Matisse & Picasso is the story of the artistic
relationship between two of Europe’s greatest twentieth-century artists.
Featuring more than 60 paintings and sculptures, as well as drawings,
prints and costumes, this is a story of friendship – and rivalry.
The exhibition traces the turbulent relationship of Henri Matisse and
Pablo Picasso from its early days during the belle epoque heyday of
Paris, through their decades of jockeying for artistic ascendency. This
enduring symbiosis continued after Matisse’s death in 1954, as Picasso’s
remembrance for his friend continued to reveal itself in his art.
Curated
by the National Gallery of Australia’s Head of International Art, Dr
Jane Kinsman, Matisse & Picasso draws on more than 200 paintings,
sculptures, drawings, prints, illustrated books and costumes to tell a
story of these two masters never-before-told in Australia.
The exhibition brings together numerous works that are rarely seen
together – made possible through the generosity of more than 20 private
and institutional lenders, including institutions in Europe, the United
Kingdom, the United States, South America and Australia including Musée
Picasso, Paris, Tate, London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, as well as private lenders in Australia, England and France. It
also draws on the National Gallery’s own extensive collection of works
by Matisse and Picasso.
National Gallery of Australia Director Nick Mitzevich said Matisse
and Picasso were both radicals, taking art in a new direction.
“Each used the other as an artistic foil and drew inspiration from
their rivalry, which spurred their creative brilliance to even greater
heights. This creative friction – over half a century of artistic
rivalry – turned the art world as we knew it on its head,” Mr Mitzevich
said.
See the story of Matisse and Picasso’s passionate relationship told
through their works of art, many in the southern hemisphere for the
first time.
With loans from museums and private collections worldwide, 'Nicolaes
Maes: Dutch Master of the Golden Age' will include over thirty-five
paintings and drawings by the Dordrecht-born artist who was one of Rembrandt’s most important pupils.
Nicolaes Maes, 'The Idle Servant' 1655
At the heart of the exhibition will be a selection of the intimate
scenes of daily life in domestic interiors for which Maes is best known.
He was a pioneer of the theme of the eavesdropper; his carefully styled
narratives often break the fourth wall, making the viewer a participant
in the scene, as characters (often a maid) eavesdrop or point to
illicit goings-on.
Also on display will be domestic scenes that are accompanied by an
unmistakable, if light-hearted, moral tone showing women spinning,
making lace, preparing a meal, or devoutly reading the Bible.
The exhibition starts with the early history scenes Maes painted,
mostly on biblical subjects, in the style of Rembrandt when he joined
his studio in Amsterdam in about 1650.
Finally, the exhibition will focus on the period from 1673 when Maes
settled in Amsterdam and abandoned domestic genre scenes to devote
himself almost exclusively to portraits. A group of these lesser-known
works will show how he brought a Van Dyckian elegance and swagger to the portraits.
Exhibition organised by the National Gallery, London and the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Catalogue
This book offers a close look at the art of Dutch Golden Age painter
Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693). One of Rembrandt’s most talented students,
Maes began by painting biblical scenes in the style of his famous
teacher. He later produced extraordinary genre pieces, in which the
closely observed actions of the main figure, often a woman, have a
hushed, almost monumental character. Maes also depicted mothers with
children or older women praying or sleeping; such works have placed him
among the most popular painters of the Dutch Golden Age. From around
1660, Maes turned exclusively to portraiture, and his elegant style
attracted wealthy and eminent clients from Dordrecht and Amsterdam. This
generously illustrated volume is the first in English to cover the full
range of his repertoire. The authors—curators from the National
Gallery, London, and the Mauritshuis, The Hague—bring extensive
knowledge to bear for the benefit of specialists and the general public.
Early medieval legends reported that one of the three kings who paid
homage to the newborn Christ Child in Bethlehem was from Africa. But it
would be nearly one thousand years before artists began representing
Balthazar, the youngest of the magi, as a Black African. This exhibition
explores the juxtaposition of a seemingly positive image with the
painful histories of Afro-European contact, particularly the brutal
enslavement of African peoples.
Georges Trubert. French, active Provence, France 1469 – 1508. The Adoration of the Magi,
about 1480 – 1490. Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment.
Leaf: 11.4 × 8.6 cm (4 1/2 × 3 3/8 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 48, fol. 59
Early medieval legends report that one of the three kings who paid
homage to the Christ Child in Bethlehem was from Africa. Written
accounts sometimes describe Balthazar, the youngest magus, as having a
dark complexion. Nevertheless, it would take nearly 1,000 years for
European artists to begin representing him as a Black man.
Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and RenaissanceArt,
an exhibition at the Getty Center Museum on view from November 19, 2019
to February 16, 2020, examines how representations in European art of
Balthazar as a Black African coincided with the increased interaction
between Europe and Africa, particularly with the systematic enslavement
of African peoples in the fifteenth century.
“This exhibition examines the illuminated manuscripts and
paintings in the Getty’s collection that tell the story of Balthazar,
placing this artistic-religious narrative in the context of the long
history of material trade networks between Africa and Europe,” says
Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum. “By exploring how his
representation coincided with and was furthered by the rise of the slave
trade, we can begin to understand the works of art in our collection,
and the broader historical and cultural phenomena they reflect, in new
ways.”
According to the Gospel of Matthew, “magi from the East”
paid tribute to the newborn Christ with offerings of gold, frankincense,
and myrrh. Magos is an ancient Greek word for a Persian
priest-astrologer or dream interpreter. Revered as wise men, they came
to be known as three kings because of the number and richness of their
gifts. European writers later assigned names to these individuals,
Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, and specified that the kings came from
the three then-known continents of the world: Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Despite further written descriptions of Balthazar as a Black African,
European artists continued for centuries to represent him as a White
king. Such treatment was not exclusive to the magi. Medieval European
artists typically (and potentially inaccurately) represented biblical
figures as White, indicating cultural or racial difference only though
costume or attribute.
In the earliest example of the Adoration of the Magi (about
1030-40) in the Getty’s collection, the three kings are virtually
identical and are represented as three White men. Only Caspar, the
eldest, is distinguished by his gray beard and slightly longer robes.
The exhibition contains other examples in which Balthazar’s African
origin was communicated through his turban, which resembled that of the
Mamluk sultan of Egypt, or his leopard-pelt headdress. The materials
that the magi held and gifted, including hardstone vessels and gold,
also carried powerful geographic associations with lands distant from
Europe.
Trade was an essential way people knew the world during the
Middle Ages and Renaissance. African elephant ivory and gold circulated
across the Sahara Desert and up the Swahili Coast into the Mediterranean
and Europe. Commerce in gold brought inhabitants of both continents
into frequent contact, and Black African soldiers served in the courts
of medieval European rulers. Diplomacy offered yet another point of
contact. In the fifteenth century, Ethiopian rulers sent church
delegations to Italy in an attempt to forge alliances, both religious
and military, with Rome. In the exhibition this story is presented
through a Gospel book from the northern monastery of Gunda Gunde.
In the 1440s, with the Portuguese incursions into West Africa, the
slave trade escalated in unprecedented ways, industrializing the
practice and bringing thousands—ultimately millions—of subjugated Black
Africans into Europe and the Americas.
It was at precisely this historical moment that artists
began representing Balthazar as a Black African with some frequency.
European artists also often alluded to his African identity by depicting
him as White but with a Black attendant. This frequent juxtaposition of
White ruler and Black servant in fifteenth-century images of the magi
reflects the very real commodification of Black Africans in Europe at
the time.
One intriguing manuscript in the exhibition provides a
tangible case study for the emerging interest in depicting Balthazar as
Black. The manuscript, first painted about 1190-1200, had included
several images of the magi as White men. Some time in its later history,
likely when the book was modified in the fifteenth century, Balthazar’s
face was tinted with a brown wash in several places (the opening on
display will show The Magi Approaching Herod). Such changes to
illuminated manuscripts reveal the evolving worldviews of their
audiences. Could the increased number of Black Africans in England at
this time have prompted the later artist to revise the figure of
Balthazar in the older manuscript?
Potts concludes, “There is so much that cannot now be known about the
countless Africans who inspired works such as those on view in the
gallery. Although many of their names have been lost to time, we are
hoping, through case studies, that this exhibition will pull back the
veil on the long history of Africans in pre-modern Europe.”
Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art
is curated by Kristen Collins, curator in the Manuscripts Department
and Bryan C. Keene, associate curator in the Manuscripts Department, and
will be on view November 19, 2019 through February 16, 2020 at the
Getty Center Museum. The curators of the exhibition shared their
inspiration for the project on the Getty Iris, and they are developing
further social media content for the run of the show.
Andrea
Mantegna (Italian, about 1431 - 1506), Adoration of the Magi, about
1495 - 1505. Distemper on linen. Dimensions: Unframed (Image size): 48.6
× 65.6 cm (19 1/8 × 25 13/16 in.) Framed: 71.8 × 86.8 × 3.5 cm (28 1/4 ×
34 3/16 × 1 3/8 in.) stretcher: 54.6 × 69.5 cm (21 1/2 × 27 3/8 in.)
Accession No. 85.PA.417 Object Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los
Angeles.
The Adoration of the Magi
(detail), about 1480–90, Georges Trubert. Tempera colors, gold leaf,
gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. The J. Paul Getty Museum
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston March 1–May 25, 2020
Unparalleled outside of Spain, the collections of the New York–based
Hispanic Society Museum & Library focus on the art and culture of
Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and the Philippines up to the early 20th
century.
The traveling exhibition Glory of Spain showcases some 200
objects spanning more than 4,000 years of Hispanic art and culture,
featuring artifacts from Roman Spain and decorative arts and manuscripts
of Islamic Spain. Also on view are paintings, sculpture, decorative
arts, and works on paper from medieval, “Golden Age,” and 18th-century
Spain, including works from Central and South America under Spanish
rule; and 19th- and early-20th-century Spanish paintings. Among the many
artists represented are Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, El Greco,
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, Diego Velázquez, and
Francisco de Zurbarán.
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), The Duchess of Alba, 1797, oil on canvas, the Hispanic Society of America.
Diego Velázquez, Camillo Astalli, Known as Cardinal Pamphili, c. 1650–51, oil on canvas, the Hispanic Society of America.
Juan Carreño de Miranda, Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, 1670, oil on canvas, the Hispanic Society of America.
José Agustín Arrieta, El Costeño (The Young Man from the Coast), c. 1843, oil on canvas, the Hispanic Society of America.
Toledo Museum of Art Jan. 18 to April 12, 2020 Cincinnati Art Museum May
15 to Aug. 9, 2020
The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) and the Cincinnati Art Museum are
collaborating on an intimate exhibition that highlights a group of
richly evocative French still lifes from a single decade, the 1860s.
ONE EACH: Still Lifes by Pissarro, Cézanne, Manet & Friends
will appear in TMA’s Gallery 18 from Jan. 18 to April 12, 2020, and
subsequently travel to Cincinnati, where it will be on display from May
15 to Aug. 9, 2020. The exhibition is curated by TMA’s Lawrence W.
Nichols, the William Hutton Senior Curator, European & American
Painting and Sculpture before 1900, and Peter Jonathan Bell,
Cincinnati’s Associate Curator of European Paintings, Sculpture and
Drawings.
Paul
Cézanne (French, 1839–1906), Still Life With Bread and Eggs. Oil on
canvas, 1865. Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Mary E. Johnston, 1955.73.
“With its solemnity as well as its spontaneity, Camille Pissarro’s Still Life
of 1867 is one of the most rewarding and mesmerizing compositions in
the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art,” Nichols said. “This
exhibition will place this masterpiece within the context of the
important developments in French still life paintings in this vital
decade.”
Also included are sterling examples from the hand of Édouard
Manet, regarded as the ‘father of modern painting’,
and Paul Cézanne,
considered to have been the driving precursor of Cubism, the early 20th
century’s major art movement. In addition, superb paintings by Claude
Monet, Henri Fantin-Latour and Gustave Courbet will be on view.
“Just as these French painters have inspired countless other
artists, this exhibition will nurture and provoke the artistic spirit in
our community,” Nichols said. “The artists’ presentation of the
tangible, experiential world will resonate with visitors.”
The Frist Art Museum presents J.M.W. Turner: Quest for the Sublime,
an exhibition of extraordinary oil paintings, luminous watercolors, and
evocative sketches by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), a
central figure in the Romantic movement widely recognized as Britain’s
greatest painter and among the most highly regarded landscape painters
in Western art. Selected from Tate’s Turner Bequest and organized in
cooperation with Tate, the exhibition will make its sole U.S. appearance
in the Frist’s Ingram Gallery from February 20 through May 31, 2020.
Long admired for his ingenuity, originality, and passion, Turner strove
to convey human moods and the feeling of awe aroused by nature’s
immensity and power—its palpable atmospheres, pulsating energy, the
drama of storms and disasters, and the transcendent effect of pure
light. With approximately 75 works, the exhibition conveys highlights in
the British painter’s career from the 1790s to the late 1840s, from
dizzying mountain scenes and stormy seascapes to epic history paintings
and mysterious views of Venice.
The Romantic movement of the late 18th- through mid-19th centuries
arose in response to the Enlightenment emphasis on reason over emotion.
“For Turner, psychological expression and the liberation of the
imagination were of paramount importance,” says David Blayney Brown,
senior curator, 19th-century British art, Tate Britain. “He achieved
these goals in images of the landscape that evoked human moods by
portraying extreme contrasts of intense light and gloomy clouds,
dramatic topographies, and energetic brushstrokes."
Turner portrays climatic events not only as compelling forces by
themselves, but also as settings and metaphor for historical and modern
dramas. “Mountains and sea show the world in motion: the glacial creep
of geological change in the Alps, the sudden fall of a rock propelled by
an avalanche, the changing appearance of Mont Rigi according to time
and weather, the swell and heave of the sea,” says Brown. Societal and
technological changes are captured as well, with images of steamships
and other suggestions of industry signaling the forthcoming machine age.
The exhibition also includes elemental images of sea and sky, painted
late in Turner’s life, which appear nearly abstract.
The exhibition provides insight into Turner’s process and working
methods by exploring sketchbook studies, works in progress, and
watercolors at various stages of completion and concludes with a section
devoted to Turner’s fascination with the sea. “As time passes, there is
a progression from a more substantial, three-dimensional style to one
that is more impressionistic and less solid,” says Brown. “In these
often-unfinished paintings, Turner stripped away subject and narrative
to capture the pure energy of air, light, and water.”
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art February 1 - April 26, 2020
This extraordinary exhibition, drawn entirely from the collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the nineteenth century, and the complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 80s, and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed. More than seventy-five paintings and works on paper help tell the story of the new style of painting which developed at the end of the nineteenth century—one that emphasized light and atmospheric conditions, rapid or loose brushstrokes, and a focus on brightly colored scenes from everyday life. Some of the artists featured in the exhibition include Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, among others, who exhibited in the official Impressionist exhibitions in Paris in the 1870s and 80s. Among the earliest American artists to embrace the style were John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Childe Hassam, and Frank W. Benson. Additional American artists embraced the style by the turn of the century, including Daniel Garber, Edward Redfield, Robert Spencer, Arthur Watson Sparks, Robert Lewis Reid, William Paxton, Chauncey Ryder, Frederick John Mulhaupt, and Guy Wiggins, are also highlighted in the exhibition.
Daniel Garber, American, 1880 - 1958, Goat Hill, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches, Museum Purchase, Reading Public Museum, 1930.131.1
John Singer Sargent, Man Reading (Nicola d’Inverno)
Arthur Watson Sparks (American, 1870-1919), Quai St. Catherine, Martigue (detail), c. 1910-1919, oil on board, Museum Purchase, Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.
The Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao October 25 , 2019 – February 16 , 2020
Masterpieces of the Kunsthalle Bremen: From
Delacroix to Beckmann, is an extraordinary selection from the holdings of the
Kunsthalle Bremen which reveals the close ties between German art and Fre nch
art in the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to the lively dialogue be tween
two parallel artistic streams which changed the way modern art was viewed, the
exhibition also reflects the unique history and artistic discourse of this
museum in a survey that starts with Romanticis m and then dips into
Impressionism, Post - Impressionism, the artists’ colony of Worpswede, and
German Expressionism. private donations of its members under the aegis of non -
expert leaders. Pauli based his acquisition policy on a dynamic dialogue
between French and German art. The story of the Kunsthalle Bremen is also the
story of the progress of a city with global connections in business, trade,
naval construction, and maritime sailing forged over the course of centuries,
which echoes the journey of Bilbao as well.
TOUR THROUGH THE EXHIBITION
Gallery 305: From Classicism to Romanticism This gallery
illustrates the evolution of German and French art from late Neoclassicism
until Romanticism and the postulates cultivated by German and French artists. Literary themes and the exploration of extreme moods burst forth from French
Romanticism, in contrast to the quiet observation of nature, the reflection on
mortality, and the admiration of the classical Mediterranean ideal, the
hallmarks of the German artists. Classicism The city of Rome ha s always
exerted enormous appeal on artists and intellectuals. Painters, sculptors,
and architects have traveled to the Eternal City from many northern European
countries since the 17th century. In 1809, a number of German artists banded
together to form the Brotherhood of Saint Luke (Lukasbund ), and one year
later they moved to Rome to live and work there communally. They aspired to
follow not the ideal of classical Rome but the biblical episodes in the style
of Raphael. Their goal was to restore the classical style and use their works
to appeal to the masses. Living in Sant’Isidoro monastery, they began to wear
loose clothing and long hair, just like Jesus of Nazareth, the source of their
nicknames the “ Nazarenes .”
The beauty of Italian women fascinated those
northern artists. The Nazarenes primarily appreciated the figures that
represent ed Raphael’s ideal, and the most celebrated example is
Portrait of Vittoria
Caldoni (1821) by Theodor Rehbenitz .
Likewise, the defined shapes, delicate
lines, and painstaking study of the surfaces define Young Woman (Melanchola ),
which Théodore Chassériau painted around 1833 – 35 following the principles of
Classicism. In this work, more than depicting a specific person, the artist is
representing a young woman who embodies a common theme in that era, the “ sweet
melancholy ” of the French tradition. Romanticism In the 1830s and 1840s, many
French artists were seeking inspiration in nature, and after 1820 they began to
visit the village of Barbizon. Located near Fontainebleau forest, it is
associated with the plein air painting movement, which came to be known as the “
Barbizon School .”
In the 1860s, a new generation of painters came to the
village, like young Impressionists Pierre - Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and
Camille Pissarro, who created their own art based on light and drew inspiration
from the plein air painting of the first generation. In reaction to the rationalism
of the Enlightenment, Romanticism spread throughout all of Europe as an artistic
movement which focused on the most obscure side of the soul. Its innovative use
of color and the distinction between valeur (light and shadow) and teinte (color)
distinguish it from previous styles, yet it took on distinct forms in Germany
and France.
Eugène Delacroix, a key figure in the French Romantic School, is
well represented in the collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen. In around 1800,
his German counterparts, including Carl Gustav Carus, Johan Christian Claus en
Dahl, Caspar David Friedrich, and Friedrich Nerly, developed a fascinating
inter action between landscape painting and science. Science, art, and
aesthetics are all intimately intertwined a s shown in Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe’s texts on geology and the letters and annotations on landscape painting
of Carus, a scholar from Dresden. Unlike Friedrich, who never visited Italy,
Carus travelled to that country three times, where he soaked up its beautiful
coastal landscapes, such as the one he captured in his Evening at the Sea (ca.
1820 – 25), perhaps inspired by the rugged coast of the Gulf of Naples or the Isle of Capri. This artist, who cultivated a particular interest i n geology,
was fascinated by these immense rocky formations, which he found to be a subject
of study a s well as a mirror into prehistory. Following the Romantic symbolic
code, Evening at the Sea reveals Carus’s predilection to represent both the
earthly an d the afterlife, turning painting into a way of showing the artist’s
emotions or feelings more than a mere copy of nature. Subjective emotion is a
basic premise in German Romanticism, the sine qua non for creating a truly meaningful
work of art. Viewers cannot comprehend the work until they immerse themselves
in it and feel it in the depths of their being.
Caspar David Friedrich
The Cemetery Gate, [Das Friedhofstor]
, ca. 1825–30
Oil on canvas
31 x 25 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Gift of the Galerieverein, 1933
Exceptionally, Friedrich’s The
Cemetery Gate (ca. 1825 – 30) was not conceived in the artist’s studio but
reflects the true state of the gateway to this cemetery, but its uniqueness
lies in his approach. The artist divides the picture into two contrasting area
s: in the foreground is the dark moor before the entrance, while in the
background is the sunny meadow with the graves, an allusion to somber earthly
life, which the artist contrasts to the tempting promise of the afterlife.
Gallery
306 : Impressionism, artists’ colonies, and collectives : The Pont - Aven School
Impressionism
The history of modern art is closely tied to the radical vision
of Impressionism and its followers, who transformed the intense experience
of the modern city and the yearning for an idyllic rural landscape as a place
of leisure through the use of pure color and the dissolution of shape. The
dialogue between French and German painting in this exhibition continues in
this gallery with works by
Paul Cézanne
Village behind Trees (Marines) [Dorf hinter Bäumen
(Marines)], ca.1898
Oil on canvas
66 x 82 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Purchased 1918
Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas,
Eva Gonzalès, Awakening Girl (1877-78)
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen. Purchased 1960, Inv. 827-1960/28
Eva Gonzalès, Claude
Monet, Pierre - Auguste Renoir, and Auguste Rodin, which are juxtaposed with
works by the representatives of German Impressionism, such as Lovis Corinth.
Vincent van Gogh
Field with Poppies [Mohnfeld], 1889
Oil on canvas
72 x 91 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Purchased 1911 with the support of the Galerieverein
Expressionism
Among the most important pieces in the collection of the Kunsthalle
Bremen is the group of works by Max Beckmann, a unique individual within the
history of modern art.
Whereas the Expressionists of Die Brücke were reacting
against the “ conventional, pre established currents ” in 1906, Beckmann was deliberately
s eeking to connect with the traditions of art history.
Max Beckmann
Self-Portrait with Saxophone [Selbstbildnis mit Saxophon]
In Self - Portrait with
Saxophone (1930), one of the more than 40 self - portraits Beckmann painted
over the course of his career as an exploration of his own self, we discover
the painter as a theater performer . In the 1930s, the world of cabaret,
vaudeville, and circus were fashion able an d attracted the attention of
countless artists, including Beckmann, who depicted them several times. In this
painting, the artist portrays himself ambiguously: he is wearing a smock over a
pink acrobat’s leotard and is holding a saxophone, a jazz instrument which evokes
contemporary life and independent art. Near the instrument is the horn of a gramophone,
so Beckmann was apparently depicting himself as a listener, yet also a passive
musician. The instrument, which is not being played, as well as his shaved head,
suggest his premonition of the political situation in Germany. Furthermore,
this symbolism is joined by the dissonant colors and undefined spaces of the
scene, which reinforce the prevailing mood. The arrival of Nazism in Germany disrupted
the painter’s career, and Beckmann left the country in 1937, after the opening
of the exhibition of “ degenerate art. ”
Otto Dix’s paintings span a wide
variety of styles, although he is primarily known for his images of war. Dix was
profoundly affected by World Wars I and II, and his art, which was highly
critical of his time, expresses the horror of these conflict s . One could say that
he is the painter of the ugly and never hesitate d to show it in his portraits.
One ex ample is his portrait of painter Franz Schulze, created in 1921 in
Dresden, where Dix founded the Dresdener Secession Gruppe in 1919, a radical
group of Expressionist and Dada painters and writers who were critical of
society. Dix cultivated portraiture as his second most important theme after war
scenes. In his portraits, he distorts reality to stress the anti - aesthetic;
his raw, provocative art is tinged with satire.
Surrealism
The works of
Richard Oelze stand out within German Surrealism . After having been a student
of Paul Klee at the Bauhaus and Otto Dix at the Dresden Fine Arts Academy,
Oelze discovered Parisian Surrealism in the mid - 1930s and began to develop
his own extraordinarily personal Surreal works characterized by profound psy chological
introspection. Oelze was interested in depicting existential relationships and
transformation s in painting. In his works, which were usually painted with
extreme precision, beings that seem like hybrids between animals and humans
blend with objects and spaces; his dreamlike visions always find new ways to
depict fears and desires. His works Outside (1965) and Inside (1955/56) are
among the most important paintings of his series entitled Interior Landscapes These
paintings contrast to the work After the Execution (ca. 1937), at the beginning
of André Masson’s second Surrealist period, which was characterized by
monstrous figures influenced by Picasso and Dalí.
Pablo Picasso
Bremen, the
Kunsthalle, and modern French art have close ties, and their strongest common
thread is the Bremen - based art dealer, Michael Hertz ( b. 1912 ; d. 1988). A
good friend and ideological companion of his fellow dealer, Daniel - Henry
Kahnweiler, Hertz was the exclusive dealer of Pablo Picasso’s graphic works in Germany.
The majority of German museums and collections bought their Picassos from
Hertz, resulting in the Kunsthalle Bremen’s extensive collection, which has
several hundred pieces.
However, its most prominent acquisition is Sylvette, an
outstanding example of the artist’s late virtuoso style, which was purchased in
1955, one year after it was painted. In 1954 in the French town of Vallauris,
the Spanish painter met Sylvette David, the 19 - year - old daughter of a
renowned Parisian gallery owner. Picasso was taken by her beauty, and in just
two months he created around 40 drawings and paintings of her. Sylvette is fashionably
dressed and wears her blond hair in a ponytail, similar to the young women who
appear in the magazines from that period. The Kunsthalle Bremen’s purchase of
this painting was hailed as a real coup . The Bremen newspaper Weser - Kurier describes
the painting as a “ symphony in gray. ” In May 1956, the Kunsthalle Bremen exhibited
the recently - purchased piece along with all its other works by Picasso — more
than 150 prints — thus becoming “ the German gallery with the most extensive
selection of important engravings by Picasso.”
Catalogue
The show will be
accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue which surveys the creation and
development of the Kunsthalle Bremen’s art collections via an extensive
introduction by its director, Christoph Grunenberg, and essays on the four
sections in this exhibition by experts Dorothee Hansen, Henrike Hans, Anne
Buschhoff, and Eva Fischer - Hausdorf, which contribute valuable insights about
the extraordinary selection of work.
Merry-Joseph Blondel
Family Portrait [Familienbildnis]
, 1813
Oil on canvas
39 x 60 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Purchased 1981 with Funds made available by the Free
Hansea9c City
of Bremen (Municipality)
Theodor Rehbenitz
Portrait of Vi5oria Caldoni [Bildnis der Vi5oria Caldoni]
, 1821
Oil on canvas
47 x 37.5 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen Bequest of
Johann
Friedrich Lahmann, 1937
Johann Christoph Erhard
Ar9sts Res9ng in the Mountains [Rastende Künstler im
Gebirge]
, 1819
Watercolor and pen with black ink over pencil
12.7 x 18.3 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Purchased 1952 with Funds of the Free Hansea9c City of
Bremen (Municipality)
. 1952/226
1
. 416-1933/10
Eugène Delacroix
Ecce homo
, ca. 1850
Oil on carboard
32 x 34 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Gi_ of Claus H. Wencke, Bremen, 2011
. 1505-2011/49
Eugène Delacroix
Lion A5acking a Boar [Löwe, einen Eber anfallend]
, 1851
Red chalk
19.9 x 30.8 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Purchased 1974 with Funds of the Free Hansea9c City of
Bremen
(Municipality)
. 1974/627
Camille Corot
Clearing in the Forest of Fontainebleau with a Low Wall
[Lichtung im
Wald von Fontainebleau mit einer kleinen Mauer]
, ca. 1830/35
Oil on paper on canvas
32.3 x 44 cm
Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen
Purchased 1977 with Funds made available by the Free
Hansea9c City
of Bremen (Municipality)
. 1209-1977/14
Pierre Auguste Renoir
S9ll Life with Fruit (Figs and Currants) [Früchtes9llleben
(Feigen und
An enduring storyteller; a master of light – Rembrandt is one of the
greatest painters who ever lived. This landmark exhibition celebrates
350 years since his death with 35 of his iconic paintings, etchings and
drawings, including major international loans.
Arranged thematically, Rembrandt’s Light will take you on a
journey from high drama and theatricality, to the contemplative and
spiritual, showcasing his use of light. The exhibition focusses on the
period from 1639–1658, when he lived in his ideal house at Breestraat in
the heart of Amsterdam (today the Museum Het Rembrandthuis). Its
striking, light-infused studio was where Rembrandt created his most
exceptional work including The Denial of St Peter and The Artist’s Studio.
Echoing Rembrandt’s power for storytelling, the exhibition’s
atmospheric lighting and design has been carefully curated to immerse
audiences in his world. In-house curators Jennifer Scott and Helen
Hillyard have collaborated with the award-winning cinematographer, Peter
Suschitzky, famed forhis work on films such as Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Mars Attacks! to create this unique experience.
Highlights include the contemplative Christ and St Mary Magdalen at the Tomb and three of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings of women:
A Woman Bathing in a Stream,
A Woman in Bed
and the Gallery’s Girl at a Window all hanging together.
The exhibition is the first to use a new innovative LED Bluetooth
lighting system designed by Erco, whilst, in the final room, artist
Stuart Semple has provided his Black 3.0 (the world’s blackest black acrylic paint) to create a dramatic backdrop for some of Rembrandt’s finest portraits.
National Gallery, London 13 February – 16 May 2021
A major exhibition devoted to German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer will open at the National Gallery in February 2021.
The first significant UK exhibition of the artist’s works in such a
wide range of media for nearly twenty years will show Dürer’s career as a
painter, draughtsman and printmaker.
It will also be the first to focus on the artist through his travels,
bringing the visitor closer to the man himself and the people and
places he visited, through over 100 paintings, drawings prints and
documents loaned from museums and private collections worldwide.
Dürer’s Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist
(13 February – 16 May 2021) will, for the first time, chronicle the
Nuremberg-born artist’s journeys to the Alps and Italy in the mid-1490s;
to Venice in 1505–7; and to the Netherlands in 1520–1, journeys which
brought him into contact with artists and fuelled his curiosity and
creativity as well as increasing his fame and influence.
One of the exhibition’s most striking loans will be a double-sided
painting of a Madonna and Child from the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, which will be shown in the UK for the first time.
The picture, which was
intended as a private devotional image, was made for a Nuremberg family
and carries on its reverse a depiction of the story of Lot and his
daughters from the Book of Genesis. Lot and his two children are seen
fleeing from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as Lot's wife is
turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying the divine command by
looking back on the scene of retribution.
The painting shows the
influence on Dürer of both Netherlandish and Italian Renaissance
artists, such as Giovanni Bellini, and reflects the huge importance of
travel and exchange of artistic ideas in Dürer’s career.
The exhibition will start by introducing Dürer and Nuremberg before
showing his very first travels as an artist in training and then his
first major journey to the Alps and Italy.
His Saint Jerome
in the National Gallery’s collection, with its detailed landscape and
extraordinary reverse will show the huge development in Dürer’s work
following his visit to Italy in the mid-1490s.
The exhibition will explore Dürer’s time in Venice in 1505-7 and the
final journey explored in detail will be Dürer’s travels to the
Netherlands in 1520-1. Highlights will include some of his early studies
of human proportion and visitors will experience how Dürer’s career
developed in the years following his return to Nuremberg when he created
the engravings which have become some of his best-known works, such as
the 'Melancholia' and 'Saint Jerome'.
As well as works with religious subjects, the exhibition will include
portraits and some of his most beautiful and engaging drawings in which
Dürer recorded the people, places and animals he saw.
The exhibition is organised by the National Gallery in partnership
with the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen whose Dürer exhibition in
2020–21 will commemorate the 500th anniversary of the journey the artist
made to the city in 1520–21.
Eva Gonzalès, Awakening Girl (1877-78)
