ARCHIVE/Art Exhibitions

2014 EUROPEAN ART EXHIBITION AND EVENTS PROGRAMME

Written by Aksel Ritenis


The following provides summary information of the museum and gallery exhibitions and other events. It is possible that dates, titles and admission prices may change so please do check before going to press.

Opening in January

15 January to 19 April 2014

Giorgio de Chirico: Myth and Mystery

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

30 January to 27 April 2014

A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes from Britain and Germany

The Courtauld Gallery, London

Opening in February

14 February to 14 December 2014

Sense and Sensuality: Art Nouveau 1890-1914

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

20 February to 18 May 2014

Court and Craft: A Masterpiece from Northern Iraq

The Courtauld Gallery, London

21 February to 20 July 2014

A Sense of Family

Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS), Florence, Italy

Opening in March

8 March to 20 July 2014

Pontormo and Rosso. Diverging Paths of Mannerism

Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy

22 March to 2 November 2014

The Colourful World of Kaffe Fassett

American Museum in Britain, Bath

29 March to 27 July 2014

Henri Matisse Sculpture: The Backs

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

29 March to 14 September 2014

Monument: Aftermath of War and Conflict

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

Opening in April

10 April to 25 August 2014

India: Jewels that Enchanted the World

The State Museums of Moscow Kremlin

26 April to 27 July 2014

John Virtue: The Sea

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

30 April to 29 June 2014

The Years of ‘La Dolce Vita’

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

Opening in May 24 May to 14 September 2014

The Wonder of Birds

Norwich Castle Art Museum & Gallery

Opening in June

19 June to 21 September 2014

Bruegel to Freud: Master Prints from The Courtauld Gallery

The Courtauld Gallery, London

Opening in July

4 to 11 July 2014

Master Paintings Week in collaboration with London Art Week, London

Opening in September

6 September to 14 December 2014

The Harsh Reality: Modern and Contemporary British Painting

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

27 September to 14 December 2014

Pan-Africanism: Post-Colonial Predicaments

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

Opening in October

23 October 2014 to 18 January 2015

Egon Schiele

23 October 2014 to 18 January 2015

Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude

The Courtauld Gallery, London

Exhibitions in Detail

Giorgio de Chirico: Myth and Mystery

15 January to 19 April 2014

This exhibition offers British audiences an outstanding opportunity to explore the enigmatic world of Giorgio de Chirico through rarely-seen sculptural works reflecting the artist’s fascination with classical myth and legend. Organised with Bologna’s Galleria d’Arte Maggiore – with which the Estorick Collection recently collaborated on an extremely successful exhibition of etchings by Giorgio Morandi – it will also feature a selection of drawings on related themes by the father of Pittura metafisica.

De Chirico was born in Greece to Italian parents. He studied painting in Athens, Florence and Munich, where he was influenced by the Symbolists as well as the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche – particularly the latter’s belief that “underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed”. Between 1910 and 1915 he established the characteristic iconography of Metaphysical painting – mannequins, illogical perspectives, deserted city squares – and his ideas and imagery were to exert an enormous influence on the development of Surrealism.

De Chirico began to sculpt towards the end of the 1960s, producing small bronze versions of the mysterious figures populating his paintings – including his singular re-imaginings of characters such as Orpheus, Castor, and Hector and Andromache, resembling tailor’s dummies or automatons. Subsequently, he devoted himself to the creation of multiples in silver patina and gilded bronze. Such was the success of his work that in 1972 he was awarded the Ibico Reggino Prize for Sculpture, jointly with Henry Moore.

Despite not having worked in three dimensions until relatively late in his career, sculpture had long fascinated de Chirico who wrote a brief essay on the subject in 1927, noting how “in the museum the appearance of the statue […] is similar to that of people glimpsed in a room we thought was empty. The lines of the walls, the floor and the ceiling separate the statue from the outside world; the statue is thus no longer a figure destined to merge with nature, the beauty of the landscape, or to complete the aesthetic harmony of an architectural construction; it appears to us in its most solitary aspect, and is rather a spectre that shows itself to us and surprises us”.

THE ESTORICK COLLECTION OF MODERN ITALIAN ART Described by Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, as “one of the finest collections of early 20th century Italian art anywhere in the world” – opened in January 1998. Comprising some 120 paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints and sculptures by many of the most prominent Italian artists of the modernist era, the Collection is housed in a Georgian Grade II listed building.

ESTORICK COLLECTION OF MODERN ITALIAN ART

39a Canonbury Square

London N1 2AN

Tel. +44 (0)20 7704 9522

www.estorickcollection.com

Opening hours:

Wednesday to Saturday – 11 am to 6 pm

Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm

Open until 9 pm on the first Thursday of each month

Admission:

£5, concessions £3.50

Students free

A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes from Britain and Germany

The Courtauld Gallery, London, 30 January to 27 April 2014

The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, 30 May to 7 September 2014

This exhibition is the result of collaboration between The Courtauld Gallery and The Morgan Library and Museum in New York. It explores aspects of Romantic landscape drawing in Britain and Germany from its origins in the 1760s to its final flowering in the 1840s. Bringing together twenty-six major drawings, watercolours and oil sketches from both collections by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Palmer, Caspar David Friedrich and Karl Friedrich Lessing, it draws upon the complementary strengths of both collections: the Morgan’s exceptional group of German drawings and The Courtauld Gallery’s wide-ranging holdings of British works. A Dialogue with Nature offers the opportunity to consider points of commonality as well as divergence between two distinctive schools. Together, these drawings exemplify Friedrich’s understanding of Romantic landscape draughtsmanship as ‘a dialogue with Nature’.

Friedrich claimed that ‘the artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself’. His words encapsulate two central elements of the Romantic conception of landscape: close observation of the natural world and the importance of the imagination. The display opens with a selection of drawings made in the late 18th century. The legacy of Claude Lorrain’s ideal vision is visible in Jakob Philipp Hackert’s magisterial view of ruins at Tivoli, near Rome, as well as in a more intimate but purely imaginary rural scene by Thomas Gainsborough, while cloud and tree studies by John Constable and Johann Georg von Dillis demonstrate the importance of drawing from life and the observation of natural phenomena.

The important visionary strand of Romanticism is brought to the fore in a group of works centred on Friedrich’s mesmerising Moonlit Landscape and Samuel Palmer’s Oak Tree and Beech, Lullingstone Park. Both are exemplary of their creators’ intensely spiritual vision of nature as well as their strikingly different techniques, Friedrich’s painstakingly fine detail contrasting with the dynamic freedom of Palmer’s penwork. The linear precision of Lessing’s rendering of a churchyard being overrun by nature contrasts with the broader and more monumental treatment of a similar subject in John Robert Cozens’ Ruined fort near Salerno.

A Dialogue with Nature is the first exhibition to be organised jointly by The Courtauld IMAF Centre for Drawings and The Morgan Library and Museum’s Drawings Institute. The accompanying publication will feature an essay by Matthew Hargraves, Yale Center for British Art, and Morgan-Courtauld Fellow, and individual catalogue entries for each work by Rachel Sloan, The Courtauld Gallery.

THE COURTAULD GALLERY houses one of Britain’s finest and best loved art collections. It is part of The Courtauld Institute of Art, an internationally renowned centre for the study of the history and conservation of art and architecture. The Courtauld is located in the elegant 18th century surroundings of Somerset House in central London.

THE COURTAULD GALLERY

Somerset House, Strand

London WC2R 0RN

Tel. +44 (0)20 7848 2526

www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery

Opening hours:

Daily 10 am to 6 pm

Last admission 5.30 pm

Closed 25 & 26 December.

Last admission at 3.30 pm on 24 December

Admission:

Adult £6, concessions £5,

Mondays (including public holidays) £3

www.courtauld.ac.uk/tickets

Sense and Sensuality: Art Nouveau 1890-1914

Masterpieces from the Victor and Gretha Arwas Collection

14 February to 14 December 2014

In this exhibition of French Art Nouveau at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, the drama and spectacle of contemporary life will be explored across a range of media through a selection of works from the legendary collection of Victor and Gretha Arwas. The exhibition marks the initiation of a collaboration between the Sainsbury Centre and Gretha Arwas, whereby the Victor and Gretha Arwas Foundation, dedicated to the study and presentation of Art Nouveau, will be established.

The period 1890 to 1914 was complicated. Known as the fin de siècle, it has often been depicted as an age that represented the end of many things, but it was also an age of beginnings. It was a turbulent time: millions of people migrated to rapidly growing cities, becoming urban dwellers in a modernised environment. How people lived, worked, and took their pleasures was transformed in a single generation and, alongside the physical shift, how they thought about the world also began to change. It was an age of contradiction, in which aspiration sat alongside anxiety and doubt, and in which values of the past clashed and mingled with ideas about the future. It was in this atmosphere that Art Nouveau was born and, from 1895, Paris was its capital. In the intense emotional maelstrom, alternative religions, novel art forms, sexual liberation, and the new science of psychology, were all symptomatic of a widespread questioning of values.

Responding to this environment, the new generation of artists and designers began to explore the human condition through the creation of a dreamlike, mystical world, inspired not least by Symbolist poetry and art, which came to the fore in Paris from the 1860s. The great writer Charles Baudelaire was inspiration for a younger generation of poets, led by Stephan Mallarmé, who were interested in creating worlds where logic, rationality, and normal values were forgotten. Similarly, the major Symbolist painters Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin and their followers pushed the boundaries of art.

Collectively, Symbolist art and poetry affected the artists and designers of the Art Nouveau style and its imagery is often mystical, erotic and dreamlike: collectivised, it can have a cultish feel. Emile Gallé, Eugène Grasset, Alphonse Mucha, Jean Carries, René Lalique, Rupert Carabin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Berthon, Georges de Feure, and others represented in this exhibition reveal the vibrant, tense energy of a young generation exploring a new-found freedom.

THE SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS is a world-class art gallery at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Centre owes its existence to the generosity of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, who donated their private collection to the UEA in 1973. This collection spans 5,000 years of human creativity, and reflects Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury’s shared passion for the aesthetic value of art. Permanently displayed in the Living Area Gallery, the collection includes works by Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon, as well as ritual and ceremonial objects from across the world.

SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS

University of East Anglia

Norwich NR4 7TJ

Tel. +44 (0)1603 593199

www.scva.ac.uk

Exhibition opening hours:

Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm

Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm

Closed on Mondays, including Bank holidays

Closed 24 December 2013 to 1 January 2014

Admission:

£8 adult; £6 concession

£20 family ticket (2 adults, 2 children)

£16 concession family ticket

Court and Craft: A Masterpiece from Northern Iraq

20 February to 18 May 2014

This exhibition explores one of the most rare and beautiful objects in the collection of The Courtauld Gallery: a precious metalwork bag, made in Northern Iraq around 1300. Decorated with a courtly scene showing an enthroned couple at a banquet as well as musicians, hunters and revellers, it ranks as one of the finest pieces of Islamic inlaid metalwork in existence. A rhyming couplet, probably composed specifically for the bag, and intricate geometric patterns complete the decoration of this splendid luxury item. No other object of this kind survives. The exhibition will explore the origins, function and imagery of this masterpiece, as well as the cultural context in which it was made.

Acquired by the Victorian collector Thomas Gambier-Parry and bequeathed to The Courtauld Gallery by his family, the container was long thought to be a saddlebag for a horseman or even a form of wallet. It is now recognised to have been a lady’s bag and the exhibition will include rare contemporary manuscripts in which similar bags are depicted. The imagery and superb craftsmanship suggest that the object was made for a lady in the courtly circles of the Mongol Ilkhanid dynasty, which was established in west Asia by Chinggis Khan’s grandson, Hülegü. The Courtauld’s bag is likely to have been made in Mosul, which was the centre of the inlaid brass industry and which fell to the Mongols in 1262. Featuring the British Museum’s exceptional Blacas Ewer, which was made in Mosul in 1232, one section of the exhibition will examine this luxury craft tradition before and after the Mongol invasion and will consider how craftsmen adapted their work for their new patrons.

A further highlight of the exhibition will be a life-size display evoking the court banqueting scene at the top of the lid. This will feature objects similar to those depicted on the bag itself, including a Chinese lacquered table, a silver bowl and spoon, gold earrings, a glass beaker and bottle. These objects testify to the cross-cultural vitality of Mosul and the trade routes opened up by the Ilkhanids. Illuminated manuscripts, including four folios from the famous Diez Album in Berlin (State Art Library) and a rare metalwork tray showing enthroned couples with courtiers will provide further insight into the courtly life under the Mongols in their Persianate Empire. Images of musicians, hunters and revellers on manuscripts, ceramics and metalwork will resonate powerfully with similar imagery on the bag. The encouragement and patronage of luxury crafts in Mosul under the Ilkhanids will be further attested to by the inclusion of a celebrated copy of the Qur’an madefor the Ilkhanid ruler Uljaytu in 1310 as well as a splendid incense burner made for Uljaytu’s son and successor, Sultan Abu Said.

Despite being one of the masterpieces of Islamic metalwork, The Courtauld’s superb inlaid bag is unknown beyond the scholarly community, and it remains little understood even among specialists. Guest-curated by Rachel Ward, formerly of the British Museum, and featuring selected loans from international collections, this focused exhibition will provide the first in-depth account of this important cultural and artistic artefact.

THE COURTAULD GALLERY

Somerset House, Strand

London WC2R 0RN

Tel. +44 (0)20 7848 2526

www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery

Opening hours:

Daily 10 am to 6 pm

Last admission 5.30 pm

Closed 25 & 26 December.

Last admission at 3.30 pm on 24 December

Admission:

Adult £6, concessions £5,

Mondays (including publicē holidays) £3

www.courtauld.ac.uk/tickets

A Sense of Family

21 February to 20 July 2014

What do we mean by family? One of the foundations of this apparently natural concept lies in Article 29 of the Italian Constitution which states that “the family is a natural unit of society founded on marriage”. However, as sociologist Chiara Saraceno provocatively states, “nothing is less natural than the family”.

The argument over “what the family is”, in ideological terms, is accompanied by the complex political definition of the rights, obligations and responsibilities of its component parts and by broader sociological deliberations, which have recently identified the family not only as the primary setting for socialisation and cultural and symbolic transmission, but also a place of inequalities. At the same time, there are the considerations in terms of its representation, the construction of its image and its dynamics in both private and the public spheres.

This exhibition revolves around a topic which anyone can relate to because of individual experiences of family realities, images, languages, settings; either because of the presence or absence of such ties in our own lives. It will attempt to develop a participative meditation on values and images that are part of everyone’s lives and that become a crucial instrument for reflecting on the dynamic between the individual and a community, the single man or woman in relationship with the collective. The concept of family has changed over the centuries, not only reflecting but also actively influencing changes in society as a whole. The term familia referred to all the persons and things placed under the hierarchical protection and authority of a pater familias to whom they literally “belonged”. The factor that defined the family was its members’ dependence on a family head, to whom they owed respect and whose honour they must defend, as representative of their own identity group. In a continuation of this pattern, the traditional farming family was based on the concept of an economic and productive bond, as was the aristocratic family, with the transmission of title or of social or economic status.

Today, what is left of the family and what is its value or image? Through the work of different contemporary artists the exhibition will spark reflections on the contradiction between the nature and the naturalness of the family, the tension between freedom and authority, the persistency of traditional iconography and moral principles opposed to the deconstruction and the ambiguities of these values.

THE PALAZZO STROZZI’S restored cellars, traditionally known as ‘La Strozzina’, are a platform for contemporary culture, hosting a broad range of events, activities and exhibitions representing the entire spectrum of contemporary creative activity.

CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE STROZZINA (CCCS)

Palazzo Strozzi

Florence, Italy

Tel. +39 055 2645155

www.strozzina.org,

www.palazzostrozzi.org

Opening hours:

Tuesday to Sunday 10 am to 8 pm

Thursday 10 am to 11 pm

Admission:

(ticket valid one month):

Adult: €5.00

Concessions: €4.00

Thursday, admission free from 6 pm to 11 pm

Combined ticket from 8 March with Pontormo and Rosso. The Diverging Paths of the ‘Modern Manner’: € 10; concessions € 5

Pontormo and Rosso. Diverging Paths of Mannerism

8 March to 20 July 2014

In 1956 Palazzo Strozzi hosted the exhibition Pontormo and Early Florentine Mannerism, in which Pontormo’s work was displayed alongside that of Rosso Fiorentino, Beccafumi and other adepts of the new and unconventional trend in painting. The exhibition offered visitors an overview of the work of an entire generation of young artists who had chosen the path of experiment and of a highly individual distortion of shape and form. No monographic exhibition, however, has ever been devoted to the work of Rosso Fiorentino, probably because of the relative scarcity of his surviving work. Almost 60 years later, much has changed in the critical approach adopted at the time with scholars exploring and gradually uncovering the reasons behind individual careers which can no longer be grouped together in a single movement.

The 2014 exhibition will be devoted to two of that movement’s leading lights: Jacopo da Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Both were born in 1494, at the close of a century which had seen the collapse of a political balance that had guaranteed the prosperity and security of Florence, and of Italy as a whole. It was the beginning of a troubled era of religious and political clashes that were to lead to a fundamental alteration of the political balances among states and to the loss of the harmony in art that had been such a feature of the transition from the 15th to the 16th centuries. Florence is the ideal city for such a project since so many of the artists’ most important works are to be found here. However, an exhaustive overview of their careers is only possible with the cooperation of museums, both in Italy and abroad.

In exploring the work of the two greatest Florentine exponents of what 20th century critics christened “Mannerism”, the exhibition aims to track the chronological development of the movement which Giorgio Vasari identified as the start of the “modern manner” and which was rooted, both for Pontormo and for Rosso Fiorentino, in their relationship with Andrea del Sarto. Their careers came to an end as the map of Europe was being redrawn by the clash between the Reformation and the Counter- Reformation, when Rosso Fiorentino, prior to his early death in 1540, was working for the court of François I of France, shortly before Pontormo painted the most controversial frescoes in the whole of Florentine Cinquecento art: the frescoes in the choir of San Lorenzo, commissioned by Cosimo I de’ Medici and begun in 1546.

PALAZZO STROZZI is not a museum but a laboratory for how to make culture accessible to as many different audiences as possible and in as many different ways. Here, cultural events are not considered merely entertainment or part of the leisure industry. Culture is a fundamental part of our identity, our civility and our capacity to respond creatively. The Strozzi’s programme consists of exhibitions entirely conceived, curated and produced in Florence. Exhibitions illustrate how collaborations and worldclass scholarship can create experiences that transform the visitor and the city alike.

PALAZZO STROZZI

Piazza Strozzi

50123 Florence, Italy

Tel. +39 055 277 6461

www.palazzostrozzi.org

Opening hours:

Daily 9 am to 8 pm;

Thursday 9 am to 11 pm

Admission:

Adult: €10.00, Concessions:

€8.50, €8.00, €7.50, €5.00

The Colourful World of Kaffe Fassett

22 March to 2 November 2014

World-renowned knitwear and textile designer Kaffe Fassett returns to the American Museum in Britain in 2014 to celebrate his fifty years working as an artist and colourist. Born in San Francisco in 1937 and raised in the creative community of Big Sur, California, Kaffe has a long association with the American Museum, first exhibiting there in 1994. When he came to live in Britain in the early 1960s, Kaffe stayed in Bath and was much inspired by the Museum’s diverse collections – especially its many antique quilts. Kaffe was fascinated not only with the block patterns created in these textile masterworks but also by their audacious use of juxtaposed colours and printed fabrics.

The Colourful World of Kaffe Fassett showcases how Kaffe lives by his maxim to find colour in a grey world. Designed by celebrated theatrical designer Johan Engels, the exhibition promises to be as colourful as the dazzling pieces on display. Over one hundred sumptuous works of textile art – a kaleidoscope of knitwear, needlepoint, beading, and quilts – will be on display in the dramatic exhibition alongside vibrant mosaics and still life paintings by the Fassett. Nearly all the objects on view are from Kaffe’s personal collection – the much-loved pieces that surround him as he creates. The cornucopia of works on view thus offers a glimpse of the private man behind the public façade.

The exhibition features works spanning Kaffe’s creative life, including drawings he made as a boy in California. These monochrome pictures are a far cry from the explosions of colour that made Kaffe a household name from the 1970s as one of the great practitioners of contemporary craft. Visitors to the exhibition will discover zones, each showcasing a variety of materials by colour, from knitted shawls to gorgeous coats inspired by Shakespearean heroines, and cushions decorated with his detailed needlepoint designs. Having captivated generations and transformed the textile industry, it is only fitting that Kaffe – an American in Britain – should return to the Museum which so inspired him during those halcyon days in the early sixties.

Complementing the exhibition will be exquisite pen drawings that Kaffe made of the American Museum’s popular Period Rooms in 1964 on display in Claverton Manor. These delicate room portraits have not been exhibited to the public before and are a reminder that Kaffe began his career in the visual arts as a painter and illustrator. Four years after making these drawings, Kaffe went to Scotland where he became enthralled by the handdyed woollen yarns he discovered there. On the long train journey home, he persuaded one of his travelling companions to teach him to knit. The rest, as they say, is history – a captivating story of a life lived in colour, which is celebrated at the American Museum during its 2014 season.

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM IN BRITAIN, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011, aims to inform its visitors about the cultural history of the United States in order to strengthen relations between the two countries. It contains over 15,000 items devoted to the decorative arts of America: fancy gowns and Shaker furniture, an extensive collection of native folk art, important holdings of early maps charting the discovery and exploration of the Americas, and one of the largest and finest quilt collections in the entire world.

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM IN BRITAIN

Claverton Manor

Bath, BA2 7BD

Tel. +44 (0)1225 460503

www.americanmuseum.org

Opening hours:

Tuesday to Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm

Closed Mondays except during August and Bank Holidays

Admission:

Museum, Exhibition and Gardens:

Adult £9; over 60s and students £8; child (5-16) £5;

family ticket £25

Gardens: Adult £5.50; over 60s and students £4.50;

child (5-16) £3.50

Henri Matisse Sculpture: The Backs

29 March to 27 July 2014

This exhibition celebrates the four monumental relief sculptures by Henri Matisse, known collectively as the Backs, on loan from Tate. The Backs were Matisse’s largest sculptures and, over a period of twenty years, he progressively refined the original pose, based on a woman leaning on a fence looking away from the viewer.

Monument: Aftermath of War and Conflict

29 March to 14 September 2014

Monument is dedicated to the commemorations on both sides of the Channel marking the 100th anniversary of the First World War as well as the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings. The exhibition brings together a group of French and British artists, all of whom create works based on the concept of monument. The Monument exhibitions in Calais, Caen and Norwich are part of the TAP project funded through the INTERREG IVA European cross-border co-operation programme.

John Virtue: The Sea

26 April to 27 July 2014

Renowned painter John Virtue moved to the North Norfolk coast in 2009 and, since that time, has been creating a spectacular new body of work. These canvases are vast in scale and powerful in the drama of their presence, the black and white paint freely applied to the raw canvas surface with brushes, hands and rags.

SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS

University of East Anglia

Norwich NR4 7TJ

Tel. +44 (0)1603 593199

www.scva.ac.uk

Exhibition opening hours:

Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm

Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm

Closed on Mondays, including Bank holidays

Closed 24 December 2013 to 1 January 2014

Admission:

£8 adult; £6 concession

£20 family ticket (2 adults, 2 children)

£16 concession family ticket

India: Jewels that Enchanted the World

10 April to 25 August 2014

The State Museums of Moscow Kremlin together with the Indo-Russian Jewellery Foundation will stage India: Jewels that Enchanted the World in The Belfry and the One-Pillar Hall. Visitors will be taken on a journey that explores the splendours of India: mysterious amulets from the temples of Tamil Nadu, Kundan Mina enamels from Rajasthan, whimsical Place Vendôme creations for Indian princes, as well as exciting jewellery by India’s leading contemporary designers. The exhibition is a tapestry of fairy tales, stories of royal rivalries and intrigues, all told against a background of the colourful fabrics, and the smells and sounds of India’s bazaars.

This is the first time that the remarkable story of five centuries of Indian jewellery history is shown in a single comprehensive exhibition. Symbolically it will be presented in the capital of Russia, Moscow, where the East continues to interact with the West.

THE STATE MUSEUMS OF MOSCOW KREMLIN

www.kreml.ru/en

Opening hours:

Open daily, 10 am to 5 pm

Closed Thursdays

Admission:

300 roubles (tbc)

The Years of ‘La Dolce Vita’

30 April to 29 June 2014

The 1950s and ’60s represent a golden era in Italy’s cinematic history, when such directors as Antonioni, Pasolini and Fellini produced some of their most famous movies, and glamorous Hollywood stars flocked to Rome. This exhibition, which comprises some 80 works, draws on the vast archive of Marcello Geppetti – one of the inspirations for the character of Paparazzo in La Dolce Vita (1960) – as well as a number of photographs taken on the set of the film. Candid and evocative, these images not only capture a period of remarkable creativity, but also changed the face of photojournalism forever.

ESTORICK COLLECTION OF MODERN ITALIAN ART

39a Canonbury Square

London N1 2AN

Tel. +44 (0)20 7704 9522

www.estorickcollection.com

Opening hours:

Wednesday to Saturday 11 am to 6 pm

Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm

Open until 9 pm on the first Thursday of each month

Admission:

£5, concessions £3.50

Students free

The Wonder of Birds

24 May to 14 September 2014

The Wonder of Birds will explore the cultural impact of birds upon mankind. Eliciting a wide range of emotions from awe to fear and from pleasure to cruelty, birds have intrigued humanity since the earliest of times. With lokans from local and national collections, the exhibition will span the centuries and include the arts with works by major artists and illustrators, historical and contemporary, natural history, archaeology, fashion and social history. This innovative exhibition will also examine local, national and international issues.

The Wonder of Birds comprises six sections, each highlighting a different aspect of birds, their meanings and our relationships with them. It begins by introducing the visitor to the breadth of this fascinating subject: what is a bird; what do they mean to us; how have we studied, portrayed, preserved, endangered and used them?

Section 2, Predators and Prey, will explore a variety of species of game bird as well as birds of prey, while Section 3, Birds & Landscape, primarily examines birds in East Anglia, focusing on wildfowl and wetland birds. Birds can be closely associated with our ideas of place and as such may be strongly connected with local identities. Arguably this is especially true in this region, which boasts a wealth of habitats of international importance housing unique groups of species.

As a contrast to their strong associations with the land, birds are equally closely linked with the sea, travel, distance and migration. Some birds travel phenomenal distances annually and Section 4, Migrants and Ocean Travellers, will examine the seasonal behaviour which may take migrating birds from Norfolk to the Arctic, Africa or South America.

Section 5 is titled Introducing the Exotic. Exotic birds have always been coveted for their brilliant plumage, combined with their sheer rarity value, both as high status pets and for their feathers. This section will also focus on the use of feathers of all kinds for clothing and fashion accessories – a trend which peaked in the western world in the 19th century. The resulting deaths of thousands of birds sparked off the awareness of extinction which led to the founding of the RSPB.

The Realms of the Spirit, the final section, will illustrate how songbirds and their relatives have symbolised the immortal soul, been seen as heralds of the seasons, messengers from heaven, or magical beings moving between worlds.

NORWICH CASTLE MUSEUM & ART GALLERY is part of the county-wide multi-award-winning Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service (NMAS), which comprises ten museums and a study centre. It is one of only sixteen Major Partner Museums in the country receiving substantial revenue investment from Arts Council England.

NORWICH CASTLE MUSEUM & ART GALLERY

Castle Meadow

Norwich NR1 3JU

Tel. +44 (0)1603 493649

www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk

Opening hours:

Peak Season: (30 June to 28 September)

Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm

Sunday, 1 to 5 pm

Low Season: (31 March to 29 June and 29 September to 28 June 2015)

Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 4.30 pm

Sunday, 1 to 4.30 pm

Closed 24 to 26 December 2014 and 1 January 2015

Summer Showcase

“Bruegel to Freud: Master Prints from The Courtauld Gallery”

19 June to 21 September 2014

The Courtauld Institute of Art houses one of the most significant collections of works on paper in Britain, with approximately 7,000 drawings and watercolours and 20,000 prints ranging from the Renaissance to the 20th century. The second Summer Showcase provides visitors with an introduction to the largest but least well-known part of The Courtauld Gallery’s outstanding collection – its holdings of prints. This selection of some thirty particularly remarkable and intriguing examples spans more than 500 years and encompasses a variety of printmaking techniques.

The display opens with Andrea Mantegna’s ambitious engraving of The Flagellation of Christ (around 1465-70), in which the Italian Renaissance artist powerfully reinvents this often depicted Passion scene. By contrast, the grand scale of a ten-part engraving after Michelangelo’s celebrated Last Judgment by French printmaker Nicolas Béatrizet exemplifies the ability of a print to reproduce a monumental work of art in spectacular fashion. Subjects of Christian iconography dominate 15th and 16th century printmaking but from early on were complemented by secular topics, with printmakers catering for a demand amongst collectors for new imagery. A superb example is Pieter Bruegel’s Rabbit Hunt (1560), the only print known to be executed by the artist himself and one of a group of master sprints bequeathed to the collection by Count Antoine Seilern in 1978. Bruegel chose the etching technique whereby its relative freedom and ease is more closely comparable to drawing, allowing him to render a scene with remarkable naturalism.

The possibilities of printmaking greatly expanded in subsequent centuries. Prints could record historical events such as battles or pageants, as in the exquisite etchings of Jacques Callot and Stefano della Bella. Canaletto’s views of 18th century Venice play wilful games with the city’s geography and are shown alongside the striking architectural inventions of his contemporary Piranesi. The 19th century in France saw avant-garde artists embracing printmaking, with Edouard Manet’s homage to Old Masters, Paul Gauguin’s revival of the woodcut and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s brilliant adoption of the newer technique of lithography for his evocative depictions of Parisian entertainment such as his highly dynamic Jockey from Samuel Courtauld’s collection. In the 20th century Pablo Picasso’s and Henri Matisse’s tireless experimentation with print techniques helped ensure the vitality of printmaking in the art of their time. The display concludes with prints by Lucian Freud, now widely acknowledged as a modern master of the medium, and by more recent work by Chris Ofili, whose prints, both figurative and abstract, continued to reinvent printmaking in the 21st century.

THE COURTAULD GALLERY

Somerset House, Strand

London WC2R 0RN

Tel. +44 (0)20 7848 2526

www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery

Opening hours:

Daily 10 am to 6 pm

Last admission 5.30 pm

Admission:

Adult £6, concessions £5,

Mondays (including publicē holidays) £3

www.courtauld.ac.uk/tickets

“Master Paintings Week”

4 to 11 July 2014

Now established as one of the key art events in the summer calendar, Master Paintings Week is a collaboration between leading galleries and auction houses. Each of the participating galleries, all of which are in the heart of London’s Mayfair and St James’s, will stage a special exhibition or event or unveil new discoveries, emphasising the unrivalled expertise to be found in London.

Participating Auction Houses

Bonhams

Christie’s

Sotheby’s

Participating Galleries

Charles Beddington Ltd John Mitchell Fine Paintings

BNB Art Consulting Moretti Fine Art Ltd

Colnaghi Philip Mould Ltd

Ben Elwes Fine Art Noortman Master Paintings

Deborah Gage (Works of Art) Ltd Piacenti Art Gallery

Richard Green Robilant + Voena

Johnny Van Haeften Ltd Sphinx Fine Art

Haldane Fine Art Stair Sainty

Fergus Hall Rafael Valls Ltd

Derek Johns Ltd The Weiss Gallery

Theo Johns Fine Art Ltd Whitfield Fine Art

William Thuillier

MASTER PAINTINGSWEEK

Tel. +44 (0)20 7491 7408

www.masterpaintingsweek.co.uk

“The Harsh Reality: Modern and Contemporary British Painting”

6 September to 14 December 2014

The Harsh Reality celebrates the enduring strength of painting and features over forty artists whose work spans five decades, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton and David Hockney alongside such contemporary painters as David Hepher, Jenny Saville, George Shaw and Alison Watt. Curated by artist Chris Stevens, the exhibition features British paintings of the real world – uncompromising and direct.

Pan-Africanism: Post-Colonial Predicaments

27 September to 14 December 2014

This exhibition documents the Pan-African heritage of Senegal through work by the acclaimed photographers Mamadou Gomis and Judith Quax. Pan- Africanism is the ideology that claimed that economic, political and cultural liberation of the colonised could only be achieved through reclamation of African independence. Today, more than fifty years after political independence, this photographic exhibition examines this Pan-African heritage.

SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS

University of East Anglia

Norwich NR4 7TJ

Tel. +44 (0)1603 593199

www.scva.ac.uk

Exhibition opening hours:

Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm

Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm

Closed on Mondays, including Bank holidays

Closed 24 December 2013 to 1 January 2014

Admission:

£8 adult; £6 concession

£20 family ticket (2 adults, 2 children)

£16 concession family ticket

“Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude”

23 October 2014 to 18 January 2015

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is one of the most important artists of the early 20th century and a central figure of Austrian Expressionism. Rising to prominence in Vienna alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka in the turbulent years around the First World War, Schiele produced some of the most radical and penetrating depictions of the human figure created in modern times.

Surprisingly, Schiele’s work is rarely seen in the UK and this exhibition will be the first ever museum show in this country devoted entirely to the artist. It will explore in detail one of Schiele’s most vital and original subjects – his extraordinary drawings and watercolours of male and female nudes.

Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude will bring together an outstanding group of his nudes to chart his ground-breaking approach to the genre during his short but urgent career. Schiele’s technical virtuosity, highly original vision and unflinching depictions of the naked figure distinguish these works as being among his most significant contributions to the development of modern art. This sharply focused exhibition will be a major opportunity to see more than thirty of these radical works assembled from international public and private collections.

Schiele arrived in Vienna in 1906, aged just fifteen, to train as an artist. He quickly proved his precocious talent and the following year sought out Klimt, the leader of Vienna’s Secessionist group of avant-garde artists and designers, who mentored Schiele and helped establish his reputation. Nothing he produced during these first few years in Vienna prepares us for the extraordinary breakthrough Schiele made in 1910 when he began to draw the figure in an entirely new way and the subject of the nude took on an increasingly important role. Highly gestural and expressive, his nudes from this year are manipulated to perform a psychologically charged body language that soon became a hallmark of his art. This exhibition will begin with a rich selection of nudes from this seminal year including a number of Schiele’s powerful naked self-portraits. The main section will explore his provocative nudes of the following few years when he pushed artistic convention to offer a more direct expression of human experience, bound up with themes of selfexpression, procreation, sexuality and eroticism. The last part of the exhibition will look at works from the final productive years of Schiele’s short life before his untimely death in 1918 from Spanish influenza, aged just 28.

His later nudes engender a more classical solidity and sometimes lyricism, whilst retaining their unflinching rawness as naked bodies. Throughout the exhibition will be a number of major self-portraits demonstrating how Schiele’s approach to the nude, and his art more generally, was linked to his sense of self and his on-going examination of his physical and psychological make-up. An important aspect of all these works is Schiele’s unique draughtsmanship and the exhibition will investigate the development of his technique and approach to the medium that he made so distinctively his own.

The exhibition will also be an opportunity to appreciate Schiele’s wideranging influence on the course of modern art that still resonates today.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue and will include new research by leading scholars including Professor Peter Vergo and Dr Gemma Blackshaw.

THE COURTAULD GALLERY

Somerset House, Strand

London WC2R 0RN

Tel. +44 (0)20 7848 2526

www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery

Opening hours:

Daily 10 am to 6 pm

Last admission 5.30 pm

Closed 25 & 26 December.

Last admission at 3.30 pm on 24 December

Admission:

Adult £6, concessions £5,

Mondays (including publicē holidays) £3

www.courtauld.ac.uk/tickets

About the author

Aksel Ritenis

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