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 Januaryto 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
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.
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”.
ESTORICK COLLECTION OF MODERN ITALIAN ART
39a Canonbury Square
London N1 2AN
Tel. +44 (0)20 7704 9522
+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 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.
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
Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 0RN
Tel. +44 (0)20 7848 2526+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
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.
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.
SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
Tel. +44 (0)1603 593199+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+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
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.
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.
CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE STROZZINA (CCCS)
Palazzo Strozzi
Florence, Italy
Tel. +39 055 2645155+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
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.
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
Piazza Strozzi
50123 Florence, Italy
Tel. +39 055 277 6461+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 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 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
Claverton Manor
Bath, BA2 7BD
Tel. +44 (0)1225 460503+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+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+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
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.
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 loans
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 CASTLEMUSEUM & ARTGALLERY
Castle Meadow
Norwich NR1 3JU
Tel. +44 (0)1603 493649+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 prints
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+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 public
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 PAINTINGS
WEEK
Tel. +44 (0)20 7491 7408+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+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+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
