn from the city's collection of works, many of which were initially assembled in Milanese aristocratic collections.
