(Also see Piero della Francesca In America)

Through a special collaboration with the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, and the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will host a focused presentation on the devotional paintings of Piero della Francesca, addressing Piero’s work for private devotion for the first time.

The four works on view have never before been brought together; the exhibition, therefore, promises to make an important contribution to the study of this major figure of the Renaissance. Piero della Francesca: Personal Encounters, on view at the Metropolitan Museum beginning January 14, will consist of the following paintings:




1. Saint Jerome and a Donor from the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice;



2. Saint Jerome in a Landscape from the Gemaldegalerie, Berlin;



3. Madonna and Child from a private collection in New York.



4. Madonna and Child with Two Angels (Senigallia Madonna)



Full credits, alternative titles (source)

1. Saint Jerome and a Devotee
Tempera (and oil?) on wood
19 ½ x 16 ½ in. (49.4 x 42 cm); painted surface: 19 ½ x 15 ½ in. (49.4 x 39.5 cm)
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

2. Saint Jerome in the Wilderness
Oil on wood (chestnut)
20 1/8 x 15 in. (51 x 38 cm)
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

3. Madonna and Child
Tempera on wood, 20 7/8 x 16 1/8 in. (53 x 41 cm)
The Alana Collection

4. The Senigallia Madonna and Child with Two Angels
(also: Virgin with Child Giving His Blessing and Two Angels)
Tempera and oil on wood (walnut)
24 11/16 x 20 ¾ in. (62.7 x 52.8 cm)
Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino (inv. 1990 D 58)

(also see Alex Katz Prints)



Alex Katz
Black Hat #2, 2010
Oil on canvas
Albertina, Batliner collection © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2013





Alex Katz
Carver's Corner, 2000
Oil on canvas
Albertina, Vienna © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2013

Alex Katz ranks among today’s most important US artists. He has been considered the key figure of a self-reflective US tradition of painting characterized by a unison of rationality, sensuality, and abstraction. Turning them into icons, as it were, the artist renders ostensibly passionless motifs from the New York intellectual scene and art world as well as the well-off leisure-oriented society in monumental formats. Another emphasis lies on the depiction of idyllic landscapes of Maine which radiate both immediacy and an air of aloofness.

Printed works are of crucial importance within Katz’s oeuvre. It is the medium in which he reproduces, reflects, and reduces his motifs in further stages, using mainly ideas from hispaintings and cut-outs. The synthesizing effect of his printing techniques – mainly silkscreen printing, aquatint, and lithography – which the artist refines together withoutstanding printers contributes to the two-dimensional and artificial appearance of the represented motifs. The printing techniques help maintain the color surfaces shining from their deep that are so typical of his prints. The works’ formal and technical precision as well as their extreme reduction and close-up views ultimately refer the observer to the picture on the wall and to the process of viewing as such.

In autumn 2009 Katz donated his complete graphic oeuvre to the Albertina. The exhibition shows a representative selection of it, with works dating from the 1960s to the present.




Alex Katz
Alex at Cheat Lake, 1969
Lithograph and photo-offset
©Alex Katz/VBK,Vienna
2013/Albertina,Vienna



Alex Katz
Large Magnolia, 2002
Charcoal, red chalk on perforated brown paper
Alex Katz, Large Magnolia, 2002. On permanent loan from the Stiftung Ludwig © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2013



Alex Katz
Men on Subway with Newspaper, 1946-1949
Ink
Albertina, Vienna © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2013



Alex Katz
Roof Garden 333-2, 1975
Ink
Albertina, Vienna © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2013




Alex Katz
Study for Mary Tyler Moore, 2000
Watercolor
Albertina, Vienna © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2013

From an outstanding review of the same show: (images added)

I relished my chance to see the large selection of Katz’s graphic enterprise now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. (The same show, in a slightly different form, was initially on view at the Albertina in Vienna in 2010, the Kunsthalle Würth in Schwäbisch Hall in 2011, and earlier this year at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt.) Clearly the prints are closely linked to his paintings, and they ought to be considered parallel to the course of the development of his painting style.

The Boston exhibition is installed non-chronologically, and although Katz had undertaken printmaking as early as 1947, this grouping begins with



“Luna Park 1” (1965)

and continues to the present. With every conceivable technique, including screen prints, lithographs, photo-offset lithographs, etchings, soft-ground etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, woodblocks, and linocuts, Katz has maximized the harmony of particular techniques with specific images. From the very start, I was taken with the combination of contrasts. In the first gallery are two versions of “Boy with Branch”:



(1975 and



1975/76),

which are subtle in tonal range. The young boy’s supple face is cropped, centered in the foreground of the horizontal field, surrounded by branches; a landscape with a lake is seen in the far background. In sharp contrast, the boldly delineated



“Olympic Swimmer” (1976)

articulates motion through a slash of water that cuts across a near-profile of the swimmer, who is anchored by the vertical field.



“Orange Hat” (1990)

monumentalizes the whole horizontal plane with a woman’s profile tucked below the perfect symmetry of the hat...



“Self-Portrait” (1978)

offers a different version of self-glamorization, with its benevolent smile and a sensitive use of tones and cropping. A contrasting image is



“Sweatshirt II” (1990)

where the painter is portrayed without fanfare as an average American man wearing typical American clothes.

From another excellent review of the Boston show:

Nowhere is the sense of familial intimacy stronger than in the dozens of prints depicting Katz’s wife and artistic muse, Ada. The two met at a gallery opening in 1957 and have been together ever since. In works like Orange Hat (1990) (above),



Red Coat (1983),

and Reclining Figure/Indian Blanket (1987), Ada is portrayed as stylish and glamorous, eyes heavily lidded, lips painted an alluring red, chiseled patrician features—in short, a figure to be reckoned with. In the show, Katz describes her as “a great beauty,” whose “gestures are perfect.” It’s easy to see what he means. The way she tilts her head, drapes a scarf across her shoulders, or stares languidly out from behind aviator sunglasses conveys a regal presence...

Other landscapes explore color and tint. In two lithographs, Swamp Maple 1 and Swamp Maple 2, both from 1970, a lone swamp maple is in the foreground against a background of water and hills—but with vastly different results. In the first, the colors are vivid, in the second the palette is much more subdued and monochromatic. So too with the two prints Good Afternoon (1974) and Good Afternoon 2 (1975). In both, a woman in a rowboat heads to the opposite shore. Where the first lithograph is all vibrant greens and blues, the second is rendered in shades of gray, gray-blue, and olive green.




Alex Katz, Good Afternoon 1, 1974, Museum of Fine Arts MFA Boston, Alex Katz Prints

Katz has always been in some ways a loner. At a time when nearly all of his contemporaries gravitated toward abstractionism, he embraced figurative painting. The show is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, giving viewers an opportunity to see how the artist returned again and again to certain ideas and subjects.

A Basel Landscape Painter between Rome and St. Petersburg

11/16/2013–02/16/2014

Jakob Christoph Miville (1786–1836), a native of Basel, was a leading representative of Swiss early Romantic landscape painting. After exploring the countryside around Rome and the Swiss Alps, he became a pioneer by spending several years in Russia, where the unfamiliar surroundings helped him develop a keen appreciation of nature. Through his work as a drawing teacher in St. Petersburg and later in Basel, he was also an important influence on the next generation of artists. A first monographic exhibition of Miville’s work was on display at the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1946. The same museum now presents an extensive survey of his oeuvre in collaboration with the Stiftung für Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts in Olten, the first such show to display drawings side by side with the paintings and bring together works from Russian and Swiss collections. The exhibition and the comprehensive catalogue are the fruits of years of scholarship undertaken by Katja Herlach and Hans Christoph Ackermann on behalf of the Foundation in Olten.

Jakob Christoph Miville studied drawing with Peter Birmann, Basel, and painting with Johann Caspar Huber, Zurich. Like many artists of his generation, he was soon drawn to Rome, where his acquaintance with the “German Romans” Joseph Anton Koch and Johann Christian Reinhart was a source of crucial inspiration and led him to hone his skills in drawing from nature. Living amid the international community of artists in Rome from 1805 until 1807, he developed a distinctive style of landscape painting.

After returning to Basel, he turned his attention on the Swiss Alps, a popular source of motifs for the landscape artists of the area, as well as the environs of Basel. But the success he had anticipated failed to materialize, and Miville left for more northerly parts. Hoping to find better luck, he went to Russia, where he lived from 1809 until 1816. In 1810, he entered Count Grigory Orlov’s services as a draughtsman and surveyor and followed him to St. Petersburg. Only a year later, in 1811, Miville set up as a drawing teacher in St. Petersburg; in 1814, he toured the north and Crimea.

Inspired by the vast northern landscapes, he developed a new sensibility of nature and arrived at a Romantic conception of the landscape that rested on careful study of the natural world. The large collection of sketches he had accumulated continued to form the basis for the drawings and paintings he executed after returning to Basel in 1816. Among his later commercial successes was the sale of a 40-part series of paintings based on Crimean motifs to the Countess Bobrinsky in St. Petersburg.

From 1819 to 1821, he was back in Rome, where he once again engaged with the work of Joseph Anton Koch, an older artist he admired, and the heroic landscape genre. In Basel, he subsequently began work on the ambitious large-format paintings Italienische Landschaft and Schwingfest auf der Balisalp, which would occupy him for some time. More generally,

Miville gradually returned to Swiss landscapes as the years went by; he also occasionally turned his attention to portraiture. It was only in 1826 when he became a successful and innovative drawing teacher at the Gesellschaft zur Beförderung des Guten und Gemeinnützigen (Society for the Promotion of the Good and the Common Benefit) that his art provided him with a dependable basis of existence.

Catalogue






Jakob Christoph Miville 1786–1836
Ein Basler Landschaftsmaler zwischen Rom und St. Petersburg

Edited by Hans Christoph Ackermann, Katja Herlach, Texts by Hans Christoph Ackermann, Yvonne Boerlin-Brodbeck, Anita Haldemann, Katja Herlach, Natalja G. Presnowa, Cornelia Reiter, graphic design by Atelier Sternstein

German

2013. 336 pp., 335 ills.

24.70 x 30.10 cm
softcover

ISBN 978-3-7757-3720-3




Jakob Christoph Miville (1786–1836), Khanspalast in Bachtschissarai, 1816–1819. Öl auf Leinwand, Bild: 56 x 76 cm. St. Petersburg, Nationales Puschkin Museum. Photo: St. Petersburg, Nationales Puschkin Museum.



Italian landscape, ca 1822, oil on canvas(Kunstmuseum Basel)




More Images Here


View of Basel and the Rhine valley from the quarry in Muttenz, 1807/1809, oil on canvas
(Kunstmuseum Basel)


Landscape near Tavastehus (Hämeenlinna), Finland, 1811, watercolour over pencil on paper
(Foundation for Art of the 19th Century, Olten)


Pair of trees with figure, 1805–1807, watercolour over pencil on paper
(Private collection, Basel)


Coast at Liepãja, Latvia, 1810, watercolour over pencil on paper
(Private collection, Basel)

View from Miville's window of an Orthodox church in Moscow, 1809 or 1814, watercolour over pencil on paper
(Foundation for Art of the 19th Century, Olten)


Open stable in southern Russia, 1814 wash pencil drawing on paper
(Kunstmuseum Basel)


Valley of the Hinterrhein, canton Graubünden, 1807/1808, oil on canvas
(Privately owned, Riehen)


Kiz-Kermen or Tepe-Kermen near Chufut-Kale, Crimea, Ukraine, 1816–1819, oil on canvas
(St Petersburg, Russian State Museum)


Self portrait, 1821, oil on canvas
(Kunstmuseum Basel)

The Museo Thyssen is presenting, 4 February to 18 May 2014, the first retrospective on Cézanne to be held in Spain in thirty years, following the one at the MEAC in 1984. The exhibition includes 58 works: 49 oils and 9 watercolours lent by museums and private collections around the world (including the USA, Australia and Japan), many not previously seen in Spain, and 9 works by Pissarro, Gauguin, Bernard, Derain, Braque, Dufy and Lhote.

Born in Aix_en_Provence, Paul Cézanne (1839_1906) was the son of a wealthy hat manufacturer and later banker of whom Cézanne would say, with some irony: “My father was a man of genius; he left me an income of 25,000 francs.” Cézanne was a fellow school pupil of the future writer Émile Zola, with whom he maintained a close and complex friendship for many years. Although Cézanne followed his father’s wishes and embarked on studying law, he soon moved to Paris to follow his true vocation of painting. There he made friends with Pissarro, ten years his senior, who would be the closest to a teacher that he had. He also met Manet and took part in the Impressionists’ informal debates at the Café Guerbois.

Every year from 1863 onwards Cézanne sent his paintings to the official Salon but they were never accepted. In 1874 he took part in the first Impressionist exhibition but would subsequently only exhibit with them once, in 1877. Critics considered him the clumsiest and most eccentric of the group. The negative words employed to describe his painting – brutal, coarse, infantile, primitive – would eventually become terms of praise for the originality of his work.

While his fellow painters, led by Monet and Renoir, would enjoy increasing success, Cézanne, who had abandoned the capital for Aix, would continue to be ignored until 1895. Between November and December of that year his first solo exhibition of around 150 works at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery earned him the respect and admiration of his colleagues and made him a key reference point for young painters. By the time of his death ten years later Cézanne was acknowledged as a key figure in modern art.

The predominant genre in Cézanne’s work is landscape, which accounts for half his total output and which he, like his Impressionist colleagues, identified with the practice of outdoor painting. In contrast to the Impressionists, however, Cézanne also conceded a crucial importance to a genre characteristic of the studio, namely the still life. Throughout his career he produced both landscapes and still lifes, which respectively represent direct contact with nature and the laboratory of composition. The subtitle of this exhibition, site/non_site, derived from the artist and theoretician Robert Smithson, refers to this dialectic between exterior and interior, between outdoor painting and studio work.

Portrait of an unknown man

The first section in the exhibition comprises a single painting,



Portrait of a Peasant

from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, which is the only portrait in the exhibition. It is one of the last canvases that Cézanne worked on before his death. He left the face of the old peasant unpainted, creating a mysterious void. We know that when he lacked a model, Cézanne would sometimes pose before the mirror. Is this in fact an indirect self-portrait of the artist? Portrait of a Peasant is located on the terrace of the artist’s last studio, between the interior and the outdoors. However, this distinction is overcome in the painting. The blue jacket partly fuses with the blue-green vegetation in the garden, as we see in the artist’s views of Mont Sainte-Victoire where mountain and sky interconnect. The borderline between figure and background is thus broken down while the continuity between man and nature is restored.

The bend in the road



Landscape. Road with Trees in Rocky Mountain, 1870_1871. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Bathers, ca.1880. Detroit Institute of Arts. Bequest of Robert H. Tannahill

The exhibition’s second section focuses on roads, particularly on bends and curves. Cézanne was a tireless walker who would go out into the countryside in search of his motifs and who walked around the outskirts of Aix in sun or rain, climbing Mont Sainte_Victoire with his rucksack on his back. The artist hated modern roads, preferring paths that adapted their lines to the landscape, with their changes of viewpoint that created a sense of surprise and expectation. One of his most recurring motifs is the bend in the road, which landscape painters traditionally used to attract the viewer’s gaze into the pictorial space. However in Cézanne’s painting this entry into the painting is frustrated: blocked by some trees and rocks or by the topography itself. Cézanne’s paths go nowhere. Even when the sky is visible in the background it rather seems to resemble a wall.




Avenue at Chantilly, 1888. The Toledo Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. y Mrs. William E. Lewis, 1959;


Nudes and trees

The third section juxtaposes scenes of bathers and landscapes with trees. Within Cézanne’s oeuvre, the paintings of bathers are the only ones that were not painted from life and as such they have always been considered as separate. However, by reinterpreting them in the context of his tree-filled landscapes, particularly those painted at the Jas de Bouffan, the Cézanne family’s country house, they take on another meaning. What if the nudes were just a daydream provoked by the trees?



Hillside in Provence, ca. 1890-1892. National Gallery, London. Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1926;

In the work of Cézanne, trees have an anthropomorphic significance. In his scenes of bathers, trees and nudes combine closely together: a figure hides behind a tree or embraces it or lies back against it; at times the tree seems to emerge from a body. On other occasions the human figure in one painting is replaced in another by a tree, probably inspired by the plant and tree metamorphoses of classical mythology.

The ghost of the Sainte-Victoire

Cézanne’s still lifes are filled with echoes of his landscapes, particularly of Mont Sainte-Victoire, which is the almost obsessive protagonist of his compositions. The painter André Masson said: “Look at these still lifes, they follow the advice of the Sainte-Victoire: they are geological.” In many of Cézanne’s still lifes the tablecloth has hollows in it, bulging out in the form of a mountain and thus evoking the familiar form of the Sainte-Victoire. In



Still Life with Flowers and Fruits, ca.1890. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

the tension between the large bunch of flowers and the diagonally arranged tablecloth finds its parallel in the dialogue between the pine and the mountain



Mount Sainte-Victoire, ca.1904. Cleveland Museum of Art. Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., 1958

In Cézanne’s still lifes, tablecloths and curtains would increasingly cover the top and legs of the table and the studio walls, eventually concealing them completely. They ultimately bury the Cartesian coordinates of the interior space, a symbol of the artist’s rational control, beneath the natural forms of a landscape.



Still Life with Cerries and Peaches, 1885-1887. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gift of Adele R. Levy Fund, Inc., and Mr. and Mrs. Armand S. Deutsch.

This section includes four still lifes from the major series on an earthenware pitcher. This unadorned object of no particular style has a unique feature: its rounded belly, a motherform around which things gravitate. Unlike Cézanne’s tablecloths, the earthenware vessel does not resemble the Sainte_Victoire but it is an equivalent to the mountain due to its manner of being a centre.

Play of constructions

Just as Cézanne transformed his still lifes into landscapes, his landscapes without figures or movements can easily become still lifes. It is said that a still life is characterised by its tactile perception. The ideal of tactile perception is a regular, geometrical object. With landscape, Cézanne obtains this effect by making use of architecture.



House in Provence, ca.1881. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. James W. Fesler in memory of Daniel W. and Elizabeth C. Marmon The Village of Gardanne, ca.1886. The Brooklyn Museum, Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund and the Alfred T. White Memorial Fund


which brings to mind Giorgio de Chirico’s words: “The Greek temple is within our grasp; it seems that we can pick it up and take it away with us like a toy on a table.” Cézanne’s landscapes are dotted with red roofs, toy_like houses that function almost as apples arranged on the pieces of cloth in a still life.

While in Cézanne’s still lifes the table becomes concealed by the textiles that simulates a landscape, in his landscapes the artist imposed a structure similar to a tabletop: a vertical foreground, a horizontal plane and another vertical plane in the background. He evolved this stepped construction, which pushes the gaze upwards and towards the background, from the time of his landscapes of L’Estaque up to his views of Gardanne. It would have a decisive influence on the beginnings of Cubism, represented in the exhibition through various works by Braque, Derain, Dufy and Lhote.

More images:

http://www.museothyssen.org/microsites/prensa/2014/cezanne/imagenes.html

Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough and the Golden Age of Painting in Europe from the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Orlando Museum of Art
January 25 – May 25, 2014

Tremendous changes swept Europe between 1600 and 1800, the years in which the art in this exhibition was produced. Religious upheavals transformed the way people thought about and utilized art. Trade routes to faraway lands, such as China and India, became more established, ensuring a steady stream of exotic goods for European consumers. Advances in the sciences transformed long held views on the way the universe worked and the place of humans within that universe. Technical aspects of art making were honed and codified, as art academies grew in number and power.

These exciting times resulted in a golden age of European painting. The number of artists and the number of art collectors grew exponentially during this period, as the fine arts reached an increasingly wider audience. This exhibition will feature 71 paintings from this remarkable period by Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jan Steen, Jacob van Ruisdael, William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough and Pompeo Batoni, among many others.

Comprised of the major genres of painting that were popular at this time – portraits, religious paintings, landscapes, scenes of everyday life, still lifes and interpretations of classical antiquity – this exhibition will illustrate both the people and the objects that made the two centuries between 1600 and 1800 such a rich cultural age. Highlighting work from Italy, France, Spain, Flanders, the Netherlands, Germany and England, this exhibition will illustrate how the tremendous changes in religion and science, coupled with the economic growth that swept Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, gave way to a period of incredible artistic creation.

Previous Venue: The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky

Images and Credits:



Paolo de’Matteis, The Adoration of the Shepherds, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 50 in., Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Gift of the Charter Collectors





Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a Forty-Year-Old Woman, possibly Marretje Cornelisdr van Grotewal, 1634, Oil on panel, 27 7/16 x 22 in., Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Purchased with funds contributed by individuals, corporations and the entire community of Louisville, as well as the Commonwealth of Kentucky



Jean Jacques François Lebarbier, Helen and Paris, 1799, Oil on canvas, 34 x 40 in., Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Gift of the Charter Collectors



Peter Paul Rubens, The Princes of the Church Adoring the Eucharist, about 1626-1627, Oil on panel, 26 1/4 x 18 5/16 in., Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Gift in memory of George W. Norton IV, by his mother, Mrs. George W. Norton, Jr. and his aunt, Mrs. Leonard T. Davidson



Hendrick van Somer, Saint Jerome, 1651, Oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 49 1/2 in., Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Gift of the Charter Collectors with funds from the Bequest of Jane Morton Norton

More images:



ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Flemish, 1599-1641
Portrait of a Woman
Oil on canvas



THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
English, 1727-1788
Portrait of Mrs. John Hallam
Oil on canvas



LOUIS MICHAEL VAN LOO
French, 1707-1771
Madame de la Croix van Crucius
Oil on canvas



CHARLES-ANTOINE COYPEL
French, 1694-1752
The Education of the Virgin
Oil on canvas



Portrait of Madame Adélaïde
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

Related exhibition:

Glimpses into the Golden Age at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum on the campus of Rollins College near downtown Winter Park, FL, January 4–May 11, 2014.

The exhibition showcases works from the permanent collection of CFAM that illustrate the social, political, and religious changes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Coinciding strategically with a presentation of Old Master paintings on view at the Orlando Museum of Art—Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough and the Golden Age of Painting from the Collection of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky—the show features works by some of the same artists.


Images and Credits:



Louis Michel van Loo (French, 1707–1771)
Portrait of the Comtesse de Beaufort, c. 1760
Oil on canvas
50 x 40 in.
Gift of the Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello and
Michael A. Mennello, in honor of Rollins College
president Rita Bornstein
1995.01.P



Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788)
Portrait of Gaëtan Apolline Balthazar Vestris, c. 1781–1782
Oil on canvas
12 1/2 x 10 3/8 in.
Bequest from the estate of Edmund L. Murray
1983.14.P




Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Italian, 1727–1804)
St. John Gualbert (Contemplating the Crucifix), c. 1753
Oil on canvas
24 1/2 x 17 3/4 in.
Gift of the Myers Family, and Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers,
Jr., R'42, and June Reinhold Myers, R'41
1961.04.P

A selection of major works from The William S. Paley Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, New York


Venues:

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 2–April 7, 1992,
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; September 15 to December 30, 2012
Portland Museum of Art, Portland Maine; May 2 through September 8, 2013
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, October 10, 2013-January 5, 2014
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville AR, MARCH 15 THROUGH JULY 7, 2014


The Paley Collection is a markedly personal one, reflecting the broad tastes of a singular art collector, rather than one unifying historical period or theme. The work selected for the exhibition, The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism, focuses on the extraordinary French School and School of Paris late 19th and early 20th century artists who, like Paley, helped redefine modernism.




Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903). Washerwomen, Arles 1888. Oil on burlap. The William S. Paley Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paley, founder and force at Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), was a leader in communication, entertainment, and broadcast journalism. His innovations in radio programming and advertising, his balanced commitment to entertainment and news dissemination, and his acute awareness of popular trends revolutionized broadcasting’s business model, and set new standards in broadcast journalism. Paley’s professional interest in emerging technology and new media undoubtedly encouraged his personal interest in modernist art.



Henri Matisse (France, 1869–1954), Seated Woman with a Vase of Amaryllis, 1941, oil on canvas, 13 x 16 1/8 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The William S. Paley Collection. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The William S. Paley Collection.

Despite his professional success and stature, as a son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, Paley was not spared the religious discrimination encountered by many Americans of his generation. While his power as a media titan opened many doors, others remained closed, including those of several prestigious clubs that denied him membership. Paley’s art patronage, showcased during parties held in his palatial twenty-room apartment on Fifth Avenue, projected an aura of cultural sophistication comparable to that cultivated by New York’s social elite.

As a master of emerging media in his own era, Paley was keenly aware that generous gifts of art to The Museum of Modern Art would help to augment both his public image and his stature as a significant philanthropist. He was one among the many Jewish collectors and donors who helped to found or shape some of America’s major museums, including the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco.

Paley’s distinguished collection was initially very much a part of his private world, and is often intimate both in scale and in quality. Many of the paintings, sculptures, and drawings provide an individual, contemplative experience with the art. The collection commenced during a trip to Europe in 1933, when Paley acquired his first purchase:



Paul Cezanne’s precious Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat (1875—1876),

directly from the artist’s son. Shortly thereafter, he acquired the artist’s



L’Estaque (1879—1883). (compare two similar images at the end of this post)

The selection of Paley’s collection hosted by the de Young is particularly rich in the works of Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, with significant works by Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Roualt, and Andre Derain. Among the pieces offered are



Gauguin’s The Seed of the Areoi (1892)

from the artist’s first visit to Tahiti,



Degas’ large-scale pastel and charcoal Two Dancers (1905),



Picasso’s celebrated monumental painting, Boy Leading a Horse (1905-1906),



Derain’s vibrant Fauve painting Bridge over the Riou (1906), and



Matisse’s Odalisque with a Tambourine (1925-26).

The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism was organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, with which Paley was affiliated beginning in 1937. Serving as trustee, chairman of the Painting and Sculpture Committee, president of the Museum, and chairman of the Board, Paley was chairman emeritus from 1985 until his death in October, 1990.

This exhibition, featuring more than 60 paintings, sculptures, and drawings, represents the accomplishments of many seminal artists, reflects the modern art patronage of a remarkable man, and celebrates his contributions to, as Robert E. Oldenburg, Director Emeritus of The Museum of Modern Art states, the very “fabric of modern life.”

From a review of the Portland show: (images added)

Picasso. “The Architect’s Table”: Isn’t that one of the great early Cubist pictures? They’re alien at first, those cubist images, and then they start whispering at you. You see the violin scroll, then the bottle of liqueur, the tablecloth tassels, the flirty inclusion of the words “Ma jolie,” the calling card with “Mis [sic] Gertrude Stein” written on it. . . . It’s like an underground trickle of private jokes and allusions. Like tax returns. Intoxicating.

Francis Bacon triptych. “Three Studies for the Portrait of Henrietta Moraes.”

From a review of the DeYoung show with lots of great images:

I discovered Bonnard and Vuillard in a previous exbibition. Their small, intimate painting are jewels. Here you see Bonnard and Vuilllard’s work is both and representational and abstract at the same time.:



Pierre Bonnard Reclining Nude



Édouard Vuillard The Green Lamp


Rouault has been a favorite of mine for his black lines that contain bright color and his sympathetic characters and religious imagery:



Georges Rouault Little Peasant Girl



Georges Rouault The Clown
.

From a review of the San Francisco show:

Matisse's "Woman With a Veil" is a good example of Paley venturing outside the comfort zone. Dressed in a severely patterned dress, with her head resting on a rigidly straight arm and her eyes curiously shadowed, the sitter peers back impassively at the viewer. It's anything but Matisse as the lush sensualist.

A Derain painting of two actors ("The Rehearsal"):



Andre Derain (French, 1880Ð1954) The Rehearsal, 1933 Oil on canvas 26 7/8 x 30 3/8 in. (68.3 x 77.2 cm) The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York Photo: The William S. Paley Collection, MOMA

and a Rouault clown (above) speak to Paley's immersion in public performance.

Even more striking, perhaps, is a pair of Francis Bacon triptychs that could be read as particularly vivid film strips or distorted TV talent head shots:



"Three Studies for the Portrait of Henrietta Moraes" (1963) is one of two Francis Bacon triptychs in the exhibition. Photo: The William S. Paley Collection, MOMA

Many more (large) images


A not to be missed publication preview

Not in the show:

Paul Cezanne:



L'Estaque, 1883–1885



The Gulf of Marseilles Seen from L'Estaque c.1885




Source

A groundbreaking exhibition of mid-19th century French painting and photography opens at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City Oct. 19, 2013 where it will be on view through Feb. 9, 2014 and at The Saint Louis Art Museum from March 16 through July 6, 2104. Featuring approximately 125 works, Impressionist France: Visions of Nation from Le Gray to Monet takes visitors on a vicarious journey through the spectacular French landscape, emphasizing connections between photography, painting and the emerging Impressionist artists during a period in which France was being fundamentally transformed and modernized (1850-1880). Key paintings by well-known artists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, as well as important photographs by influential photographers like Gustave Le Gray and Édouard Baldus will be featured...

This exhibition will include important works from 42 museums and private collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Musées nationaux du Palais de Compiègne, among many others. It will also be the first major exhibition to feature significant and important new acquisitions by the Nelson-Atkins in 19th-century French photography.

Venues:

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
(10/19/13-02/09/14)

Saint Louis Art Museum
(03/16/14–07/06/14)

Excellent review

Catalogue



Impressionist France
Visions of Nation from Le Gray to Monet

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

312 p., 9 1/2 x 11
359 color illus.
ISBN: 9780300196955
PB-Flexibound: $35.00 sc

Simon Kelly and April M. Watson; With essays by Neil McWilliam and Maura Coughlin

Between 1850 and 1880, Impressionist landscape painting and early forms of photography flourished within the arts in France. In the context of massive social and political change that also marked this era, painters and photographers composed competing visions of France as modern and industrialized or as rural and anti-modern. Impressionist France explores the resonances between landscape art and national identity as reflected in the paintings and photographs made during this period, examining and illustrating in particular the works of key artists such as Édouard Baldus, Gustave Le Gray, the Bisson Frères, Édouard Manet, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Charles Nègre, and Camille Pissarro. This ambitious premise focuses on the whole of France, exploring the relationship between landscape art and the notion of French nationhood across the country’s varied and spectacular landscapes in seven geographical sections and four scholarly essays, which provide new information regarding the production and impact of French Impressionism.

Simon Kelly is curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. April M. Watson is associate curator, photography, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.


Images:



Édouard Manet, French (1832-1883). The Rue Mosnier with Flags, 1878. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 31 3/4 inches. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 89.PA.71.



Claude Monet, French (1840-1926). The Promenade with the Railroad Bridge, Argenteuil, 1874. Oil on canvas, 21 1/8 x 28 3/8 inches. Saint Louis Art Museum. Gift of Sydney M. Shoenberg Sr., 45:1973.



Claude Monet, French (1840-1926). Regatta at Sainte-Adresse, 1867. Oil on canvas, 29 5/8 x 40 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of William Church Osborn, 1951, 51.30.4.



Claude Monet, The Bridge at Argenteuil , 1874



Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822-1899)
Grazing Sheep in the Pyrenees
Oil on canvas, 12 5/8 x 17 15/16 in.
Gift of Mrs. Mervat Zahid, 1997.46
he Hall Family Foundation, 2010.30.3.

8 November 2013 – 23 February 2014
Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

The first and second decade of the 20th century witnessed an unprecedented explosion of artistic movements all over Europe. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 brought much of this creative ferment to an abrupt end. At a time when politics sought to stoke enmity between Germany and France, artists exchanged ideas and collaborated across national borders with unprecedented intensity. Paris was the centre of the new art, yet it found its most enthusiastic early advocates in Germany.

The exhibition is the first to investigate and present in depth the fate of modern art in the context of the First World War by presenting some 300 works from around 60 artists.

The exhibition starts with two paintings by Lovis Corinth with a symbolic content: a bellicose



Self-portrait in Armour dating from 1914, and,



from 1918, the Pieces of Armour in the Studio, bereft of all but artistic purpose.

Before 1914:

The first section of the exhibition investigates the way different artists related to the war. Even before 1914, artists in Germany and Austria – for example Alfred Kubin, Ludwig Meidner and Oskar Kokoschka – had given visual expression to disturbing apocalyptic thoughts. Other artists like Ernst Barlach, Franz von Stuck, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Luigi Russolo or Gino Severini indulged in manifold images of fighting.

From the Studio to the Battlefield:

The collapse of the newly-built edifice of international artistic exchange and collaboration dealt Modernism a decisive and tragic blow. Many artists left their studios for the battlefields, some – among them Umberto Boccioni, Franz Marc, August Macke, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Albert Weisgerber – never returned. International artists’ groups disbanded because the former guests had become ‘enemy aliens’ and had to leave the host country: Kandinsky went back to Russia, Kahnweiler was forced to leave France, Chagall could not return to Paris, the Delaunays fled to neutral Spain etc. In 1915 Marcel Duchamp, who had gone to New York, wrote ‘Paris is like a deserted mansion. Her lights are out. The friends are all away at the front. Or else they have already been killed.’

‘Avant-garde in uniform’:

While artists such as Franz Marc, André Mare and Dunoyer de Segonzac used avant-garde forms in the design of military camouflage, Kazimir Malevich in Russia, Raoul Dufy in France, Max Liebermann in Germany produced patriotic pictures.

Severe Traumatisation:

The third section of the exhibition looks at the severe traumatisation of many artists within months of the outbreak of the war. The existential experience of suffering and destruction led painters and graphic artists such as Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Dix or Egon Schiele – even Paul Klee – to poignant new themes and novel techniques. It was during the first year of the war that Franz Marc collected the motifs for a future pictorial world. Félix Vallotton, Frans Masereel and Willy Jaeckel created graphic series.

Prospects for the 20th century 1915–1918:

In 1916, with the war still raging across Europe, a group of émigré artists in neutral Switzerland founded the Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of Dada, that international protest movement against absolutely everything. At that time Duchamp was already working on his Large Glass. In 1917 Guillaume Apollinaire called for an esprit nouveau as the epitome of culture shaking off the fetters of the old and coined the term surrealism. Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich approached the complete abstraction. Thus it was during the war – outside its direct sphere of influence – that major perspectives for 20th century art were developed.

More on the exhibition:

The Avantgarde Prior to 1914

A Golden Age

The years immediately prior to the outbreak of the First World War were the golden age of the international avantgarde. In France, Picasso and Braque together developed a pictorial language of facetted forms: Cubism. In 1912 they added items from the everyday world, thus re-uniting artwork and reality. Unlike these artists, who because of the their German dealers, were regarded in France as boches (derogatory term for ‘Germans’) and thus as politically suspect, Gleizes and Metzinger painted Cubist works regarded as typically French. For Delaunay and Léger, the Cubist imagery was no longer an end in itself, but a means of coming to terms with the theme of the large modern city. The avantgarde tone in Germany was set by the Munich-based artist-group known as Der Blaue Reiter, whose members included Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter and Alexej von Jawlensky. In their works, unlike those by the Cubists, the expressivity of colours played a major role. At about the same time in Prague, Franti_ek Kupka arrived at a similar pictorial conclusion to Kandinsky – namely abstraction.

Premonitions

Even before 1914, the optimism of the avantgarde was alloyed with dark forebodings, the sense of standing at a turning point in history. The Austrian artist Alfred Kubin understood in masterly fashion how to give expression to these existential fears. His pictorial world is permeated by fantastically combined incarnations of the menacing and demonic. With his apocalyptic landscapes, Ludwig Meidner added an unmistakable note to the eschatological pessimism of the day. In the works he painted before the outbreak of the war, the world is coming to a noisy end: a preview of things to come. Jakob Steinhardt used the motif of the contemporary city to illustrate his view of the world. He presents it as a place not of gleaming modernity, but of dislocation and decline.

Encircled by Enemies

Feinde ringsum (Encircled by Enemies) the title of a sculpture by Franz von Stuck, is taken from a slogan uttered by Kaiser Wilhelm II in August 1914, and so this is also the title of this room, whose main theme is different meanings of the word ‘struggle’. Ernst Barlach’s Rächer (The Avenger)(below) together with the lithograph



Der heilige Krieg (The Holy War),

whose motif is the same, calls on Germans to honour their higher duty to the fatherland. Emil Nolde’s paintings, by contrast, display an altogether ambivalent relationship to the war. In the work of Roberto Baldessari and Gino Severini, we see a flaring up of the patriotic pathos of the Italian Futurists. The motif of the street decorated with flags, often to be seen in French painting of the time, and here illustrated by a work of Raoul Dufy, testifies at first to an – if anything – innocent patriotism, but as preparations for war got under way, takes on political significance. Kandinsky’s perspective was quite different: his apocalyptic scenes express the conviction that from the ruins of the old world, a new spiritual order would emerge.

Images and credits:



Alexej von Jawlensky
Self-portrait
1911, Oil on cardboard
© Stiftung im Obersteg, Depositum
im Kunstmuseum Basel




Ernst Barlach
The Avenger
1914, Bronze
Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz,
Saarland.Museum Saarbrücken



Pablo Picasso
The Violin
1914, Oil on canvas
© Musée national
d'art moderne Paris,
bpk/CNAC-MNAM



Emil Nolde
Soldiers, 1913
Oil on burlap
Nolde Stiftung Seebüll



Wassily Kandinsky
Deluge I
1912, oil on canvas
Kunstmuseen Krefeld



Ludwig Meidner
Burned-Out(Homeless)
1912
Oil on canvas
© Museum Folkwang



Ludwig Meidner
The Cannon (III)
1914
Pen and ink on paper
Winfried Flammann, Karlsruhe


1914. Into War

Patriotic, popular

Instead of standing at their easels in the studio, artists now served as soldiers at the front – or else on the ‘home front’. Thus at the outbreak of the war, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky is said to have endlessly and publicly declaimed ‘bloodthirsty and virulently anti-German verses’ in Moscow. Such texts were also created for propaganda sheets designed by the Russians Kazimir Malevich and Aristarkh Lentulov in the style of the old Russian lubok or popular print. Vernacular images also inspired the French painter of serene landscapes Raoul Dufy, when in 1914 he drew coloured propaganda sheets in the style of the popular prints known as images d’Épinal.

The series of ‘artist flysheets’ that appeared from the end of August 1914 in Berlin under the title Kriegszeit (Time of War) were entirely in the spirit of the Kaiser’s war policy. Max Liebermann, August Gaul and Ernst Barlach all supplied numerous contributions. In Italy, Carlo Carrà helped to fire patriotic enthusiasm with his publication Guerrapittura (War Painting) in 1915.

Camouflage

When, during the war, Picasso saw a cannon painted in Cubist camouflage colours, he is said to have exclaimed: ‘That’s our doing!’ When artists were commissioned to design and implement camouflage patterns for ordnance, they applied their formal innovations. The sketchbooks of the Cubist André Mare bear particular witness to this. In France Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola headed the camouflage team to which the painters André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Roger de la Fresnaye, Jacques Villon and André Fraye belonged. On the German side, Franz Marc was assigned to paint camouflage. His letter, written in February 1916, gives more detailed information. In England artists such as Norman Wilkinson and Edward Wadsworth used confusingly entangled geometric forms for the ‘dazzle camouflage’ of naval vessels.


Images and credits:




Albert Weisgerber
David and Goliath
1914, Oil on Canvas
Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz,
Saarland.Museum, Saarbrücken



Kasimir Malewitsch
Look, oh look, the Vistula
is already close…
1914
Farblithografie
© Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin




Max Liebermann
I no longer recognize any political parties
From: Kriegszeit. Künstlerflugblätter
Nr. 1 of 31 august 1914
Ed. by Paul Cassirer, 1914–16
Lithograph
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Bibliothek



Max Liebermann
Now we want to thrash them!
From: Kriegszeit. Künstlerflugblätter
Nr. 2 of 7 september 1914
Ed. by Paul Cassirer, 1914–16
Lithograph
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Bibliothek



Raoul Dufy
The End of the Great War
1915
Coloured wood engraving
© Musée national d'art moderne Paris,
bpk/CNAC-MNAM

Shocks 1914/1915

On the battlefield

Artists on active service often took the opportunity to make sketches on the spot: of strangers, of the sufferings of the victims, of destruction. In this way they took on the role of involved observers. These ‘brushless artists’ (Paul Klee) had to fall back on handy formats and simple techniques. As a rule these works were not commissioned, the artists themselves being driven to come to terms with the enormity of the events. By contrast, it was as an official Austrian war artist that Oskar Kokoschka made his sketches on the Isonzo front in summer 1916.

Where the artists did have access to easels, canvases and oil-paints, then they were mostly working on official commission, like the Frenchman Félix Vallotton and the Englishman C. R. W. Nevinson. If, as in Nevinson’s, case the motif did not accord with the political directives, the censorship authorities stepped in.

The disoriented, the wounded, the dead

At times the artists were not only observers, but depicted themselves as casualties. This was especially true of some German artists. In self-portraits, they come across as shattered, disoriented, frightened and confused. A particularly eloquent example is the painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

A unique artistic formulation for the general physical and psychological collapse was found by Wilhelm Lehmbruck. With his sculpture Der Gestürzte (Fallen Man) dating from 1916, which at first bore the title Sterbender Krieger (Dying Warrior), he created a kind of memorial.

Accusations

There were also artists who opposed the war from the outset. To reach as broad a public as possible, they plumped for prints as a medium. And to reinforce antiwar sentiment, they chose simple, hard-hitting images.

One of the first was the 26-year-old Willy Jaeckel, with his drastically realistic series of prints Memento 1914/15. After making sketches on the spot, the Impressionist Max Slevogt, who was a generation older, produced critical prints full of cartoon-like exaggeration. The Belgian Frans Masereel used the eyecatching succinct pictorial language of the black-and-white woodcut, as did the Frenchman Félix Vallotton for his own sheets, which banked on popular imagery.

A world of lines, shattered by reality

The terrors and fears of the war led some German artists to change their style, a change which went hand-in-hand with new motifs that bore the marks of their experiences.

Max Beckmann’s works from



Kriegserklärung (Declaration of War) to



Granatenexplosion (Shell Explosion) to



Leichenschauhaus (Morgue)

resemble stations along a road of suffering: direct witnesses to the shock he had undergone.

In the work of Otto Dix, too, the pictorial means reflect very directly the bewilderment felt in the face of the carnage, the explosion, and the ruins. Paul Klee’s drawings are invaded by prickly monsters; the very titles signal the menacing nature of the general situation.

Images and credits:




Otto Dix
Self-portrait as Mars
1915, Oil on canvas
© Städtische Sammlungen Freital, Schloss Burgk



Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Self-portrait as a Soldier
1915, Oil on canvas
© Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, USA
1914_lehmbruck.jpg



Max Slevogt
Die Kathedrale von Löwen
1914
Aquarell, Bleistift auf Papier
Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz,
Saarland.Museum, Saarbrücken aus der
Sammlung Kohl-Weigand



Édouard Vuillard
The Interrogation, 1917
Distemper on paper on canvas
Centre national des arts plastiques, Frankreich



Prospects for the Twentieth Century 1915–1918

Fresh start in the studio

After the collapse, the artists rediscovered themselves as isolated individuals. To the extent that they could work in the studio at all, they made a fresh start with their art. The extreme experiences they had undergone demanded decidedly more radical means.

George Grosz now demanded ‘Brutality! Clarity that hurts!’, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner wrote: ‘I am inwardly riven and immunized against everything, but I am fighting to express this too through art.’ His pen-and-ink drawing are among the most impressive examples of graphic art in the whole twentieth century.

A new pictorial world also opened up for Paul Klee in the years 1916/17. On an experimental basis to start with, he laid the artistic foundation for his future oeuvre. Max Beckmann’s radical new start in painting is immediately obvious when one compares the two self-portraits, the one before, the other immediately after his involvement in the war. The large, unfinished (and not for loan) Auferstehung (Resurrection) is the subjective résumé of his war experience.

Against everything: Dada

When artists formed groups during the war, they were driven by the political conditions. Some fled to avoid mobilization, some travelled on false passports, some deserted. Neutral Switzerland was the venue in 1915/16 for opponents of, and refugees from the war, such as the Romanians Marcel Janco and Tristan Tzara, the Germans Hans Richter, Richard Huelsenbeck, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, and Hans Arp, who was from Alsace. Richter noted that he could not understand ‘how a movement could arise from such heterogeneous elements’. This movement was Dada.

The Dadaists were against everything, against the war, against the bourgeoisie and against its culture. Their activities in Zurich were concentrated three areas: a new approach to spoken language, a new approach to printed language (typography) and the invention of the ‘Aktion’ as an art form.




Max Beckmann
Self-portrait as a Medical Orderly
1915, Oil on canvas
© Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal
Max Beckmann



Paul Klee
Stars above Evil Houses
1916
Watercolor on plaster-primed canvas,
mounted on cardboard
© Merzbacher Kunststiftung




Egon Schiele
Portrait of the Artist’s Wife
1917, Oil on canvas
© The Pierpont Morgan Library New York



Radicalized Modernism

Malevich presented his totally abstract Black Square for the first time in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in 1915. At the same time, Vladimir Tatlin exhibited sculptures made of objets trouvés that represent nothing but themselves. This laid the foundations for unconditional abstraction and for the material picture of the twentieth century.

In order to escape the war, Marcel Duchamp went to New York in the summer of 1915. Here he created The Large Glass, and applied the term ‘Ready-made’ for the first time to his selected objects – the foundations of Concept Art. While Picasso, after 1915, was once again working in the traditional style, which he had previously rejected in favour of the Cubist technique, the Paris-based Futurist Severini also made a similar turnaround, thus laying the foundations for the Neue Sachlichkeit of the 1920s.

To avoid military service, Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà both spent time in a military psychiatric hospital in Ferrara in 1917. There they produced outstanding works which paved the way for Surrealist painting.

List of Artists

Pierre ALBERT-BIROT (1876–1967)
Hans (Jean) ARP (1886–1966)
Roberto Marcello Iras BALDESSARI (1894–1965)
Hugo BALL (1886–1927)
Ernst BARLACH (1870–1938)
Max BECKMANN (1884–1950)
Carlo CARRÀ (1881–1966)
Lovis CORINTH (1858–1925)
Robert DELAUNAY (1885–1941)
Otto DIX (1891–1969)
Marcel DUCHAMP (1887–1968)
Raoul DUFY (1877–1953)
Heinrich EHMSEN (1886–1964)
Conrad FELIXMÜLLER (1897–1977)
André FRAYE (1887–1963)
August GAUL (1869–1921)
Albert GLEIZES (1881–1953)
Walter GRAMATTÉ (1897–1929)
Rudolf GROSSMANN (1882–1941)
George GROSZ (1893–1959)
Otto GUTFREUND (1889–1927)
Raoul HAUSMANN (1886–1971)
Erich HECKEL (1883–1970)
Otto HETTNER (1875–1931)
Richard HUELSENBECK (1892–1974)
Willy JAECKEL (1888–1944)
Marcel JANCO (1895–1984)
Alexej von JAWLENSKY (1865–1941)
Arthur KAMPF (1864–1950)
Wassily KANDINSKY (1866–1944)
Ernst Ludwig KIRCHNER (1880–1938)
Paul KLEE (1879–1940)
Oskar KOKOSCHKA (1886–1980)
Käthe KOLLWITZ (1867–1945)
Alfred KUBIN (1877–1959)
Franti_ek KUPKA (1871–1957)
Fernand LÉGER (1881–1955)
Wilhelm LEHMBRUCK (1881–1919)
Aristach LENTULOW (1882–1943)
Max LIEBERMANN (1847–1935)
August MACKE (1887–1914)
Wladimir Wladimirowitsch MAJAKOWSKI (1893–1930)
Kazimir MALEVICH (1878–1935)
Franz MARC (1880–1916)
André MARE (1885–1932)
Frans MASEREEL (1889–1972)
Ludwig MEIDNER (1884–1966):


Jean METZINGER (1883–1956)
Gabriele MÜNTER (1877–1962)
Christopher Richard Wynne NEVINSON (1889–1946)
Emil NOLDE (1867–1956)
Francis PICABIA (1879–1953)
Pablo PICASSO (1881–1973)
Hans RICHTER (1888–1976)
Waldemar RÖSLER (1882–1916)
Luigi RUSSOLO (1885–1947)
Egon SCHIELE (1890–1918)
Gino SEVERINI (1883–1966)
Max SLEVOGT (1868–1932)
Jacob STEINHARDT (1887–1968)
Wladimir Lewgrafowitsch TATLIN (1885–1953)
Wilhelm TRÜBNER (1851–1917)
Percyval TUDOR-HART (1873–1954)
Leon UNDERWOOD (1890–1975)
Henry VALENSI (1883–1960)
Félix VALLOTTON (1865–1925)
Theo VAN DOESBURG (1883–1931)
Franz VON STUCK (1863–1928)
Éduard VUILLARD (1868–1940)
Albert WEISGERBER (1878–1915)
Ossip ZADKINE (1891–1967)

Catalogue

1914. The Avant-Gardes at War
Format: 24,5 x 28 cm, Hardcover
Pages: 360 with 400 colour illustrations
Walther König

ISBN: 978-3-86442-052-8 (German)
ISBN: 978-3-86442-053-5 (English)
Texts by Régine Bonnefoit and Gertrud Held, Uwe Fleckner, Eckhart Gillen,
Christine Hopfengart, Lucian Hölscher, Friederike Kitschen, Joes Segal, Uwe M.
Schneede, Jay Winter and with biographiqual notes about the artists in the years
1914 till 1918 by Natascha Bolle

Etchings from a 19th century book of French short stories by writer Ludovic Halévy and two copies of the rare book will be on exhibit Jan. 21-Feb. 28 in Special Collections and Archives of the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell Library. The 20-plus etchings offer a look at French society and Paris street and night life through the work of an Impressionist master.

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is best known as an observer of modern Paris life. From an aristocratic family, he belied his pedigree when he was backstage at the Paris Opera, sketching the young, ballet dancers in the chorus line. Degas is also known for scenes of Paris racetracks and horses, restaurant interiors, cabarets and cafés, brothels and prostitutes and, above all, his portraiture, with its searing delineation of social class.

Degas' close friend, writer and librettist of Carmen Ludovic Halévy, documented Paris backstage activity in short stories gathered into one volume called La Famille Cardinal. Degas illustrated these fictional adventures of Pauline and Virginie Cardinal and their parents. Halévy, however, failed to recognize the greatness of these monotypes. They remained unpublished until 1938 when Marcel Guérin, David Weill and publisher Auguste Blaizot formed a consortium to purchase the lot at auction. The monotypes were then reduced and reproduced by the photogravure process in 1938 and used in the book. The etchings are important because many Degas monotypes have vanished.

From a commentary:

Degas made the monotypes to illustrate Halévy's book, La Famille Cardinal, a satire of social-climbing ballet dancers, controlling stage mothers and the backstage sex-trade. Hoping to illustrate a new edition of the book, originally published in 1872, Degas created a collection of monotypes inspired by the story in the early 1880s. Since Halévy narrated the book in the first person, Degas included him in nine of the illustrations. Theodore Reff suggests that Halévy did not publish his friends monotypes because, "On the whole, Degas' illustrations are more a recreation of the spirit and ambience than authentic illustrations".

More about the collector, Héloïse B. Levit, and the collection, with images


More images:



"Conversation — Ludovic Halevy Talking to Mme Cardinal in the Dressing Room," etching made from a monotype by Edgar Degas. Collection of Heloise B. Levit



"The Cardinal Sisters Talking to Admirers," etching made from a monotype by Edgar Degas. Collection of Héloïse B. Levit



"Monseur Cardinal About to Write a Letter," etching made from a monotype by Edgar Degas. Collection of Héloïse B. Levit



"An Admirer in the Corridor," etching made from a monotype by Edgar Degas. Collection of Héloïse B. Levit



Pauline and Virginie Conversing with Admirers



Seated Man and Dancer

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, showcased Fauve and Expressionist paintings from one of the world’s most notable private collections of modern art in the exhibition Color Gone Wild: Fauve and Expressionist Masterworks from the Merzbacher Collection. On view July 6, 2013-January 11, 2014, the exhibition featured works by major Fauve and Expressionist artists from high points in their careers, including paintings by Georges Braque, André Derain, Alexej Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Maurice Vlaminck, among others. Fifteen years following the collection’s public debut at the Israel Museum, Color Gone Wild provided a focused examination of forty-two collection highlights, including important works acquired since then, all linked by a vivid use of vibrant color as a vehicle for emotional expression.

“Since its first public presentation at the Israel Museum in 1998, the Merzbacher Collection has been universally embraced for its exceptional quality, comprising paintings that trace the history of color in the 20th century,” said James S. Snyder, the Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum. “The works on view in Color Gone Wild are linked by their intensity of color and their emotional expressiveness—reflecting Werner and Gabrielle Merzbacher’s persisting passion for collecting artworks by some of the most pioneering artists of the 20th century. We are deeply grateful to the Merzbachers for making the presentation of this extraordinary display possible.”

Color Gone Wild reflects the Merzbachers’ aesthetic passions. Their interest in collecting was spurred initially by Mrs. Merzbacher’s grandparents, staunch supporters of the avant-garde who amassed a small but stunning collection of modern art. The modern masterpieces on view in this presentation are unified by their brilliantly contrasting hues and energized brushwork. Though differing in subject matter, the paintings all demonstrate a freedom from the social and artistic conventions of their time and a vision of art as socially and spiritually transforming. The exhibition opens with Fauve painting, leading then to the two groups of Expressionists, The Bridge (Die Brücke) and the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), emphasizing the contemporaneous preoccupation of these painters with expressive color, bold brushstrokes, and innovative composition.

Included in the exhibition were two keystones of the Merzbacher collection:



Blooming Trees (1909) by Karl Schmidt Rottluf and



Interior at Collioure (1905) by Henri Matisse.

The acquisition of Blooming Trees marked a significant break in the Merzbachers’ earlier collecting practice, which initially favored works by Social Realists and colorful Impressionists. Shortly thereafter, the arrival on loan from Mrs. Merzbacher’s parents of Matisse’s Interior at Collioure further established the foundation for the Merzbachers’ new collecting focus and fueled their search for seminal Fauve and Expressionist works, as well as paintings from related art movements.

Approximately one quarter of the works in Color Gone Wild were purchased following the collection’s public debut in 1998 and had never been seen in Israel. Among the newly acquired works in the exhibition was



Wassily Kandinsky’s Two Hoursemen and a Lying Person (1909-1910),

an early work that demonstrates the artist’s inclination towards abstraction with its bold simplification of figures and heightened use of color.

Also on view were



Girl with Cat (1910) and



Two Nudes on a Blue Sofa (1910-20) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,

which in their crude, non-naturalistic depictions of contemporary bohemian life reflect the artist’s attempts to break from the traditional academic style of the age.

Another work that marks a shift in artistic practice is



Maurice de Vlaminck’s Potato Pickers (ca. 1905-07),

an example of the artist’s trend towards “deconstructing” the physical landscape into violent streaks of color that convey a sense of motion. The exhibition also showcased newly acquired paintings by Erich Heckel, Emil Nolde, and Max Beckmann.

Color Gone Wild was on view within the Museum’s collection galleries, as a preamble to its permanent display of the art of the 20th century. The exhibition is an extension of a longstanding relationship between the Israel Museum and the Merzbachers, dating back to Mr. Merzbacher’s extended term as the Founding President of the Swiss Friends of the Israel Museum. In 1986, the Merzbacher’s gifted the Dr. Julius and Hilde Merzbacher Gallery for Israeli Art.



Max Pechstein (German, 1881–1955), “The Red Bathhouse,” 1910, oil on canvas. ©The Werner and Gabrielle Merzbacher Collection

Curator: Color Gone Wild was curated by Dr. Adina Kamien-Kazhdan, David Rockefeller Curator, The Stella Fischbach Department of Modern Art at the Israel Museum.



From a very nice article about the Merzbachers and the show in the NY Times (images added):

After seeing an exhibition of Kandinsky's paintings at the Leonard Hutton Galleries in Manhattan in the early 1960's, he put that Russian-born artist at the top of his wish list. And eventually, years later, he acquired seven Kandinskys, one by one, from a critical point in his career. Viewed together, the oil paintings seem to show Kandinsky's movement from landscapes to abstraction.

But each Kandinsky painting was like a slippery eel that got away just as he pounced. One,



''Section for Composition II,''

was repeatedly put on the market and snatched back by an indecisive owner. Seven years after Mr. Merzbacher first tried to buy it, it appeared on the cover of an auction catalogue.

''I thought, 'Oh, this time I really want to get it,' but the owner changed his mind again,'' Mr. Merzbacher said. ''The auction house told him he couldn't; it was on their cover. So they put a very high limit and thought they wouldn't sell it. But I wanted it. For me it is not a mental difficulty to pay more than the market value for something I really want.''

This was in the late 1970's, before art prices skyrocketed, and Mr. Merzbacher said he paid $1 million. ''You wouldn't be seeing this exhibition if money was what was important,'' Mr. Merzbacher said. ''I have never bought art for money. I'm not displeased that it has not been a terrible investment, but that was not my motivation.''

Stephen S. Lash, the vice chairman of Christie's, called Mr. Merzbacher ''a collector's collector, whose collection bears the unmistakable imprint of the man himself.''

That collection is estimated to be worth several hundred million dollars. (A Modigliani similar to his



''Jeanne Hebuterne Sitting''

recently sold for $13 million.) He has not sold a painting in more than 20 years.

Previous shows:

"The Joy of Color", an exhibition of almost 150 pictures from the collection, first celebrated success in Jerusalem in 1998, followed by Japan in 2001, the Royal Academy in London in 2002, and Zurich's Kunsthaus in 2006. Further exhibitions were held at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark in 2010 and in 2012 at the Fondation Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland (June 29 to November 25).

From an article about the Martigny show (some images added):

In 1964, around 15 years after leaving the country, the family relocates back to Switzerland with their three children. Werner Merzbacher joins international fur trading firm Mayer & Cie. It is his wife Gabrielle who leads him to discover art. In Ascona, she shows him the small, prestigious collection belonging to her grandfather, Bernhard Mayer.

Picasso's "The Couple",



Cézanne's "Skull",

Matisse's "Interior at Collioure (The Siesta)" (above)

now belong to the Merzbacher Collection, and at that time have a profound impact on him. "Although I never knew him, Bernhard Mayer became a very important part of my life". With his collection, his father-in-law gives him a major boost to his own collection.

Purchasing art is a question of economics, but in this case it's first and foremost a case of love. The spark is ignited in an exhibition on Fauvism at New York's Moma, following which the Merzbachers start acquiring works of art in the 1960s.



Wassily Kandinsky's "Murnau – Dorfstrasse", 1908,

is the first piece; the artist goes on to remain very much a center of attention.



Blue Balls



Lady with a Yellow Straw Hat

From an article about the Royal Academy show:

Werner Merzbacher was born in Germany in 1928. As the son of a highly respected country doctor who considered himself a German, like so many other Jews, Werner's life was destined to change course dramatically. After the warning signals of Kristallnacht, when Werner was 10 years old and no longer permitted to attend school, his parents took the precaution of sending him with a children's transport to Switzerland. A sympathetic Christian physician and colleague of his father took Werner in to live with his family. War broke out and the young boy never saw his parents again. They died in Auschwitz after being held in a concentration camp in France.

With the help of scholarships, Werner remained in Switzerland for 10 years, where he received his education. In 1949 he emigrated to the United States and met Gabrielle Mayer. In 1951 they were married...

In 1964 the Merzbachers returned to Switzerland with their three children...

Werner Merzbacher's dynamism and energy is visible in the works he has collected, which literally jump off the walls in the galleries. His passion for art knows no half measures, and art is deeply important to both him and his wife; their earliest purchases were made as newlyweds, when money was a factor.



"The Seine at Pecq," by Maurice de Vlaminck, oil on canvas, 86 by 118 centimeters, 1905

For a sense of "loosened-up," virtuoso Van Gogh brushwork, Vlaminck's "The Seine at Pecq" (1905), shown above, is an riot of palette-knifed cadmiums, acid greens and swirling black lines, reaching a crescendo in the blood-red buildings in the distance, which in reality must have been the drab muddy-browns and non-descript grays usually associated with small-town port architecture. In the artist's imagination, they are transformed by a unique interpretation in raw color squeezed directly from the tube.

The more soothing Fauve paintings in the second gallery, like Derain's "London Bridge," (1905-1906) and Vlaminck's stunning "View from Chatou" (1906), while still maximizing on the complimentary (discordant) greens and reds, owe more to the elegant spatial sensibilities of Matisse's "Interior at Collioure" (1905-1906), (above) which came to the collection through Bernard Mayer, Gabrielle Merzbacher's grandfather, in the 1920s.



"Landscape at L'Estaque" by Georges Braque, oil on canvas, 46 by 55 centimeters, 1906

Even in the dazzling company of the Vlaminck's and Derains in the second gallery, George Braque (1882-1963) holds his own with a sublime, rosy hued "Landscape at L'Estaque," (1906) and "Landscape at La Ciotat," (1907), a jewel of a painting worth kidnapping. The sinuous curves and sumptuous colors of his Fauve period give no hint whatsoever of the controlled color palette and intellectual rigor of the Cubist revolution that Braque, together with Picasso, later instigated. These works are like a joyous romp in a sun-drenched garden, the calm before the storm. Even though it is well known that Braque went through a Fauve period, his lyrical Fauve paintings come as a surprise because they are touchingly uninhibited, colorful and child-like. It made this viewer long for a gigantic retrospective of his work. (Editor: See Georges Braque: A Retrospective)



"Stars Above an Evil House," by Paul Klee, watercolor and sand on canvas, 19.7 by 22 centimeters, 1916

Later, while on military service, the mood becomes more menacing and the colors more somber in "Stars Above an Evil House (1916), shown above. "Moonrise-Sunset" (1919), is a sophisticated, exotic patchwork in oils of palm trees, turrets and rooftops beneath a starry sky. Suspended in the midst of this dark, tropical night is a full-blown yellow sun, which ignites the composition. Klee's magical paintings wash up on the shores of the imagination long after the show is left behind. Although Klee (1879-1940) was a supremely gifted artist, he took his time to develop. His discovery of color was a catalyst, and in 1914 he wrote in his diary "Color possesses me forever, I know. Color and I are one. I am a painter." It is no coincidence that Klee's paintings are placed alongside spectacular watercolors by Emile Nolde (1867-1956). Together with Derain and Vlaminck, the juxtaposition of Klee and Nolde - which accentuate their striking affinity - is the most memorable at the show. Nolde will be discussed later.

Early 20th century French art was almost exclusively the work of immigrant painters, represented in gallery two with works by Vlaminck, (Belgian), Picasso and Julio Gonzalez (1876-1942), (Spain), Jacques Lipschitz 1891-1973), (Lithuania), Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Gino Severini (1883-1966) and Umberto Boccionni (1882-1916), (Italy), and Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), the pioneer of abstract painting came from what was then the Hapsburg Empire. The exceptions were Fernand Léger (1881-1955), whose "Two Discs in the City" (1919), celebrate city life and the machine, and Sonia Delaunay Terk (1885-1979) whose "Le Bal Bullier" (1913) is reminiscent of Severini's high-velocity "The Plastic Forms of a Horse" (1913-14). Nearby, Severini's "The Speeding Car," (1912-13) is a reminder of the famous assertion in Marinetti's first Futurist Manifesto, (1909), that "a speeding racing car is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace," which must have endeared him to the curators of antiquities departments in museums around the world.



"Form of Yellow (Notre Dame)" by Frantisek Kupka, oil on canvas, 73 by 59.5 centimeters, 1911

Three remarkable Kupka's are a revelation, the most important being the musical "Form of Yellow, (Notre Dame)" (1911). "Study for a Fuge," (1912-19), and "Abstract Composition," (1913-19), are early examples of Kupka's series based on the cosmos, which bear an uncanny resemblance to the more recent work of the Abstract Expressionists, noticeably Clifford Still. There is no attempt in these paintings to be representational: they are uniquely "free-form" and the only purely abstract works in the show. Perhaps this is why Kupka is credited with being the pioneer of abstraction.



"Angel of the Last Judgement" by Vasily Kandinsky, oil on cardboard, 64 by 50 centimeters, 1911

Bernhard Mayer was not particularly interested in color theory and its exponents, though he did make a brave attempt to understand his friend and artist Arthur Segal (1875-1944), who is represented in the show by a canvas titled "Mayer & Co." (1919). While Goethe's color theories are not manifest in Segal's brown monotone painting, which possibly alludes to the Mayer fur enterprise, Vasily Kandinsky's (1866-1944) gorgeous and unusual "Section for Composition II" (1910) and exuberant "Angel of the Last Judgment" (1911), both shown above, not only pay homage to Goethe's color theories, but embody Kandinsky's own philosophy on color, as laid down in his great manifesto, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," (1911), which accompanied these paintings. The magnificent Kandinskys at this show were added to the collection by Mayer's grandchildren, the Merzbachers.

Also represented are strong paintings by Russian Modernists, completed before the Russian Revolution of 1917. The original, personal styles of Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) in "River Landscape" (1909-11), and especially "Dynamics of Color" (circa 1916-18) by Alexandra Exter (1882-1949), arrive at abstraction before anyone else was to do so, with the exception of

The third gallery is dominated by the vital and towering presence of Vasily Kandinsky, and includes other artists like Franz Marc 1880-1916), Paul Klee and Heinrich Campendock (1889-1957), commonly associated with Der Blau Rider, ("The Blue Rider'). Never a formal organization of artists, it was a name given to an illustrated anthology of essays on art and music, "The Blue Rider Almanac," edited by Kandinsky and Marc, published in 1912. They also organized two exhibitions in Munich in 1911 and 1913.

While the works displayed share (once again) a pre-occupation with non-naturalistic color, which has caused the artists to be mistakenly thought of as German Expressionist painters, there was never a unified Blue Rider "style," or a manifesto; the artists differed widely in subject and approach, as in Kandinsky's "Murnau Village Street" (1908) and Franz Marc's "Landscape with House, Dog and Cow" (1914), although the latter shows a strong affinity with Paul Klee's luminous, post-Tunisian "The Yellow House," also painted in 1914. Kandinsky's "Murnau-Kohlgruberstrasse" (1908), (above) which was painted in the countryside outside Murnau, south of Munich on the edge of the Alps, leans towards abstraction, which he accomplished by 1913. He and his partner, Gabrielle Munter (1877-1962), liked the area so much that she bought a house there. It was in Murnau that Kandinsky developed the pictorial language that evolved into his abstract compositions. The give-and-take between the artists becomes apparent in Kandinsky's gorgeous "Section for Composition II" (1930), (above) which shows the influence of Matisse. The artist even painted the frame of this highly decorative image.



"Autumn Landscape with Boats" by Vasily Kandinsky, oil on board, 71 by 96.5 centimeters, 1908

Between 1908 and 1913, Kandinsky's pre-occupation with non-naturalistic color developed from late Impressionist, Fauve-related landscapes like "Autumn Landscape with Boats" (1908), shown above, to the paintings mentioned earlier "Murnau the Garden II" (1910) and "Angel of the Last Judgment" (1911) which turned out to be crucial for twentieth-century painting. Nothing is directly represented in "Angel of the Last Judgment." The title alludes to the kind of image that may have inspired it, but nothing can be deciphered besides pure forms and colors.

Kandinsky learned a great deal from Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941), who liberated color from its traditionally descriptive paintings. Both artists were Russian and arrived in Munich to study art in 1896. Although they became friends, Jawlensky never joined any of the Blue Rider activities. However, Jawlensky's "Girl in a Gray Apron" (1909), reflects his knowledge of the Fauves, (as did Kirchner), in the interplay of red and green; black contour lines flatten the image and make it more decorative. The painting could have been painted from a model, but by the time Jawlensky painted "Saviour's Face" (1917), and "Mystical Head of a Girl" (1917), the subject is imaginary and spiritually inspired. By the time he painted "Abstract Head" in 1929, although a face is discernible, the artist insisted it is not a face: "It is that which closes itself downward, opens itself upward and encounters itself in the middle." By which he means the "inner" self. The "spiritual" in man and woman, was now manifest in art.



"Poppy" by Emil Nolde, gouache on paper, 44.5 by 36 centimeters

In these uniquely beautiful works, including "Poppy," (undated), shown above, and the exquisite duo of "Sunflowers," (undated), Nolde gives a nod to Van Gogh, whose sunflowers have become synonymous with the idea of a flower, and who, by painting them so often, bestowed upon the humble blossom a degree of importance previously absent from "haute" art. Nolde's sunflowers instantly draw comparison with Van Gogh's unique "Two Sunflowers," painted in the summer 1887, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Other members of Die Brucke included Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Karl Schmidt-Rottulf (1884-1976) and Fritz Bleyl. The group was founded in Dresden in 1905, its name "Die Brucke" borrowed from a Nietzsche quotation. Max Pechstein (1881-1956), together with Nolde, joined the group in 1906, and with the exception of Kirchner, all were self-taught. The purchase by Werner Merzbacher of Schmidt-Rottulf's "Blooming Trees," shown above, in 1919 marked a turning point in the collection; its wild handling and raw colors, which, once again, owe so much to Van Gogh, competed with the earliest paintings collected by Mayer, forcing the Merzbacher's to think differently about the works they acquired.

Landscape was essential to Die Brucke, and paintings like Erich Heckel's luscious "Houses in the Autumn," (1908) Kirchner's magical "Sertig Valley Landscape," (1924) and Max Pechstein's "The Red Bathhouse, (1910), while demonstrating their exposure to Fauvism, owe much more to Van Gogh. In Schmidt-Rottulf's "Gateway," (1910), however, there is a subtle shift. Despite the high-voltage color and the rapid brushwork, which were intended to assault the eye and disturb the mood (all traceable to Van Gogh) the pigment is thinner, and less textured. His individuality as a German Expressionist was asserting itself.

Eric Heckel's sultry "Group on Holiday," painted in 1909, must have raised an eyebrow or two amongst the monocled ladies and gents in the salon: anything less consistent with the principals of a classical life-drawing class would be hard to find. It is intentionally unsettling and discordant in the very best Van Gogh tradition, but the deft modeling and sophisticated use of black contours also allies it to Matisse, who called black "the queen of colors."

Kirchner's "Unicycle Rider" reveals an increasing interest in big-city subjects, such as street scenes and circus acts, and his palette became more restricted, although he continued to use color expressively.

Flowers, women, pet cats and dogs and mythological birds all find their way into Beckman's art. "Still Life with Red Roses and Butchy" (1942) refers to Butchy the pet Pekinese, who entered the family when Beckman married. This was on the condition that his wife never wish for children and promised to give up her budding career as a singer and violinist. In return, he had to give her red roses every single day. Well, artists are not the most predictable - or reasonable - individuals.



"Still Life with Mirror and Tiger Lilies" by Max Beckmann, oil on canvas, 76 by 61 centimeters, 1950

Beckman had plenty of takers for his "flower" paintings and still-lifes, which appealed to dealers and collectors more than his melancholy, mythological-allegorical figure paintings: "Still-Life with Mirror and Tiger Lilies" (1950), shown above, was picked up by Beckman's New York dealer Curt Valentin almost before the canvas had dried on the easel. This sophisticated painting is typical of Beckman's "Woman with Red Rooster," (1941) is an exotic "odalisque," in which the rooster suggests a glorious bird of paradise, which, frankly, would be far more "hip" and compatible with the elegant pose and attire of the reclining blond beauty on the sofa. The bird, like the woman, is sensually appealing; it is also a symbol of Beckman's more abstract ideas and concepts, some of them erotic.



"Bec de l'Aigle, La Ciotat," by Emile-Othon Friesz, oil on canvas, 65.5 by 81 centimeters, 1906-7

There are a great many spectacular paintings in this exhibition such as "Bec de L'Aigle, La Ciotat" by Emile-Othon Friesz, that resonate with dynamism and indelible imagery.

More images mentioned in the above article:



Derain "London Bridge," (1905-1906)



George Braque"Landscape at La Ciotat," (1907)



Natalia Goncharova "River Landscape" (1909-11)



Kandinsky "Murnau Village Street" (1908)



Franz Marc "Landscape with House, Dog and Cow" (1914),



Paul Klee "The Yellow House"



Kirchner "Sertig Valley Landscape" (1924)



Kirchner "Unicycle Rider"



Max Beckmann (German, 1884-1950): Woman with Red Rooster, 1941. Oil on canvas, 55 x 95 cm. Mr and Mrs Merzbacher, the Merzbacher Foundation and Carafe Investment Company. © DACS 2002 and



Eric Heckel"Group on Holiday," (1909)



"Florence: View from the Mannielli Tower" by Oskar Kokoschka, oil on canvas, 85.5 by 110 centimeters, 1948

Venues

The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY 1280
June 15, 2013 - September 15, 2013

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Santa Fe, NM
October 4, 2013 – January 26, 2014

de Young Museum, San Francisco
February 15, 2014 – May 11, 2014

The Hyde Collection, in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, organized a first-of-its-kind exhibition that examines the extraordinary body of work created by O’Keeffe of and at Lake George.

Between 1918 and 1934, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) lived for part of each year at Alfred Stieglitz’s (1864-1946) family estate on Lake George, the popular resort destination in the Adirondacks of New York. The 36-acre property was situated just north of Lake George Village along the western shoreline. It served as a rural retreat for the artist, providing the basic materials for her art and a distinct spirit of place that was essential to O’Keeffe’s modern approach to the natural world. During this highly productive decade, O’Keeffe created more than 200 paintings on canvas and paper in addition to sketches and pastels, making her Lake George years among the most prolific and transformative of her seven-decade career. This period also coincided with her first critical success and emergence as a professional artist; yet, Lake George is often portrayed as an annoyance from which she tried to escape.

“In later years, O’Keeffe herself and various writers described the Lake George years as a period of frustration,” according to Dr. Cody Hartley, director of curatorial affairs at the O’Keeffe Museum. “There is this sense that she felt constantly harassed by the overbearing Stieglitz family and found the landscape cloying, as if it was too overgrown to offer creative inspiration.” The exhibition and accompanying catalogue provides an important corrective. “In looking closely at her art and correspondence from the Lake George years, it becomes clear just how richly inspiring she found the region. Her deep awareness of the natural world, be it a landscape or a botanical subject, is as much indebted to her time at Lake George as anywhere.”

In 1923, for example, O’Keeffe enthusiastically wrote to her friend Sherwood Anderson, “I wish you could see the place here – there is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees – Sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces – it seems so perfect – but it is really lovely – and when the household is in good running order – and I feel free to work it is very nice.”

The exhibition explores the full range of O’Keeffe’s work inspired by Lake George, from magnified botanical compositions of the flowers and vegetables that she grew in her garden, to a group of remarkable still lifes of the apples and pears that she picked on the property. O’Keeffe became fascinated with the variety of trees—cedars, maples, poplars, and birches—that grew in abundance at Lake George, and they were the subject of at least 25 compositions. Telescopic views of a single leaf or pairs of overlapping leaves were another recurring motif during O’Keeffe’s Lake George years, resulting in some 29 canvases. Architectural subjects, including paintings of the weathered barns and buildings on the Stieglitz property that blend the descriptive and the abstract, emerged as a theme, as did a number of panoramic landscape paintings and bold, color-filled abstractions that often visually related to the subjects she was working on at the time. Landscape views of the lake and surrounding hills, throughout the seasons and in a variety of conditions were also a recurring subject. All of these themes will be explored through a selection of approximately 55 works gathered from public and private collections.

O’Keeffe painted throughout the summer and fall at Lake George and transported canvases back to her New York studio for completion and exhibition in the spring. Based in Glens Falls, New York, just a short distance from Lake George and the location of the Stieglitz property, the Hyde Collection brings a rich understanding of the region and its historical context. As Erin B. Coe, chief curator of the Hyde Collection, observes, “Modern Nature offers an unprecedented opportunity to intimately connect the works to the environment that conditions that inspiration.”

Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George was organized by the Hyde Collection, in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.


Catalogue:



Outstanding article

Another nice article


Images and Credits:



Georgia O’Keeffe, Autumn Leaves, 1924. Oil on canvas. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: Museum Purchase, Howald Fund II, 1981.006.



Georgia O’Keeffe, Starlight Night, Lake George, 1922. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Images © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York



Georgia O’Keeffe, Lake George, 1922. Oil on canvas, 16 1/4 x 22 in. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California. Gift of Charlotte Mack, 52.6714



Georgia O'Keeffe's "Petunias" (1925). Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.



Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), Apple Family–2, 1920. Oil on canvas, 8⅛ x 10⅛ inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation (1997.04.03). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.



Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), The Chestnut Grey, 1924. Oil on canvas, 36 x 30⅛ inches. Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis, Minnesota. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.



Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), From the Lake, No. 3, 1924. Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bequest of Georgia O’Keeffe for the Alfred Stieglitz Collection (1987). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.



Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), Lake George Barns, 1926. Oil on canvas, 213⁄16 x 321⁄16 inches, Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Gift of the T. B. Walker Foundation (1954). © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.



Georgia O’Keeffe, Petunia No. 2, 1924. Oil on canvas, 36 x 30. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and Gerald and Kathleen Peters (1996.03.002) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum



Georgia O’Keeffe, Storm Cloud, Lake George, 1923. Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 1/8. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation (2007.01.018) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum



Georgia O’Keeffe, Autumn Trees-The Maple, 1924 Georgia O’Keeffe. Oil on canvas, 36 x 30. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and Gerald and Kathleen Peters (1996.03.001) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum



Georgia O’Keeffe, Pond in the Woods, 1922. Pastel on paper, 24 x 18. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation (2007.01.017) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum



Georgia O’Keeffe, Corn, No. 2, 1924. Oil on canvas, 27 1/4 x 10. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation



Georgia O’Keeffe, Lake George, Autumn 1922, Collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek/Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Court to Café, on view October 27, 2013–February 9, 2014, at the Denver Art Museum, features 50 masterpieces from the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn. The artworks visually unfold the richness of French painting, ranging from the 17th through the early 20th century and include religious and mythological subjects, portraits, landscapes, still lifes and genre scenes.

Nicolas Poussin, François Boucher, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Claude Monet are among the masters represented.

This exhibition tour is the first time that all of these works have been shown as a group. The exhibition is accompanied by



an exhibition catalogue titled Masters of French Painting, 1290-1920: At The Wadsworth Atheneum, by Eric M. Zafran.

Following the social history of French art, the exhibition will take viewers through six themed sections. Each area reveals the cultural shifts of the period and how they were reflected in art from the time of the absolute monarchy to the café society of Paris.



Claude Monet, The Beach at Trouville, 1870. Oil on canvas; 21 1/4 x 25 1/2 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund.



Paul Cézanne, House in the Country, about 1877-79. Oil on canvas; 23-1/2 x 28-7/8 in. Wadsworth Atheneum; Anonymous gift.



Louis Anquetin, Avenue de Clichy (Street – Five O’clock in the Evening), 1887. Oil on paper, mounted on canvas; 27-1/4 x 21 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund. Endowed in memory of Louis M. Beckstein by the Beckstein Family.



Edgar Degas, Double Portrait—The Cousins of the Painter, about 1868-70. Oil on canvas; 23-5/8 x 28-3/4 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund.



Claude Monet, Nympheas (Water Lilies), 1907. Oil on canvas; 31-7/8 x 36-1/4 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Bequest of Anne Parrish Titzell.



Eugene Delacroix, Bathers, 1854. Oil on canvas; 36-3/4 x 31-1/4 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund.



Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873. Oil on canvas; 18-3/8 x 23-1/2 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Bequest of Anne Parrish Titzell.



Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge, 1892. Essence on board; 33-3/4 x 27-1/2 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Bequest of George Gay.



Louis-Rolland Trinquesse, An Interior with a Lady, her Maid, and a Gentleman, 1776. Oil on canvas; 38-1/8 x 50-7/8 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund.

The Denver Art Museum on view through February 9, 2014

Nature as Muse: Impressionist Landscapes from the Frederic C. Hamilton Collection and the Denver Art Museum is part of the exhibition Passport to Paris.

Focusing on landscape paintings, this exhibition features about 36 artworks from the private collection of Frederic C. Hamilton and the DAM’s own holdings. This is the first time that the masterworks from Hamilton’s private collection will be on view to the public.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, artists took their easels and paints and worked outside, freed from the constraints of studio space and light. Utilizing loose brushstrokes and a soft color palette, the impressionists told the story of the French countryside through their canvases. The DAM is producing an illustrated catalog for the exhibition.

The DAM announced January 13 that Denver-based philanthropist Frederic C. Hamilton, the museum’s Chairman Emeritus, bequeathed 22 Impressionist masterworks from his private collection to the museum—the largest gift ever given to the museum. All 22 artworks are on view in Nature as Muse.

The gift includes a painting by



Vincent van Gogh, Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies,

the first Van Gogh artwork to enter the museum’s collection;

four works by the impressionist master Claude Monet including



Path in the Wheat Fields at the Pourville, 1882, and



The Houses in the Snow, Norway,

that illustrate a range of output during the peak of Monet’s career;

three paintings by Eugène Boudin, the first by the artist to enter the museum’s collection, including



Scene at the Beach in Trouville, 1881;

along with paintings by Paul Cézanne, another first for the museum’s collection, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, as well as those of their American contemporaries William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam.

More images from the show:



Paul Cézanne, A Painter at Work, about 1874-75.



Gustave Caillebotte, Boats Moored at Argenteuil, 1887.



Camille Pissarro, Spring at Éragny, 1900.



Pierre Auguste Renoir, Banks of the Seine, about 1882. Oil on canvas; 16-7/8 x 21-5/8 in



Alfred Sisley, Route de Veneaux à Moret – Jour de Printemps, 1886. Oil on canvas; 24 x 28-11/16 in.



Claude Monet, Fishing Boats, 1883. Oil on canvas; 25-3/4 x 36-1/2 in.

All works: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
All works, unless noted, photography: Graham S. Haber

Visions and Nightmares: Four Centuries of Spanish Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum January 17–May 11, 2014 explores the shifting roles and attitudes toward the art of drawing in Spain, as well as the impact of the Catholic Church and the nightmare of the Inquisition on Spanish artists and their work. It is the first exhibition of Spanish drawings ever to be held at the Morgan Library & Museum, whose holdings in this area are relatively small but strong.

The exhibition features more than twenty drawings spanning the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Works by well-known artists such as José de Ribera, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and Francisco Goya are presented alongside sheets by equally talented but less familiar artists, including Vicente Carducho, Alonso Cano, and Eugenio Lucas. Complementing the drawings is a display of contemporary Spanish letters and volumes, notably a lavish 1780 edition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.



Francisco Goya (1746–1828)
Muy accordes (Close Harmony), ca. 1816–20
Black wash
Black Border Album (E), page 50
Thaw Collection

Among the drawings in the exhibition is one of many sheets preparatory for a series of fifty-six paintings that Vicente Carducho designed for the Charterhouse of El Paular. In the foreground, Father Andrés is tortured using a device called la garrucha; the background reveals his subsequent murder by a mob. Squared for transfer to the oil sketch that preceded the final painting, the drawing bears an inscription by the patron indicating that the suspended figure should be larger and more centrally placed. Carducho incorporated this correction into the finished canvas.

José de Ribera was drawn to violent subjects—notably, the flaying of St. Bartholomew and his pagan counterpart, Marsyas, a satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical contest. As punishment for losing the competition and for his sin of pride, Marsyas was tied to a tree and skinned alive. This drawing depicts the bound satyr screaming, his skin still intact. In a variation on the theme, Ribera portrays Marsyas with human (rather than goat) legs, thus connecting this mythologsubject to the artist’s numerous other drawings of bound figures.



José de Ribera (1591–1652)
Marsyas Bound to a Tree, ca. 1630s
Red chalk
Purchased as the gift of Frederick R. Koch, 1976



Vicente Carducho (ca. 1576–1638) Martyrdom of Father Andrés, ca. 1632
Brown wash, over black chalk, with lead white chalk
Gift of Gertrude W. and Seth Dennis, 1986 2

On view are three drawings by Alonso Cano, including his masterpiece on paper: a monumental design for the altarpiece of the Chapel of San Diego de Alcalá. Composed of seventeen joined sheets, the work is highly finished, indicating that it was a presentation drawing, offering the patron different options to consider. King Philip IV became patron of the chapel in 1657; his coats of arms appear at the lower left and right of the drawing.

Renowned for his paintings of religious themes, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo made this preparatory drawing for one of his many versionImmaculate Conception. The loose, sketchy handling of this sheet is typical of the artist’s later style. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception—the belief that the Virgin was born free of original sin—was especially popular in seventeenth-century Spain. Here the abstract ideal is embodied by the figure of the Virgin standing on a crescent moon.



Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1618–1682)
Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, ca. 1665–70
Brown ink and wash, over black chalk
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909


Visions and Nightmares includes four drawings by Francisco Goya. Toward the end of his life, the artist drew increasingly for his own pleasure, executing eight albums now lettered A through H and variously named. Pesadilla (Nightmare)—one of two drawings on view from the so-called Black Border Album—depicts a disheveled woman astride a flying bull, her eyes bulging as she screams in terror. Although the image of a woman and bull traditionally personified the European continent, Goya’s drawing seems to symbolize the turmoil in Spain following the Peninsular War.

Eugenio Lucas’s ominous drawing depicts Death reading from an oversized book supported by the back of a kneeling man who serves as a human lectern. Moody and macabre, this sheet recalls the threat of the Inquisition. Also on view is another sheet by Lucas, which depicts a figure shrouded in white, its arms extending toward the top of the page. The latter drawing may be seen as the pendant to Death Reading from a Human Lectern—the two works representing death and resurrection, respectively.



Francisco Goya (1746–1828) Pesadilla (Nightmare), ca. 1816–20
Black Border Album (E), page 20 Black ink and wash Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard, 1959



Eugenio Lucas (1817–1870)
Death Reading from a Human
Congregation in Background, ca. 1850



Eugenio Lucas (1817–1870), Crowd with Fallen Figures, ca. 1850. Brown wash and watercolor. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; I, 111g. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909.


NY Times review

Related exhibitions:

The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya
The Frick Collection
October 5, 2010, through January 9, 2011



Catalogue:




The Spanish Line in the British Museum. Drawings from the Renaissance to Goya

Venues:

Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes, 7 October 2013 to 26 January 2014;

Madrid Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 18 February to 1 June 2014;

Malaga, Museo Carmen Thyssen, 26 June to 12 October 2014.

Organised to mark the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death, this exhibition is an extensive retrospective of the career of Darío de Regoyos (1857-1913), the leading Spanish representative of Impressionism. More than 100 works will reveal the artist’s different modes of artistic expression, thematic concerns and aesthetic evolution over the course of his career.

Their original use of colour and audacious depiction of the effects of light and atmosphere make Regoyos’s landscapes one of the most innovative chapters in the history of Spanish art of this period. In addition, the early links he established with Belgian and French painters, musicians and writers and his active participation in avant-garde art circles make him the most international figure in late 19th- century Spanish painting. In contrast, his works based around the concept of España negra [Black Spain] reflect a darker side of Spanish culture.




The Diagonal Avenue (Barcelona), 1912. Oil on canvas, 49.6 x 60.5 cm. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao Dax Market, 1909. Oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm. Private collection

The exhibition is produced by the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao with the collaboration of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the Museo Carmen Thyssen in Malaga, where it will subsequently be shown in a smaller version. These three museums have contributed important works from their respective collections, in addition to others loaned by leading institutions such as the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, the Musée d’Orsay, the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, as well as numerous private collections.





DARIO DE REGOYOS 1857-1913 : La aventura impresionista
Author: Baron, Javier (et al)
Price: $77.50
Record created on 10/16/2013
Description: Bilbao: Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2013. 27cm., pbk., 268pp., 194 color illus. Exhibition catalogue. Spanish text.


The exhibition’s catalogue offers an updated revision of the artist’s biography and an in-depth analysis of his contribution to painting, with texts by the curator, Juan San Nicolás, one of the leading experts on Regoyos; Javier Barón, Head of the Department of 19th-century Painting at the Museo Nacional del Prado; and Mercè Doñate, until last year Curator of Modern Art at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

All images: Darío de Regoyos y Valdés.



Bulls in Pasajes, 1898. Oil on canvas, 61.3 x 50.4cm. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao;



Ormáiztegui Viaduct, 1896. Oil on canvas, 70 x 98cm. Private collection;



Street in Durango (Pinondo District), 1907. Oil on canvas, 61.5 x 50.5cm. BBK

DARÍO DE REGOYOS (Ribadesella, 1857- Barcelona, 1913)

Born in Asturias, Darío de Regoyos initially trained with Carlos de Haes in Madrid and Joseph Quinaux in Brussels, from whom he assimilated a light palette and spontaneous brushwork applied to landscape painting, a little appreciate genre at that date but one that responded to Regoyos’s artistic ambitions. His early development was enriched by his contact with the French and Belgian artists James Ensor, Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and with the American James McNeill Whistler. Regoyos was a member of the European avant-garde groups L’Essor and Les XX.

During the course of his life Regoyos made numerous trips around Spain, Belgium, Holland, France and Italy in search of pictorial motifs. In 1885 he moved to London with his friend the poet Émile Verhaeren in order to visit Whistler, who painted a now lost portrait of him. A few years later he and Verhaeren travelled around Spain, giving rise to the collaborative book España negra (1899). During this period Regoyos regularly participated in group shows in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona. Through his friend Pissarro, in 1897 he started to exhibit individually in Paris. Around the turn of the century he became associated with the group of Basque artists based in Bilbao (Manuel Losada, Francisco Iturrino, Pablo Uranga and Ignacio Zuloaga) who aspired to modernise local artistic creation. In 1907 Regoyos and his family moved to Bizkaia, living in Durango then in Bilbao and Las Arenas. In 1912 the artist moved to Barcelona and although gravely ill with cancer held two major exhibitions there and continued to work outdoors. Regoyos died one year later at the early age of 55.

Darío de Regoyos was one of the few Spanish artists to adopt the theories of Impressionism, remaining faithful to them throughout his career despite critical incomprehension. For this reason, the core of the exhibition focuses on Regoyos as an Impressionist, presenting a significant group of oils that reveal his innovative contribution to landscape painting of the day, with the first room devoted to his early years of training and two areas that display works from his “España negra” phase and his brief period of experimentation with Divisionism. Visitors will also see display cases containing original documentation, which has been used to revise certain lesser known aspects of Regoyos’s personality, professional relations and biography.

The early years Regoyos made his first trip to Brussels in 1879 where he met the most innovative artists of the time. This trip is reflected in his misty views of the Belgian capital. At this early date his work already reveals the interest in effects of light which would characterise his entire career, while he also painted nocturnal scenes. In addition, atmospheric effects allowed the artist to experiment with brushstroke and colour. This first section also includes two self-portraits and various portraits of the artist by friends, including Guitarist: Portrait of the Spanish Painter Darío de Regoyos (1882) by Théo van Rysselberghe. These images reveal the most human side of the Spanish painter who best represents the Impressionist movement.



Self-portrait, ca.1880. Oil on card, 22 x 16 cm. Private collection Place à Segovia (Square in Segovia), 1882. Oil on card, 30 x 42.2 cm. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao

España negra

In 1888 Regoyos became familiar with the traditional and sometimes sombre landscape and rituals of provincial Spain during a trip with the poet Émile Verhaeren, who would publish his impressions in a magazine on their return. Ten years later they were translated and Regoyos illustrated them with woodcuts, resulting in the celebrated book España negra. Regoyos devoted numerous oils and works on paper to this theme, which coexisted with Impressionist landscapes in his work until the turn of the century. With their crude symbolism, Victims of the Fiesta (Bullfight, 1894) and Vendredi Saint in Castille (Good Friday in Castile, 1904) (below) are paradigmatic works of this period.

Divisionism

In 1887 Regoyos became interested in Neo-Impressionism or Divisionism after he saw its first manifestations by Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro in Paris and Brussels. The Nets (1893) is a masterpiece of this period, which would be short-lived (from 1892 to 1894) as the technique prevented Regoyos from working outdoors. He subsequently made occasional use of the characteristic Pointillist technique in order to achieve new textures and nuances in his landscapes.

Impressionism

Regoyos is the artist who best represents the Impressionist movement in Spanish painting, deploying a style that can be considered fully Impressionist in the broadest sense and which evolved throughout his career. In his works the artist aimed to express the immediate impression arising from the appearance of things, fleeting effects of light and the volumetric presence of shadows. Regoyos worked directly from life, en plein air, painting rapidly and without the use of preparatory studies. As a result his oeuvre includes numerous small and medium-format works as they were easier to transport.

In his works Regoyos set out to express the immediate impression produced by the appearance of things, the fleeting effects of light and the emphatic presence of shadows. He worked directly and rapidly en plein air, without preparatory sketches. As a result, many of his works are of small or medium size, which made them easier to transport.



La Concha, Night-time, ca. 1906. Oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on free loan to the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga



The Nets, 1893. Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm. Private collection



Vendredi Saint in Castille (Good Friday in Castile), 1904. Oil on canvas, 81 x 65.5 cm. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao

Landscape allowed Regoyos to investigate light, its fleeting effects and colour. Sunrises and sunsets, cloudy days, evening light, nocturnal scenes and gales and showers were his favourite subjects. Works such as



The Downpour. Santoña Bay (1900),



Lumière electrique (Electric Light) (1901),



The Urumea River (1904) and

La Concha, Night-time (ca.1906) (above) reveal this interest in reflecting different effects relating to light - rainbows, daytime or night time light, gas or electric light, etc, -which would reach their maximum expression in his depictions of the same subject at different times of the day, for example



Morning in a Square in Burgos and



A Square in Burgos at Dusk, both of 1906.

Smoke and the movement of boats and trains, typifying modern life, also frequently appear in Regoyos’s work, as seen, for example, in the view of Bilbao



The Arenal Bridge of 1910.

A tireless traveller, Regoyos painted regularly in the Basque Country between 1884 and 1912, living for lengthy periods in Irún, San Sebastián, Las Arenas and Durango. He preferred to work in the delicate light of Cantabria although he also painted in more southerly regions of Spain, as seen in



Sunrise in Granada (1911) and

Almond Trees in Blossom (ca.1905), painted in Castellón.



Bathing in Rentería (1900)

and Ormáiztegui Viaduct (1896) (above) are good examples of these years of artistic maturity. In addition, they reveal characteristic compositional elements such as bird’s-eye views, diagonals receding into depth and fragmented or truncated viewpoints influenced by the Impressionists’ knowledge and use of Japanese prints and by the influence of photography.

Regoyos’s works rarely include individual figures but, in contrast, often feature groups and crowds, which the artist represented in a sketchy, imprecise manner in order to give a sense of life and movement to his scenes of markets, fiestas and processions.

The exhibition concludes with a selection of works dating from the last year of Regoyos’s life in Barcelona when he painted landscapes of different parts of Catalonia as well as views of the city and other subjects including



The Hen House (1912).

More images



Mercado en Durango. 1907. Óleo sobre lienzo. 60 x 50 cm.




Arrabal de Pinondo (Durango)1905. Óleo sobre lienzo. 60 x 50 cm

And still more images here

Modern Masters: 20th Century Icons from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, March 2–June 8, 2014, at the Denver Art Museum brings together approximately 50 iconic artworks by more than 40 influential artists from the late 19th century to the present. Curated by Dean Sobel, director of CSM, the exhibition is drawn from the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, one of the finest collections of 20th-century art in the country.




Jackson Pollock, Convergence, 1952. Oil on canvas; support: 93-1/2 x 155 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1956. © 2013 Pollock-Krasner Foundation/ Artists Rights Society, New York. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

The exhibition provides an unparalleled opportunity to witness the major stylistic developments that shaped the course of modern art. Modern Masters will feature masterpieces by some of the most prominent names in art history including Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo and Andy Warhol as well as one of the finest drip paintings ever created by Jackson Pollock.




Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Monkey, 1938. Oil on Masonite; 16 x 12 in. Collection of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear, 1966. © 2013 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“Sometimes considered radical or off the wall, the artwork presented in these exhibitions explores a time of great creativity,” Sobel said. “It’s a rare treat to be able to see the development of modern art and then go next door to the Clyfford Still Museum and explore the evolution of one artist in-depth.”

A related exhibition, 1959, will be presented at the CSM February 14–June 15, 2014. Also curated by Sobel, 1959 re-creates Still’s landmark exhibition held at the Albright-Knox in the fall of 1959. This exhibition was the largest of Still’s career and the first following his decision to break ties with the art world in 1951. He included works made during the 1930s and major paintings made in New York during the 1950s. These artworks were not well known at the time and had never previously shown to the public. Further connecting the exhibitions and institutions, Modern Masters includes a strong example of Still’s work from this time period, PH-48, 1957.

“Modern Masters showcases one of the best collections of modern art in the country,” said Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. “Not only are most of the iconic artists of the time represented, but the works themselves are masterpieces from each artist. We are thrilled to work with our neighbor the Clyfford Still Museum to bring this outstanding exhibition to Denver.”




Clyfford Still (American, 1904–1980), 1957-D No. 1, 1957. Oil on canvas; support: 113 x 159 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1959. © 2013 The Estate of Clyfford Still and The Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, CO. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

The exhibition begins in the late 1800s and includes stellar examples of Post-Impressionism by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, which provide a springboard for various expressionist and visionary tendencies apparent in later works throughout the exhibition. Modern Masters also considers ideas that contributed to the development—and conscious rejection—of the art movements Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art, and Minimalism. The largest grouping in the exhibition features approximately 20 mid-century American artists, many of whom identified as Abstract Expressionists, including Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Still. Still is uniquely associated with the Albright-Knox as a result of his gift of 31 paintings to that institution in 1964.



Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983), Le Carnaval d'Arlequin (Carnival of Harlequin), 1924-25. Oil on canvas; support: 26 x 35-5/8 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1940. © 2013 Successió Miró S.L./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

The exhibition also brings to light other themes and tendencies that reappear throughout 20th-century art, such as subject matter drawn from everyday life and the emphasis on “process,” particularly in painting. During this time, the medium itself and the ways in which it was applied became an expressive agent for meaning and emotion.



Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–1997), Head—Red and Yellow, 1962. Oil on canvas; 48 x 48 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1962. © 2014 Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Photograph by Tom Loonan. K1962.015



Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903). Spirit of the Dead Watching, 1892. Oil on burlap mounted on canvas; 28-3/4 x 36-3/8 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. A. Conger Goodyear Collection, 1965. Photograph by Tom Loonan.1965.001

This exhibition is organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

From 7 February to 11 May 2014 the Kunsthaus Zürich will be staging ‘From Matisse to the Blue Rider. Expressionism in Germany and France’. Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, Pechstein and others come face to face with more than 100 works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse and Delaunay to correct the widespread view that Expressionism was a uniquely German invention. After the Kunsthaus, this enlightening and colourful exhibition moves on to the US and Canada.

Today, ‘Expressionism’ is commonly viewed as a German movement – yet in fact it originally emerged at the start of the 20th century from the enthusiastic engagement of German artists with Classical Modernism in France, even as contemporary French art had already established a presence in Germany. ‘Van Gogh struck modern art like a bolt of lightning,’ was how one German observer of the scene described the painter’s impact on German artists – at a time when they were simultanesouly receptive for the art of Seurat, Signac and the Post-Impressionists. Then followed Cézanne, Gauguin and Matisse. The response by the artists of ‘Die Brücke’ and ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (Blue Rider) to French Post-Impressionism and the ‘Fauves’ was an explosion of colour. Collectors in Germany also eagerly acquired and exhibited French art, while museum directors with an eye to the future were purchasing it for their own collections.

ONLY SHOWING IN EUROPE

This exhibition sets the record straight. It demonstrates that Expressionism is a movement shaped by the spirit of cosmopolitanism and productive international exchange. It presents the findings of recent research into the 107 masterpieces by 38 artists on display, documenting a history of reception that has hitherto been little studied by scholars. The curator of the exhibition’s sole showing in Europe is Cathérine Hug. Together with the Kunsthaus Zürich, Timothy O. Benson, curator at the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, has succeeded in bringing together paintings and graphic works that featured in major exhibitions and collections of the time, or were studied in detail by German artists in Paris. They are juxtaposed with ‘counterparts’ in which the impact of the works that provided the initial inspiration can clearly be seen.


THE BERLIN SECESSION, SONDERBUND AND OTHER INFLUENCES

Unlike Impressionism and Divisionism, with their focus on the world around us, this is an art that gives formal expression to the inner feelings and psychological states of its creators, in a language that is both powerful and laden with energy. The relatively coarse brushwork reflects the fears, but also the hopes, which imbued that extraordinarily productive and eventful period before the First World War. The strong influence on the art scene of associations such as the Berlin Secession and the Sonderbund in Cologne, as well as gallery owners, art dealers and collectors such as Paul Cassirer, Harry Graf Kessler and Karl Osthaus, is absolutely essential in order to understand this chapter of art history and the perception of art works from the various expressionist movements. Visionary museum directors populated their collections with masterpieces of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, arousing widespread public interest.

A VIVID PRESENTATION OF SCHOLARLY RESEARCH

As well as a tour through European art history from Paris to Berlin, the exhibition reflects the findings of new research into Franco-German relations in the early years of the 20th century, opening up striking perspectives and new interpretations of Expressionism with remarkable alacrity. The Kunsthaus Zürich is dividing the works up into thematic and formal groups: van Gogh, Paris, Fauves, Berlin, Cubism, ‘Die Brücke’, ‘Der Blaue Reiter’. Visitors can expect an all-encompassing sensory experience marked by surprising confrontations. The expressive power of the works and their relationships to each other are immediately apparent and easy to comprehend. A section including historical materials – printed matter such as source texts, archival records, photographs and press reviews – further underscores the exhibition’s contribution to scholarship.

LOANS FROM THE WORLD’S LEADING MUSEUMS

The 77 paintings and 30 graphic works by 38 artists are drawn from public and private collections in Europe and overseas. The most celebrated include the Musée d’Orsay, Tate, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the National Gallery of Art Washington, the National Gallery in Berlin, the Folkwang Museum and the Merzbacher Kunststiftung.

From Zurich, the exhibition travels to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky June 8, 2014–September 14, 2014 and to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montréal.

Timothy O. Benson is responsible for the background scholarship and for the cooperation between the Kunsthaus and LACMA.

Catalogue:



The results of his most recent research form part of an extensive catalogue, complemented by scientific treatises from experts such as Timothy Benson, Claudine Grammont, Katherine Kuenzli and Magdalena M. Moeller and a contribution by Cathérine Hug. Hardcover, Linen with jacket, 256 pages, 22.2x31, 8.7 x 12.2 Inches, 200 colour illustrations ISBN: 978-3-7913-5340-1








Vincent van Gogh, Pollard Willows at Sunset, 1888, Oil on canvas mounted on cardboard, Kröller‑Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands, Photo Credit: Art Resource, NY.



Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Reclining Nude in Front of Mirror, 1909–1910, Oil on canvas, Brücke‑Museum, Berlin © Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Courtesy Ingeborg & Dr. Wolfgang Henze-Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern Photo © Brücke-Museum, Berlin.

The Museo del Prado is presenting The “Furias,” 21 January to 4 May 2014. From Titian to Ribera. Sponsored by the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado, the exhibition analyses the rise, evolution and decline of the subject of the “Furias”, from the time of its appearance in European art in the mid-16th century to the late 17th century.

The exhibition includes 28 works, including a drawing by Michelangelo loaned from the Royal Collection in London and paintings by Rubens, Rombouts, Goltzius, Assereto, Rosa and Langetti. Also on display are the Prado’s versions of the “Furias” by Titian and Ribera and its Tityus enchained by Gregorio Martínez, acquired in 2011.

Together, these works illustrate the success enjoyed for 120 years by the subject of the “Furias” at a time when rulers used them as political allegories and painters saw them as an ideal vehicle for illustrating supreme mastery in art, both in a formal sense, given that they are huge, nude figures in improbable foreshortenings, and in expressive terms, as the most overt representation of suffering.

The “Furias”. From Titian to Ribera offers an in-depth analysis of the Renaissance and Baroque’s interpretation of antiquity and looks at the circulation and exchange of artists, works and aesthetic ideas across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. In addition, it encourages a reflection on why certain forms acquire meanings that are passed down from one generation to the next.

Divided into five sections, the exhibition includes 2 drawings, 8 prints, 1 medal and 16 paintings and centers on a copy of the Laocoön from the Museo de Escultura in Valladolid.

The first section looks at the only iconographic precedent for the group commissioned from Titian, which is a drawing of Tityus by Michelangelo of 1532, exhibited for the first time in Spain.

A view of the Great Hall in the palace at Binche, created to welcome Charles V and Prince Philip, opens the second section, which is devoted to the group commissioned from Titian by Mary of Hungary.

The third section looks at Haarlem and Antwerp in the final years of the 16th century and the early 17th century when these cities were the first centres for the reception of the subject of the Furias, based on the Laocoön.

The fourth section illustrates the subject’s “return” to Italy, the role played by Flemish and Dutch artists in this process and the importance of Naples as the Baroque capital of the Furies with Ribera as their maximum exponent.

The exhibition ends with the dissemination of the subject across Italy, terminating in Venice with Langetti and the tenebrosi and thus closing a circle initiated by Titian.

The “Furias” first appeared as a group in art in 1548 when Mary of Hungary commissioned Titian to paint four canvases for her palace at Binche (on the outskirts of Brussels) depicting Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus and Ixion, figures whom she associated with the German princes who had rebelled against her brother, the Emperor Charles V, and whom he had defeated the year before at Mühlberg.

In Spain, the name the “Furias” was applied to four figures who dwelled in the Graeco-Roman Hades as a punishment for defying the gods: Tityus, whose liver was constantly pecked at by a vulture for attempting to rape one of Zeus’s lovers; Tantalus, condemned to vainly try to obtain food and drink for serving up his son at a banquet of the gods; Sisyphus, who had to endlessly roll an enormous rock for revealing Zeus’s infidelities; and Ixion, obliged to turn forever on a wheel for attempting to seduce Hera. Strictly speaking, the Furies were female figures who personified punishment and vengeance and were responsible for ensuring that those in Hades underwent their punishments. In Spain, however, and from the 16th century onwards the name was used for Titian’s canvases of Tityus, Ixion, Tantalus and Sisyphus, and the term thus became used for the subject in general.

The “Furias” became a popular iconography in the 120 years after their first appearance, taking on further meanings in addition to their original, political one. From the late 16th century onwards the subject was considered highly appropriate for illustrating supreme mastery in art, given that they are monumental, nude figures in complex foreshortenings and also represent extreme suffering, which appealed to the Baroque sensibility. They were thus used by leading artists such as Rubens, Goltzius and Van Haarlem to demonstrate their skills, and by Ribera and Rombouts to give visual form to the aesthetic of horror in vogue in Europe at the time. However, after a peak of interest in Naples with Ribera and in Venice with Langetti, from around 1680 artists began to make less use of this subject, which was replaced around 1700 by others that allowed similar concepts to be expressed.



The accompanying catalogue is entirely written by Miguel Falomir, curator of the exhibition and Head of the Department of Italian and French Painting (up to 1700) at the Museo del Prado. It includes the following chapters: “Titian, Mary of Hungary and Political Allegory: on monarchs, traitors and vengeful lovers”; “The Artistic Challenge. Improbable foreshortenings and exaggerated expressions”; and “Originality and Imitation: classical and modern artists”. Paperback 192 Pages 24 x 28 cm Spanish and English Publisher Castellano ISBN 978-84-8480-282-2

Images:



1.Tityus
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Charcoal and black chalk on paper, 33 x 19 cm
1532
London, Royal Collection Trust / ©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014



2. The punishment of Tityus
Anonymous Italian( Nicolás Beatrizet)
Engraving, 30.5 x 45 cm
XVI Century
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España



3. The punishment of Tityus
Gregorio Martínez
Oil on canvas, 173 x 233 cm
1590 - 1596
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado


4. Fight between Jupiter and the Titans
Leone Leoni
Silver medal, diameter: 73,5 mm.; weight: 180,98 gr
1538?
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado



5. Tantalus
Giulio Sanuto
Engraving, 44.2 x 34.1 cm
1565
Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum



6.Sisyphus
Titian
Oil on canvas, 237 x 216 cm
1560 - 1565
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado



7. Tityus
Titian
Oil on canvas, 253 x 217 cm
1560 - 1565
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado



8. Tityus or Prometheus chained to the Caucasus
Cornelis Cort
Engraving, 45 x 37 cm
1566
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España



9. Tityus
Cornelisz van Haarlem
Ink on paper, 36 x 26.8 cm
1588
Vienna, Albertina



10. Tityus
Goltzius
Oil on canvas, 125 x 105 cm
1613
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum



11. Prometheus Bound
Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders
Oil on canvas, 242.6 x 209.5 cm
c. 1611
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art



12. Ixion
Cornelisz van Haarlem
Oil on canvas, 192 x 152 cm
1588
Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen



13. Tantalus
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick
Engraving, 31 cm diameter
1562 - 1638
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum



14. Ixion
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick
Engraving, 33 cm diameter
1562 - 1638
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum



15. Phaeton
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick
Engraving, 33.5 cm diameter
1562 - 1638
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum



16. Icarus
Cornelisz van Haarlem / Goltzius, Heindrick
Engraving, 34.2 cm diameter
1562 - 1638
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum



17. Prometheus
Theodoor Rombouts
Oil on canvas, 154 x 222.5 cm
Brussels, Royal Museum of Fines Arts of Belgium



18. Ixion
José de Ribera
Oil on canvas, 220 x 301 cm
1632
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado



19. Tityus
José de Ribera
Oil on canvas, 227 x 301 cm
1632
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

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, Bruegel to Freud: Master Prints from The Courtauld Gallery, 19 June to 21 September 2014, 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.



Nicolas Beatrizet, French, Section from Last Judgment (upper right, angels and arma Christi), 1562, Engraving; 23.8 x 51.1 cm (9 3/8 x 20 1/8 inches) (plate) irregular, Museum Membership Fund 70.055 RISD Museum

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.




Jacques Callot



Della Bella, Stefano (1610-1664): Stage designs for 'Le Nozze degli Dei' Scene V, 1637, etching, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

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, Piazza di San Giacomo di Rialto © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London



Piranesi, Giovanni Battista; Pantheon in an imaginary architectural setting (recto)
© The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

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.



Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) The Jockey, 1899 Lithograph, ink on paper 51.6 x 36.3 cm The Courtauld Gallery, London

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 first American retrospective devoted to the work of the great Italian Renaissance artist known as Fra Angelico (1390/5-1455) – and the first comprehensive presentation of his work assembled anywhere in the world in half a century – opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 26. More than 50 public institutions and private collections in Europe and America will participate in the landmark exhibition, which commemorates the 550th anniversary of the artist's death. Fra Angelico will feature nearly 75 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations from throughout his career, supplemented by 45 additional works by his assistants and closest followers. Highlights of the exhibition include recently discovered paintings and new attributions, paintings never before displayed publicly, and reconstructed groupings of works, some of them reunited for the first time.

"The subtlety and technical sophistication of Fra Angelico's mind and hand are among the characteristics that set him apart from other artists of the Italian Renaissance," commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. "The exhibition Fra Angelico illustrates the artist's endlessly fertile imagination and incomparable craftsmanship, as well as the reach and continuity of his influence into the second half of the 15th century."

Biography of the Artist

Born in the countryside north of Florence, Guido di Pietro was already an established artist when he joined the Dominican order sometime between 1419 and 1422, taking for himself the name Fra Giovanni. He received commissions for important altarpieces from his own monastery San Domenico in Fiesole, from other Dominican houses in Florence, Cortona, and Perugia, and from religious institutions as far away as Brescia in the north of Italy and Orvieto and Rome to the south. His prominence as an artist was challenged in Florence only by the brief and meteoric career of Masaccio (1401-1428), many of whose innovations Angelico anticipated in his own, still little-understood early works. By the time Masaccio left Florence for Rome in 1427, Angelico was indisputably the leading painter in Tuscany, a position he maintained for nearly 30 years, eclipsing the reputations of such gifted artists as Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), Domenico Veneziano (about 1410-1461), and even the young Piero della Francesca (about 1406/12-1492).

Known for his pious treatment of religious subjects – which he portrayed with unprecedented psychological penetration and a compelling realism – Fra Giovanni was first called "pictor angelicus," the Angelic Painter, shortly after his death in 1455, a name that came to be rendered in English as Fra Angelico. In 1984, Fra Angelico was beatified – the first step in the process toward sainthood – by Pope John Paul II, who also decreed him the patron of artists.

Exhibition Overview

Much of Angelico's enduring popularity rests on his frescoes – especially those painted in the dormitory cells at the convent of San Marco in Florence – and on altarpieces too large to be safely transported. Instead, the exhibition will bring together a nearly complete selection of his works of smaller scale, presenting the entire range of the development of his genius over the full course of his career. Even in his most intimate creations – illuminated initials in liturgical manuscripts – Fra Angelico remained a monumental artist, conceiving narrative, drama, and human form with a grandeur that belied their physical format. His predella panels (the small painted scenes beneath large altarpieces) are among the most forward-looking and innovative works produced in 15th-century Florence, while his images of the Virgin and Child still retain their inspirational immediacy and presence, as well as their striking beauty.

The exhibition was arranged chronologically and by attribution. The first decade of Fra Angelico's career, until about 1422, was explored in a group of 17 paintings and drawings, which ranged from two recently discovered panels that may be his first efforts as an independent artist to his high altarpiece commissioned for the newly founded convent of San Domenico in Fiesole. Thirty-four additional works on panel, paper, and parchment chronicled his rise to prominence in Florence over the next ten years and his development of a distinctive personal style that paved the way for many of the accomplishments of later Renaissance painters in Tuscany. Chief among these were the panels of a monumental tabernacle triptych now divided among museums in Munich, London, and Parma; the only two surviving independent drawings by Angelico's hand; and ten of the 11 known panels from a reconstructed altarpiece painted for the Da Filicaia family chapel in the church of Santa Croce. The survey of the artist's career concluded with 24 of the finest paintings from the period of his full maturity, including nine fragments from the high altarpiece painted about 1440 for the convent church of San Marco and his last known autograph work, a Crucifixion painted for the Spanish Cardinal, Juan de Torquemada, now in the Fogg Art Museum.

The second half of the exhibition was dedicated to five of Angelico's assistants and followers, each of whom was introduced in the catalogue by a monographic essay and in the exhibition by a representative selection of works.

Five paintings by Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, Angelico's first documented colleague, included two panels from the altarpiece dated 1419, which formerly served as the artist's name-piece (Master of 1419) and three other paintings not previously recognized as his.

Zanobi Strozzi, who worked alongside Angelico intermittently for nearly 20 years, was represented by 22 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations culled from every decade of his career. Some of these are new attributions as well; and several are executed in collaboration with other artists, including Fra Angelico himself.

Two of the exceptionally rare works by the Master of the Sherman Predella were included, along with a curatorial conjecture for that artist's identification.

Five paintings by Francesco Pesellino – perhaps the most influential artist active in Florence at mid-century – commemorated his stylistic debt to Angelico and his brief partnership with Zanobi Strozzi prior to his emergence as an independent master.

The presence of Benozzo Gozzoli in Fra Angelico's shop was investigated through collaborative works and a selection of paintings from his later career, illustrating the continuity of this tradition nearly to the end of the 15th century.

Catalogue



A fully illustrated catalogue, published by the Metropolitan Museum and distributed by Yale University Pres.

From a review in the NY Times:

National Gallery, London
"18 Blessed of the Dominican Order."



National Gallery of Art
"Attempted Martyrdom of Saints Cosmas and Damian."



Graphische Sammlung, Albertina
"Christ on the Cross," pen and brown ink, with red wash, on paper.


Vatican Museums, Vatican City
"The Stigmatization of Saint Francis," from the Vatican Museums
.

From another review:

Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1390/95-1455)
The Nativity, ca. 1429-30
Tempera and gold on panel
11 3/8 x 7 7/16 in.
Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì, Italy
© Nazario Spadoni, Forlì


Presumably part of a portable altarpiece, Fra Angelico's Nativity (ca. 1429-30) is an unusual nocturnal study of the infant Jesus' birth. The artist painted the manger, wherein the Holy Family resides and surmounted by nine haloed angels, at a sharp angle to the picture plane. In the foreground are: Saint Joseph, arms reverentially crossed; the glistening Christ Child; and the diminutive Virgin Mary, hands pressed against each other in a prayerful stance. Fra Angelico's depiction of the Madonna bears a sharp resemblance to others taken from illuminated manuscripts of the times. Behind her are a benign mule and ox in seated postures. The complacent animals and the manger's increasingly dark background suggest depth...



Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1390/95-1455)
The Virgin of Humility, ca. 1436-38
Tempera on panel
29 1/8 x 24 in.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam


Fra Angelico's Virgin of Humility (ca. 1436-38) from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam dates to the artist's period of artistic maturity. In a radical and innovative departure from the accepted canon of artistic symbols during the Italian Renaissance, the friar's Madonna holds a stiff sprig of lily (a Christian symbol of the Virgin Mary) in her right hand, usually reserved for interpretations of the Annunciation. Seated on a throne covered by a golden fabric with intricate designs, Fra Angelico painted the Virgin Mary with the sweeping folds of her monumental deep blue cloak. The Virgin Mother holds the infant Jesus in her left arm; the Christ Child gestures gently to grasp his mother in an endearing expression of sensitivity and humanity.




Truly the most arresting painting in the exhibition, and perhaps in all of Fra Angelico's career, is his Christ Crowned with Thorns (ca. 1438-39) from Livorno, Italy. A radical departure from his beatific angels and inspired scenes of the Nativity, this brilliant introspective tempera and gold on panel masterpiece has been the subject of much scholarly debate, due to its stylistic affinity with an early Netherlandish painting of the same subject by Jan van Eyck (act. 1422; d. 1441). Fra Angelico's confrontational composition is a visually disturbing bust-length portrait of Christ having been crowned with thorns while alive and before his imminent crucifixion. Traces of blood realistically trail over Christ's savaged face. His eyes reddened by agony and set deeply within the Savior's head, this iconic image is prophetic. The gold collar around Christ's neck identifies him as the King of Kings in Latin, words from the Book of the Apocalypse inscribed on the rim of Jesus' mantle

.

Another good review