Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid
3/8/2022 - 6/12/2022↧
Annibale Carracci. The frescoes from the Herrera Chapel
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Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948–1960
The first major museum exhibition to explore the early work of Roy Lichtenstein, one the most celebrated American artists of the 20th century, will be on view at the Columbus Museum of Art from March 4 through June 5, 2022. Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948–1960 offers an in-depth view of the artist’s years in Columbus, Ohio, and includes approximately 90 works on loan from public and private collections in a range of media. With many works on public view for the first time, this unprecedented exhibition demonstrates the formal invention and provocative nature of Lichtenstein’s early work.
“Many people know Roy Lichtenstein’s work but may not be aware of his formative years in Ohio. Until this exhibition, almost no one had really seen this work all together,” said Nannette Maciejunes, CMA executive director and CEO. “This region helped shape Lichtenstein’s towering achievements in American art, and the Columbus Museum of Art is a perfect place to share a more robust story of his development as an artist.”
Born in New York City in 1923, Lichtenstein went on to enroll in and teach at The Ohio State University, where the progressive curriculum and a focus on visual perception influenced his irreverent response to American history and culture. The artist’s studies were interrupted when he served in the Army during World War II, an experience that also allowed him to see a wealth of European art in person. After he returned to Ohio, Lichtenstein quickly synthesized modern art styles to create an innovative and personalized body of work. By the early 1950s Lichtenstein was exhibiting regularly in New York and began to receive critical attention.
Before 1960, Lichtenstein’s art was filled with characteristic humor and evoked many of the themes that would become synonymous with his later career. He borrowed from earlier styles and displayed an avid interest in popular culture, including fairy tales, caricature, folk art and children’s art. He also drew upon various forms of Americana, such as 19th-century paintings of the Great Plains, as well as the cartoon characters Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. These and other vernacular inspirations are the essential but little-known precursors to the artist’s later appropriations of popular culture associated with the Pop Art movement of the 1960s from comic books, advertisements and newspapers.
The exhibition also tells the story of Lichtenstein’s brief but instrumental flirtation with abstraction in 1959 and 1960. Coinciding with the broader acceptance of Abstract Expressionism, these paintings illustrate how the artist was inspired to engage with the movement’s pervasive influence, but not without inserting his characteristic humor and wit.
“Lichtenstein’s work is often poised between irony and admiration,” said Tyler Cann, CMA’s acting chief curator, who is overseeing the exhibition in Columbus. “This exhibition will present a new Roy Lichtenstein for many visitors, and it is fascinating to see that key elements of his later work are there.”
Catalogue
Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948–1960 is accompanied by a 224-page publication of the same title that features new contributions by leading scholars in the field.
Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948–1960 is co-organized by the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. The exhibition is co-curated by Elizabeth Finch, Lunder Chief Curator at the Colby Museum and Marshall N. Price, Chief Curator and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum. Support for this exhibition and its national tour is provided by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional catalogue support is provided by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.
Image Credit: Roy Lichtenstein, Self-Portrait at an Easel, c. 1951–1952. Oil on canvas, 34 1/16 x 30 1/8 inches (86.5 x 76.5 cm). Private collection. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.
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Graphic Eloquence: American Modernism on Paper from the Collection of Michael T. Ricker
Museums and scholars revisit the story of American modernism regularly, but few exhibitions have examined modernist works on paper. “Graphic Eloquence: American Modernism on Paper from the Collection of Michael T. Ricker,” on view from March 5 to September 4, 2022, at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, hopes to change that conversation. The exhibition includes approximately 150 works by 70 artists, both well known and overlooked, and will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the museum.
William Baziotes (American, 1912 – 1963), untitled (abstraction), 1945. Ink and watercolor, 11 9/16 × 14 1/16 inches. Promised gift of Michael T. Ricker.
Modernism reflected global shifts in thought and expression, partially as a result of the industrial revolution. The Armory Show of 1913, which opened in New York, is generally accepted as the starting point of American modernism. Although European artists received the majority of attention and exhibition space in the gallery compared to American artists, its influence was wide reaching, and artists who saw the show soon began experimenting with abstract form and new subject matter in response.
“Graphic Eloquence” aims to show the ways modernist experimentation played out through printmaking and other paper-based media, as artists invented new technologies and reinvented old ones. The exhibition includes examples of works in casein, cellocut, charcoal, collage, collagraphy, colored pencil, conté, encaustic (gesso-wax), gouache, graphite, ink, intaglio, lithography, mezzotint, monotype, oil, serigraphy, silverpoint, tempera, watercolor, woodcut and wood engraving. Its artists range similarly across the United States, including particularly strong examples by Texas artists from the Fort Worth Circle, proving once again that modernism was not purely an East Coast phenomenon.
Many of the works featured in the exhibition are part of a gift to the museum. Curator of American art Jeffrey Richmond-Moll said, “We are grateful to Michael Ricker for generously gifting these diverse expressions of the American modernist spirit to the museum. Works on paper are a longstanding strength of our museum, and Ricker’s donation will decisively deepen the stories we tell about this medium and the evolution of American abstraction across broader geographies and artistic networks.”
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Guarding the Art
For the first time in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s (BMA) history, the people who protect the art have selected the art. Guarding the Art, an exhibition curated entirely by 17 current and former members of the museum’s security team, opens on Sunday, March 27, with approximately 25 works of art from across the BMA’s collection.
The exhibition highlights the unique perspectives of the officers and their reflections on the featured objects are drawn from their many hours in the galleries, their interactions with visitors, and their personal stories and interests. Works by Jeremy Alden, Louise Bourgeois, Sam Gilliam, Grace Hartigan, Winslow Homer, Alma W. Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, and unidentified artists from Colombia, Costa Rica, and the Solomon Islands are among those featured in the exhibition. Guarding the Art is on view through July 10, and includes a fully illustrated catalogue.
The project was conceived last year by BMA Trustee Amy Elias as the result of a conversation with Dr. Asma Naeem, BMA Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator, about ways to engage with the security guards who spend more time with the museum’s collection than anyone else. Following that initial conversation, Elias continued to think about this challenge and then presented her concept of Guarding the Art to BMA leadership who wholeheartedly embraced the idea.
“Guarding the Art is more personal than typical museum shows as it gives visitors a unique opportunity to see, listen and learn the personal histories and motivations of guest curators,” said Elias. “In this way, the exhibition opens a door for how a visitor might feel about the art, rather than just providing a framework for how to think about the art.”
The project began with an inquiry sent to all members of the BMA’s security team gauging their interest in developing an exhibition that would provide them with an opportunity to have their voices heard through their perspectives about the museum’s collection. Seventeen members of the BMA signed on as guest curators and have worked over the past year in collaboration with museum leadership and staff to engage in every facet of exhibition development. The guest curators include Traci Archable-Frederick, Jess Bither, Ben Bjork, Ricardo Castro, Melissa Clasing, Bret Click, Alex Dicken, Kellen Johnson, Michael Jones, Rob Kempton, Chris Koo, Alex Lei, Dominic Mallari, Dereck Mangus, Sara Ruark, Joan Smith, and Elise Tensley. Renowned art historian and curator Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims provided additional mentorship and professional development guidance. Along with the creative opportunity, each participant was compensated for their time with funds directed from a lead grant from the Pearlstone Family Foundation.
For many of the guest curators, selecting the objects for the exhibition was the most challenging aspect of this project. After proposing up to three top choices, the group met with curators, conservators, and exhibition designers to learn more about each work, its condition, and presentation requirements. They debated several variations of the gallery floor plan and made final selections based on how well the works would fit in the spaces. Once that was completed, work on writing the object labels and producing content for the publication began. The team also met with education team members to develop public programs and marketing team members to discuss graphic identity, social media, and communications. All of their work, which continues through the July 10 closing of the exhibition, was coordinated by Sarah Cho, BMA Curatorial Assistant for American Painting & Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and Katie Cooke, BMA Curatorial Assistant to the Chief Curator and the Curatorial Division.
“There is so much more to see in the BMA’s collection than what’s on the gallery walls. It’s been exciting to get first-hand experience in organizing an exhibition and discovering all the behind-the-scenes considerations. It gives you a new respect for how museums work and the stories they tell,” said Elise Tensley. “I cannot wait to see all the objects we’ve selected on display.”
Exhibition
Guarding the Art reflects a broad range of backgrounds and interests with officers who are also artists, chefs, musicians, scholars, and writers. Kellen Johnson selected two works that have a connection to music and Black artists, respectively: Max Beckmann’s Still Life with Large Shell (1939), a portrait of his wife, Mathilde, who was a violinist and singer, and Hale Woodruff’s Normandy Landscape (1928), created when the artist was living in France. Joan Smith appreciates objects that are both functional and beautiful and chose a Water Bottle (Early 20th century) by an unidentified Mono artist in the Solomon Islands and a Bottleneck Basket (c.1875) by an unidentified Yokuts artist in California. Ben Bjork brings attention to the humor in art with Jeremy Alden’s 50 Dozen (2005/2008)—a chair composed entirely of Ticonderoga pencils that would break if sat upon—and British designer James Hadley’s satirical porcelain Teapot (1882).
Several objects were selected because of the time the officers spent regarding the works in the galleries. Dominic Mallari chose Sam Gilliam’s Blue Edge (1971), a powerful painting with bursts of color that evoke rings of noise and the sound of music he likens to “a melodic mess, like hearing the instrumental battles of musicians,” and Alfred Dehodencq’s Little Girl (c. 1850), which he admires for its combination of innocence and spunk. Bret Click enjoys interacting with visitors and invites them to find specific details in Entry into the Ark (c. 1575–1580), a grand painting attributed to Jacopo Bassano with assistance of Leandro and Francesco Bassano. Michael Jones designed a special case for Émile Antoine Bourdelle’s Head of Medusa (Door Knocker) (1925), so that he could finally experience the object without worrying about it being touched by visitors.
In some cases, the exhibition brings forward objects and artists that are overlooked or underrepresented. These include the House of Frederick Crey (1830-35) attributed to Thomas Ruckle, which provides an early glimpse of Baltimore’s Mt. Vernon neighborhood where Dereck Mangus lives, and Winslow Homer’s Waiting an Answer (1872), which Alex Lei admitted was one he didn’t notice until he stopped moving. “It’s strangely reflective of the experience of being a guard—a job mostly made up of waiting.” Elise Tensley focused on women artists and selected Winter’s End (1958) by Jane Frank, an abstract painting by a Baltimore-based artist that hasn’t been on view since 1983. Ricardo Castro’s desire to see more works by Latinx artists prompted his choice of a Seated Male Figure (500-1000) by an unidentified Quimbaya artist in Colombia, an Effigy Vessel of Standing Dignitary (500 BCE-CE 500) by an unidentified Jama-Coaque artist in Ecuador, and a Figure of a Shaman (Sukia) (1000-1520) from an unidentified Atlantic Watershed artist in Costa Rica. He also advocated for an empty plinth with an image of the Puerto Rican flag to represent the absence of works from his heritage.
One of the most admired artists is Grace Hartigan, whose Pallas Athena—Fire (1961) attracted Jess Bither with its swirling colors of potential energy, considered by many to be a self-portrait of the artist. She was also drawn to the mysterious melancholy aura of Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture Spring (1948-49/1984). Rob Kempton was inspired by passion, defiance, and revelation in Hartigan’s painting Interior, (The Creeks) (1957). He also chose Alma W. Thomas’s Evening Glow (1972), a painting he describes as a celebration of color and nature that gave him a deep calmness the first time he saw it. Chris Koo selected Philip Guston’s The Oracle (1974), which inspires him to create art with freedom and honesty rather than the approval of others. He also chose Mark Rothko’s Black over Reds [Black on Red] (1957) as a moment for meditation.
Several guest curators are interested in works that speak to social justice and resilience. Resist #2 (2021), by Mickalene Thomas, spoke to Traci Archable-Frederick as a representation of “then and now” from the 1960s Civil Rights Movement to the protests following the murders of Freddie Gray and George Floyd. Sara Ruark sees Karel Appel’s A World in Darkness (1962) as a reminder of how mankind falls apart during times of suffering, trauma, and horror. She also interprets Miniature Totem Pole (mid-20th century) by an unidentified Haida artist as a means of economic survival amidst the continued injustices faced by Indigenous people. Alex Dicken was drawn to the unusual color palette and absence of figures in Max Ernst’s Earthquake, Late Afternoon (1948), an ecological catastrophe that he noticed appears almost serene, but indicates a hidden crisis from a vantage point of a world without human observers.
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*Meadows Museum * *February 20 through June 12, 2022* Installation view, "Murillo: Picturing the Prodigal Son" at Meadows Museum.*Photo: Guy Rogers III*Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Spanish, 1617–1682), The Prodigal Son Receiving His Portion, 1660s. Oil on canvas, 411/8 x 53 in. (104.5 x 134.5 cm). National Gallery of Ireland. Presented,Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, 1987 (Beit Collection); NGI.4540.Photo © National Gallery of Ireland.Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Spanish, 1617–1682), The Departure of the Prodigal Son, 1660s. Oil on canvas, 411/8 x 53 in. (104.5 x134.5 cm). National Gallery... read more
Art History News5 weeks ago
Dialogues with Picasso. The Collection 2020-2023
* MUSEO PICASSO MÁLAGA* *THE ROWER**, A CUBIST MASTERPIECE BY PICASSO FROM 1910, IS NOW ON DISPLAY AS AN INVITED WORK AT THE MUSEO PICASSO MÁLAGA* - *The Cubist painting The Rower, an oil on canvas in the collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, was painted by Pablo Picasso in Cadaqués in 1910. As an invited work, it can be seen in Room II of the Museo Picasso Málaga until May as part of the display Dialogues with Picasso. The Collection 2020-2023.* - *The Rower** last visited Europe more than thirty years ago when it was exhibited at the Öffentliche Kunst... read more
Art History News5 weeks ago
HYPERREAL. THE ART OF TROMPE L'OEIL
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza 16 March to 22 May 2022 Christoffel Pierson. Niche with Falcony Gear, ca. 1660-1670 . Washington, National Gallery of Art. Patrons’ Permanent Fund. © National Gallery of Art, Washington Painting images that are impossible to distinguish from reality has been a challenge for artists of all periods. The ability to deceive the viewer by making the painted seem real through the laws of optics and perspective is a visual game of which the earliest examples are known from descriptions in Greek literary texts. Since then, trompe l’oeil has been exten... read more
Art History News5 weeks ago
Thomas Cole’s Studio: Memory and Inspiration
The Thomas Cole National Historic Site *April 30 to October 30, 2022* *Albuquerque Museum* *November 19, 2022, to February 12, 2023* Thomas Cole, Study for “Catskill Creek,” c.1844-45, oil on wood, 12 x 18 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington, Avalon Fund, 1998.67.1. Thomas Cole was already the most famous landscape painter in America when he died unexpectedly at the age of 47 in February 1848. His legacy continues to influence American art to this day, and a new exhibition “Thomas Cole’s Studio: Memory and Inspiration” explores the creative directions of the painter’s las... read more
Art History News5 weeks ago
The Art of Experiment: Parmigianino at The Courtauld
5 March – 5 June 2022 The Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery The Renaissance artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (1503-1540), was celebrated for his graceful compositions and praised as the heir to Raphael (1483 – 1520). Parmigianino drew relentlessly during his short life: more than a thousand of his drawings have survived. They show the virtuoso artist, endlessly sketching out new ideas on paper. As well as drawing and painting, Parmigianino also experimented with printmaking, and is considered to have been the first to try the new mediu... read more
Art History News5 weeks ago
Window on the Marsh
* Cape Ann Museum * *March 19 through Sept. 27, 2022* Martin Johnson Heade (1819 - 1904). Sunset on the Marshes , 1867. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Photography by Bob Packert. Stretching across 25,000 acres of vast salt marsh, barrier beaches, and tidal rivers on Massachusetts’ North Shore is the Great Marsh, a natural wonder that has captivated many artists over the years. *Window on the Marsh* is a new exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum that features two works of the marsh by each of the renowned painters Martin Johnson Heade and Fitz Henry Lane is accompanied by four phot... read more
Art History News1 month ago
Christie’s 1 March 2022: Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1986-7
• Francis Bacon’s *Triptych 1986-7* will be a leading highlight of Christie’s Shanghai to London sale series • *Triptych 1986-7 *is being offered at auction for the first time in the 20 th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale on 1 March 2022 • Across three monumental canvases, Bacon’s most rare and celebrated format, he entwines imagery drawn from the annals of twentieth-century history with a poignant, retrospective view of his own life and art • The figure in the left-hand panel is based on a photograph of American President Woodrow Wilson leaving the Treaty of Versailles negotiation... read more
Art History News1 month ago
Mark Rothko's Works on Paper - Exhibition and Catalogue Raisonné
*National Gallery of Art, * *November 19, 2023–March 31, 2024* *The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway* *May 16–September 22, 2024* Mark Rothko, *Untitled*, 1959, Oil on paper, private collection, © 2023 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko The National Gallery of Art, the largest public repository of works by Mark Rothko, announced today a major exhibition of the artist’s paintings on paper. On view in the National Gallery’s East Building from November 19, 2023, through March 31, 2024, the exhibition will examine some 100 paintings on paper that the a... read more
Art History News1 month ago
Latest Art History News
Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman *The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York* *February 17–May 15, 2022* Regarded in his time as the most important painter in France, Jacques Louis David (1748–1825) produced major canvases that shaped the public’s perceptions of historical events in the years before, during, and after the French Revolution. Drawings were the primary vehicle by which he devised and refined his groundbreaking compositions. Opening February 17, 2022, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman is the first exhibition devoted to wor... read more
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Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on 17 May: Claude Monet , Pablo Picasso , Philip Guston
Picasso’s Rapturous 1932 Homage to Marie-Thérèse Walter
Painted in April 1932, 90 years ago to the month, Femme nue couchée is one of Pablo Picasso’s most monumental and uninhibitedly sensual portrayals of Marie-Thérèse Walter. Appearing at auction for the first time, the large-scale painting is poised to achieve in excess of $60 million at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on 17 May, making it one of the most valuable portraits of Marie-Thérèse Walter ever offered at auction.
Marie-Thérèse was the inspiration for many of Picasso’s greatest works, with 1932 - the year in which he was finally able to give full painterly voice to his passion - widely regarded as his ‘annus mirabilis’. So extraordinarily was Picasso’s output that year, an entire museum exhibition has been dedicated to it (“Paris 1932”, at Tate Modern in 2018). And while the works from this moment stand out for their creativity and their joyous mood, what perhaps marks them out most of all is the intensity of desire that underpins them. (In fact, the French leg of exhibition at the Musee Picasso was called “Paris 1932: année erotique”.)
Femme nue couchée a Monumental Achievement in Picasso’s Oeuvre and the History of Portraiture, Is Poised to Achieve in Excess of $60 Million
But of the many portraits Picasso painted of Marie-Therese in that year, this particular image stands out: it is a uniquely compelling composition that is radically different, both from anything else in his oeuvre, and from the broader art historical tradition of the female reclining nude. In this work, Picasso evokes Marie-Therese with the strong and sensuous fin-like limbs of a sea-creature. Though he would go on to render subsequent lovers in animalistic form, the allusion to the sea here is significant: Marie-Thérèse was also an avid and accomplished swimmer whose powerful, athletic grace in the water was a source of constant fascination for Picasso (something that was perhaps all the more beguiling for him, given that – for all the time he spent on the beach as a child and subsequently – he in fact he never learned to swim). In addition to which, the headiest days of their blossoming relationship were spent by the sea: in the summer of 1928, Picasso took his then-wife Olga and son Paulo to the seaside at Dinard. Unbeknown to them, he also installed his then-still-secret-lover Marie-Thérèse in a holiday camp nearby, ‘eloping’, whenever possible for secret romantic encounters by the sea.
“Picasso’s portraits of his golden muse Marie-Thérèse are undeniable hallmarks of 20th century art. When unveiled at his career retrospective in 1932, this cycle of monumental works scintillated with their rapturously romantic and sensuous depiction of Picasso’s heretofore sequestered mistress. A radical departure from tradition, this striking painting is at the same time a deeply lyrical ode to the artist’s unbound desire for Marie-Thérèse; with her fin-like, endlessly pliable limbs, the portrait continues to enchant as it perfectly captures Picasso’s muse as the ultimate expression of his genius.”
BROOKE LAMPLEY, SOTHEBY’S CHAIRMAN AND WORLDWIDE HEAD OF GLOBAL FINE ART SALES
Furthermore, a lover of the sea (‘I am a child of the sea; I long to bathe in it, to gulp down the salty water’) and an avid film goer, Picasso may well have been influenced in this composition by Jean Painlevé’s 1928 surrealist masterpiece, La Pieuvre, “a captivating love letter to one of nature's most intelligent and enigmatic creations.”
Building on the lineage of the reclining nude in art history, Picasso’s Femme nue couchée offers a daring new take on the tradition, upending naturalism for the biomorphic forms of Surrealism and a curvilinear approach derived from his simultaneous sculptural practice, which would prove highly influential to generations of artists to come.
In early 1932 Picasso was planning a major retrospective scheduled for June, and in preparation for the exhibition began his first dedicated series of paintings depicting his muse and mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter in the seclusion of his new country home of Boisgeloup. In Femme nue couchée, which was completed during this period, Picasso charted new territory with his portrait of Marie-Thérèse, not only in his own body of work, but in the history of the nude figure with his depiction of her reclining in a highly abstracted space, highlighting her biomorphic figure with touches of fertility, sexuality, and grace. As a landmark work within Picasso’s oeuvre and his famed series completed in 1932, as well as a pivotal exampale in the history of portraiture, Femme nue couchée’s arrival at auction for the first time this Spring marks a significant moment in Picasso’s unrivaled legacy in the art market.
“As one of the star highlights of Tate Modern’s world-class exhibition devoted to 1932 as a pivotal year for Picasso, Femme nue couchée is a ground-breaking, extraordinarily sensual work that remained within the artist’s estate for decades before its acquisition directly from the family of the artist . Marking the first time this painting will appear at auction, our Modern Evening Sale will be a defining moment in solidifying 1932 as one of Picasso’s most critically important and sought-after periods.”
HELENA NEWMAN, SOTHEBY’S WORLDWIDE HEAD OF IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART
The story of Picasso’s first encounter with Marie-Thérèse, and their subsequent love affair, is among the most compelling in 20th century art history. Picasso first met Marie-Thérèse in Paris in 1927 when she was seventeen years old. The couple’s relationship was kept a well-guarded secret for many years, both on account of the fact that Picasso was then still married to Olga Khokhlova, a Russian-Ukrainian dancer he had met on tour with Diaghilev, and because of Marie-Thérèse’s age. It was during these preceding months that he first cast his artistic spotlight on the voluptuous blonde. Until then, Picasso had only referenced his extramarital affair with Marie-Thérèse in code, sometimes embedding her symbolically in a composition or rendering her unmistakable profile as a feature of the background. But by the end of 1931, Picasso could no longer repress the creative impulse that his lover inspired, and over Christmas 1931 and into early 1932, Marie- Thérèse emerged, for the first time, in fully recognizable, languorous, form in his work.
For Picasso, Marie-Thérèse offered a sensual amalgam of the lover, the model, and the goddess, and would be cast in many roles throughout his body of work. In Boisgeloup, Picasso increasingly devoted his time and creative energy to sculpture, including a number of plaster busts and reclining nude portraits of Marie-Thérèse. The influence of this medium is visible in Femme nue couchée in the monumental sculptural force with which Picasso portrays the female body. At the same time, the psychological state of the sleeping woman resonates in the soft modelling of the figure, creating an atmosphere of reverie and carefree abandon. Seeking to convey his erotic desire, Picasso generates morphological permutations and distortions of the female anatomy. Abandoning any attempt at naturalism, he creates a figure composed of biomorphic forms, a technique that developed from his earlier, Surrealist works.
Picasso’s treatment of the female figure is undoubtedly rooted in the great tradition of the reclining nude in art history, following his predecessors Goya, Ingres, and Manet, among others. Yet, the artist’s shocking new take on the nude and frank sexuality would provide an influence to some of the greatest artists in the generations to follow.
“There were many notable years in the long, dramatic career of Pablo Picasso, but 1932 stands out as particularly momentous. In this ‘year of wonders,’ Picasso produced the most sensuous depictions of his great muse and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, who would inspire some of the artist’s most iconic images. In Femme nue couchée, she is presented with a potent mix of sensuality and youthful naivety, and heralds a major creative turning point for Picasso as he was no longer willing to hide his passion and affair.”
JULIAN DAWES, SOTHEBY’S HEAD OF MODERN ART, AMERICAS
Exhibition Schedule
Hong Kong 8 – 12 April
London 20 – 24 April
New York 6 – 17 May
Philip Guston’s 1950s Abstract Expressionist Masterpiece Nile To Make Auction Debut at Sotheby’s This May
Sale Coincides with Highly-Anticipated Museum Retrospective &
Appearance of Two Other Major Works at Sotheby’s this Season
“Few artists have expressed such a depth of range in their artistic practice as Philip Guston, whose work spanned Depression Era murals to the heights of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s to a later figurative resurgence that showcased his unique perspective. In Nile, Guston’s incredible sensitivities to composition are on full display, and the painting is not only a landmark achievement during the greatest period of transformation in his career, but also in the evolution of post-war abstract art.”
Michael Macaulay, Sotheby’s Senior Vice President, Contemporary Art
Making its first public appearance in four decades this Friday at Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries in London, Philip Guston’s Abstract Expressionist masterpiece Nile from 1958 is a monumental work that represents the pinnacle of Guston’s abstract practice, and is among the small group of works that established Guston’s reputation as one of the premier artists of 20th century art. Coming to auction for the first time this spring in Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction, Nile will be offered in tandem with several other exceptional works from the artist’s later, figurative period in the Contemporary Evening Auction, marking a significant moment for the market to celebrate the artist’s legacy as an undeniable master of the post-war period that will coincide with the highly-anticipated Philip Guston Now retrospective opening at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston this May.
For more than 40 years, the painting remained in the collection of Peter and Edith O’Donnell of Dallas, Texas, and will be sold in May to benefit the O’Donnell Foundation, whose philanthropic ethos continues Peter and Edith’s selfless legacy of passionately advancing a wide range of higher education causes; innovations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; medical research and public health programs; and an array of arts and culture initiatives. Since the Foundation was established in 1957, the O’Donnells were recognized with numerous accolades for their extraordinary and transformative contributions, which to date have totaled more than $900 million to a spectrum of extraordinary causes. Additional works from the O’Donnell Collection will be offered at Sotheby’s in May 2022 to support the Foundation.
Of the 29 works produced by Guston between 1956 and 1960, the pinnacle of his abstract expressionist output, there are 10 which stand above the rest as unquestioned masterpieces. Nile is one of these ten exemplary canvases, and one of only three remaining in private hands. The additional seven works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (promised gift); The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
The large-scale work is estimated to sell for $20/30 million during Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on 17 May – marking the highest auction estimate ever placed on a work by the artist.
Philip Guston’s Nile
Estimate $20/30 million
Executed at the heart of the artist’s esteemed abstract period during the late 1950s, Nile embodies Guston’s most radical period of transformation, when he developed an innovative working method that drastically affected his output. As a devoted student of the Italian Renaissance, a prolific traveler and reader, a music connoisseur, and an avid filmgoer, Guston was a formidable polymath whose art emerged from his depth of art historical knowledge, as well as a reservoir of diverse experiences and inspirations, including his work with the Depression era WPA and as a founding participant in the pioneering New York School.
It was during his period with his peers of the New York School that Guston developed his signature technique and style that is epitomized by Nile. While his contemporaries experimented with increasing the size of their canvases to create immersive experiences or increasing the size of their gestures, Guston increased his own proximity to the picture plane. Working so close that he lost all sense of space and depth - sometimes close enough for paint splatters to get in his eyes – Guston forged a new type of painterly intensity, reaching its apex in Nile.
Nile comes to auction at a time of renewed interest in Guston’s body of work. The Contemporary Evening Auction will feature two of his later figurative works, Remorse and Studio Celebration. Taken together, the May marquee auctions will present an in-depth overview of the best of his practice.
Nile will appear in a public exhibition for the first time in over forty years when it goes on view in Sotheby’s London galleries from 8 – 13 April, followed by Hong Kong from 24 – 27 April, before returning to New York from 6 – 17 May for exhibition ahead of our Modern Evening Auction on 17 May.
From the great Impressionist masterpieces of Claude Monet to the groundbreaking Modernist canvases of Pablo Picasso and Philip Guston, the Modern Evening Auction will bring together works which exemplify the undaunted spirit of artistic innovation in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Tracing the origins and fulfillment of abstraction from Impressionism through Pointillism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and beyond, the May sale will spotlight the critical artistic developments of the last 150 years, uniting those masterworks that define art history as we know it today.
The Modern Evening Auction is highlighted by one of Claude Monet’s greatest masterpieces—the visionary depiction of Venice from 1908, Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute. Painted during the artist’s only trip to La Serenissima, this work captures the majesty of a city Monet once called “too beautiful to paint.” The finest example in the limited series painted from the steps of the Palazzo Barbaro, Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute radiates with an ethereal luminescence and sublime coloration. Monet’s unparalleled ability to capture shifting light and the palpable atmosphere of the city set this work apart, presenting one of the artist’s greatest Venice pictures ever to come to market.
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Canaletto’s Venice Revisited
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Completed Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné,
Eastman Johnson, Self-Portrait, c. 1850, National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, John Davis Hatch Collection (1979.20.73).
The National Academy of Design is pleased to announce the publication of the Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings & Prints on April 5, the anniversary of the artist’s death. The addition of this section completes the catalogue raisonné of American artist Eastman Johnson, following the section dedicated to his paintings that was first published online in July 2021.
The Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné (EJCR) is founded and directed by Dr. Patricia Hills, project managed by Abigael MacGibeny, and stewarded by the National Academy of Design. The catalogue is based on Dr. Hills’s decades-long research on Johnson’s artwork, dating to the 1972 monographic exhibition of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Celebrating the artist’s substantial contributions to the development of American genre and portrait painting throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, this catalogue raisonné is a vast and intricate online resource designed to be a living archive.
“The National Academy of Design is honored to serve as the steward of the Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. In addition to being a catalogue of Johnson’s works, this extensive online resource has already generated essays and other critical work by contemporary scholars and historians, setting a new benchmark for what a catalogue raisonné can be. We are deeply appreciative of Dr. Patricia Hills and Abigael MacGibeny for their extraordinary work in bringing this to fruition," states Gregory Wessner, Executive Director of the National Academy of Design.
The EJCR website provides authoritative information on paintings, drawings, and prints by Eastman Johnson. According to Dr. Hills, "This range of information not only aids in the connoisseurship of Johnson's art, but provides a multifaceted lens for examining the history of American art and America itself." Johnson’s nearly 1,400 known paintings, drawings, and prints are organized thematically and catalogued with their titles, dates, media, dimensions, inscriptions, current owners, provenance, exhibition histories, and bibliographies. Many of the entries also feature quotes from historical sources, remarks by Dr. Hills and MacGibeny that provide insight into the works, and Dr. Hills’s examination notes and opinion letters. New with the launch of Drawings & Prints are approximately 400 catalogue entries for those works; brief biographies of Johnson's more than 300 portrait sitters, for both drawings and oil paintings; prints made by other artists after Johnson’s works during his lifetime; and an expanded chronology of Johnson’s life to acquaint visitors with his travels and artistic development.
The EJCR website is a free, open access resource for the public. Visitors can bookmark Johnson’s works, with catalogue information and images, for their future reference and use. Visitors can also bookmark collections, exhibitions, and literature, and refer to their saved materials on return visits to the site. The EJCR team is mindful that language of the past has perpetuated racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. Catalogue entries containing historical titles of artworks and descriptions that use derogatory language are linked to an explanatory Racist Language/Negative Stereotypes Statement.
Johnson’s thematic areas of focus include early representations of the Ojibwe Nation in Minnesota Territory; the visual culture of the Civil War; images of Black and white people which did not reflect stereotypes of the time; the celebration of farmers and the agrarian communal ideal; images of the interiority of women; and the shift in style and content from an earlier moralizing genre painting to subject pictures with an emphasis on the spontaneous brushstroke. Eastman Johnson’s ties to the National Academy of Design are longstanding. He became an Academician in 1860 and participated actively in the Academy’s Annual Exhibitions throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. He filled several roles on the Academy’s governing body, the Council, from 1866 to 1890, and taught at the Academy’s school for the academic years of 1867 and 1868. The Academy is proud to become the long-term steward of the EJCR, managing future updates and keeping it available to the public in perpetuity.
The Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné can be accessed at www.eastmanjohnson.org. The website was developed by panOpticon, whose specialized catalogue raisonné platform enables the digital collection and presentation of this rich content.
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Alone Together: Encounters in American Realism
- Opening Sunday, May 29 at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, in Greensburg, Penn., the exhibition Alone Together: Encounters in American Realism brings together works of art separated by almost a century to consider how they are bound together by the shared experience of living and working in difficult times.
The exhibition is guest curated by Alex J. Taylor, Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, and includes major magic realist and American scene painting from the collection of Jason Schoen, one of the most important privately-owned holdings of such work. The works from the Schoen collection are supplemented with key loans from other institutions, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as with selections from The Westmoreland’s own permanent collection. Alongside these historical paintings and prints, which are predominantly from the 1930s through 1950s, the exhibition stages encounters with works by five contemporary artists to capture shared experiences across time.
Clyde J. Singer (1908–1999), Tallulah, 1958, Oil on canvas 30 1/8 x 38 3/4 inches, Collection: The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Gift of John J. McDonough, 1978.5
Martin Lewis (1881–1962), Night in New York, n.d. Etching on paper, 8 1/4 x 9 3/4 inches Collection: The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Gift of the Thomas Lynch Fund and Friends of the Museum, 1979.22
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O. Louis Guglielmi (1906–1956), The American Dream, 1935, Oil on masonite, 12 1/2 x 32 inches Estate of Barbara Vanefsky, Courtesy of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Many of the works in the exhibition are characterized by their dream-like vision of the social realm rendered with precise technical skill. Some of the historical works present images of civil unrest in ways that are startlingly contemporary, including several that unfold in the shadow of monuments, or capture violent struggles in public space. While the exhibition emphasizes works associated with social realism and the often surrealist-inflected imagery of magic realism in the United States, it draws works from across a variety of styles to explore varied approaches to the human subject.
“Alone Together uses the collective space of the exhibition to reflect on shared experiences across time,” Taylor offered. “Feelings of connection and disconnection define many images of modern life, and this exhibition invites visitors to The Westmoreland to draw connections between the social conditions of the past and the present, and to dream their way into the untold stories that these human subjects contain.”
In the early-to-mid twentieth century, American realist painters produced evocative images of human connection and disconnection tied to the traumas of war, civil unrest, economic depression, and other societal upheavals. Such works pursued a compelling approach to realism that captures the uneasiness of a modern world in turmoil. Long overlooked in favor of more obviously modern styles, the work of such artists has recently enjoyed a resurgence of attention. One result of this interest is that contemporary painters can be seen to pursue similarly innovative approaches to representational painting that grapple with what it feels like to live in the world right now.
“The concept for this exhibition was conceived during the pandemic, and it presents us all with images that now resonate in different ways, having collectively experienced the past two years,” stated Anne Kraybill, the Richard M. Scaife Director/CEO. “Bringing forth a sense of shared human experience and connection to the past, I think our visitors will particularly find the encounters Dr. Taylor has created between the historical works and those by the contemporary artists in the exhibition to be compelling and thought-provoking.”
Alone Together: Encounters in American Realism will be on view at The Westmoreland from May 29 -September 25, 2022. A schedule of public programming related to the exhibition, including a panel discussion, artist talk, culinary experience, and film screening, will be announced soon in the Museum’s Spring/Summer 2022 Perspectives newsletter and posted at thewestmoreland.org/events for registration.
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An American Place
January 29 - May 1, 2022
SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS GALLERY, SECOND FLOOR
The story of the coming of age of American art is filled with alliances and ruptures, expatriates and immigrants, transatlantic dialogues and the search for an authentic aesthetic rooted in America. An American Place examines the complexity of this national narrative, highlighting a century of American art from the post-Civil War decades through the Civil Rights era. The exhibition includes paintings, works on paper, and sculptures drawn from the recent bequest of collectors and philanthropists James and Barbara Palmer.
Amassed over more than three decades, this remarkable collection features notable works by well-known nineteenth-century artists and boasts strengths in realist Ashcan portraits and gritty genre scenes. It also includes experimental avant-garde canvases associated with the modernist circle of gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, whose “An American Place” gallery supported a core group of American artists for nearly two decades. The Palmers lovingly shared the works they acquired with friends and their community, essentially creating “An American Place” of their own for students of all ages. Their signature collection includes a broad array of mid-century voices—many of them once marginalized—demonstrating the discerning inclusivity of their vision and the diverse breadth of the story of American art.
An American Place is organized in four thematic sections: Breaking Ties, Embracing Modernity, America as Place, and Diverse Voices. Artists represented include Thomas Anshutz, Romare Bearden,
Thomas Hart Benton, Paul Cadmus, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Edwin Church, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence, Seymour Lipton, George Luks, John Marin, Alfred Maurer, Georgia O’Keeffe, Theodore Robinson, John Sloan, and George Tooker.
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Christie's New York 20th Century Evening Sale May 12 2022
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PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE FRENCH COLLECTION
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
La Mare, effet de neige
signed and dated ‘Claude Monet 75’ (lower left)
Painted in Argenteuil in 1874-1875
Estimate: $18 million – 25 million
Christie’s has announced Claude Monet’s masterwork La Mare, effet de neige (estimate: $18 million – 25 million) will be a highlight of the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place live on 12 May 2022 at Rockefeller Center. A historic masterpiece, the exemplary painting was among the selection of Monet canvasses represented at The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879. The work is incredibly fresh to market, having been held in a single private collection for over 70 years. Christie’s Restitution Department was privileged to provide research that helped facilitate a settlement agreement between the current owners and the heirs of Richard Semmel, the persecuted collector, who owned the painting during the Nazi era. The painting will be on exhibition at Christie’s Hong Kong 20-21 April.
Anika Guntrum, International Director, 20th & 21st Century Art, remarks: Claude Monet’s La Mare, effet de neige is undeniably one of the masterpieces of the Impressionist movement. The spontaneity and the freedom of execution seen in the rendering of light and atmosphere is a veritable tour de force. The blanket of white snow, melting along the edge of the pond is a genius pretext for the artist to reveal, by touches of silvery blue and rose tones, a hint of springtime to come.”
MONET’S LA MARE, EFFET DE NEIGE
Claude Monet painted La Mare, effet de neige in Argenteuil winter of 1874-1875. The aethereal landscape employs tonal blue and white hues to create a frosted snowscape, bordered by homes with snow-dusted roofs. A trio of silhouetted figures, dwarfed by trees, traverse the scene. The work is brilliant, charming and subtle, standing as a superb example of Monet’s experimentation with the Impressionist style in the mid-1870s. During this crucial period of his practice, his increasingly loose brushwork and thick application of paint began to formally convey the more ephemeral and atmospheric effects of the natural world.
La Mare, effet de neige was sold a few months after its execution, at an auction at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. Monet organized this sale with his fellow Impressionist painters, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, after the poor critical reception of The First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874. At this sale, Paul Durand-Ruel, art dealer and champion of the Impressionists, purchased 18 of the 73 works offered, including Monet’s La Mare, effet de neige.
La Mare, effet de neige was exhibited publicly for the first time four years after it was complete at The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition or “4e exposition faite par un Groupe d’artistes Indépendants.” Monet had initially been reluctant to participate in the exhibition, however, Gustave Caillebotte eventually convinced him to join. Twenty-nine works by the artist were included in the show, three of them Argenteuil winter landscapes—including La Mare, effet de neige. This group of 29 represented the full range of Monet’s mature oeuvre. They were all hung in the fifth and final room of the exhibition space, declaring their importance. As put by a 1879 article in Le Siècle, “the last room belongs to the high priests of Impressionism.” Despite his work being the crown jewel, Monet never visited the exhibition during its month-long run. Regardless, the show was a rousing success, with overwhelmingly positive reviews in the press.
Durand-Ruel held the painting until at least 1879. By 1893, the work had entered the collection of Henri Vever, one of the most important jewelry designers in fin-de-siècle France, and a major collector of Japanese prints and Impressionist pictures. In 1898, the painting was in the Holthusen collection, in Hamburg, Germany.
SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT
In the early 1930s, La Mare, effet de neige belonged to a German textile industrialist named Richard Semmel, who lived in Berlin with his wife, Clara Cäcilie (née Brück). When the National Socialist government came into power, the Semmels were targeted for their Jewish background and Richard’s support of the German Democratic Party. After leaving Berlin for Amsterdam in 1933, Richard offered his art collection for sale, with mixed success. Shortly before the occupation of the Netherlands, the Semmels fled again to New York via Chile. Over recent months, Christie’s has worked closely with the current owners in their discussions with the legal representative for heirs of Richard Semmel. Our Restitution Department offered research and support as the parties involved came to an agreement. The present work is being offered for sale pursuant to that settlement agreement. The settlement agreement resolves the dispute over ownership of the work and title will pass to the successful bidder.
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JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-1956)
Number 31
signed and dated ‘Jackson Pollock 49’ (upper left)
oil, enamel, aluminum paint and gesso on paper mounted on Masonite
31 x 22 ½ in. (78.7 x 57.2 cm.)
Executed in 1949.
Estimate on request; in excess of $45 million
Christie’s has announce that Jackson Pollock’s Number 31, 1949 will lead the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place 12 May 2022 at Rockefeller Plaza (Estimate on request; in excess of $45 million). Painted in 1949, the work is among the richest and most powerful examples of Pollock’s celebrated drip paintings, standing as an icon from a seminal moment in the development of twentieth-century art. It has been featured in a number of important exhibitions, including the 1967 Jackson Pollock MoMA retrospective in addition to the 1998 retrospective mounted at MoMA and The Tate. Held in the same private collection for over two decades, the work is incredibly fresh to market.
Pollock executed Number 31 during a flurry of brilliant artistic activity during the end of 1949. The work was subsequently exhibited with Pollock’s new dealer Betty Parsons later that year where critics described the exhibition as “the best painting he has yet done.” Number 31 will tour to Christie’s Los Angeles where it will be on view from 19 – 22 April before returning to New York ahead of the sale.
Alex Rotter, Christie’s Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks, “In the late 1940s, Pollock’s drip paintings categorically redefined how we understand art. This moment saw the art world’s center of gravity shift for the first time away from the museums and galleries of Paris and into the streets of New York. With his revolutionary new technique, Pollock effectively upended the existing framework of traditional painting practices. True drip paintings were—and still are—the ultimate in mid-century American avant-garde, and are rare to come across in the secondary market. Number 31 is a superb example. It is a fantastic, frenetic combination of rich hues—straight from the paint can. It stands as a brilliant demonstration of Pollock’s rigor and effusiveness and we are thrilled to feature it as the top lot in Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale this Spring Marquee Week.”
Essentially an unknown artist in the early 1940s, Pollock first began exploring his now infamous drip painting technique in 1948. By the latter half of 1949, Pollock had found himself catapulted to success as a result of the popularity of this body of work, with paintings acquired by five major museums and 40 prominent private collections. By the time he created Number 31, Pollock had truly mastered the process. Pollock created only thirteen of these drip paintings on paper in 1949—each then mounted onto Masonite, composition board or canvas. Only eight of these display the gleaming, metallic paint employed in Number 31, one of the fullest and most opulent compositions of the group.
Property from a Renowned Private New York Collection
WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997)
Untitled XXI
signed ‘de Kooning’ (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
Painted in 1977.
70 x 80 in. (177.8 x 203.2 cm.)
Estimate on Request
Christie's will offer Willem de Kooning's Untitled XXI as a leading highlight in the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place during Spring Marquee Week at Rockefeller Plaza (Estimate on Request; in excess of $20 million). Untitled XXI is fresh to the market, having been in the same important private collection for more than 30 years. This spring presents buyers with a rare opportunity to acquire a de Kooning of exceptional quality and significance.
Untitled XXI was painted in de Kooning’s studio in East Hampton in 1977, a historic year when he turned out a group of radiant, large-scale abstractions that had a new level of mastery about them. Art historians regard 1977 as a highpoint of his career, his annus mirabilis, or “miraculous year,” as the British critic David Sylvester wrote. The art market has confirmed that view: three of de Kooning’s top four highest prices achieved at auction were for paintings from 1977.
Untitled XXI is a singularly compelling work. At first it looks like a glowing abstraction, with ribbons of color twisting against a pearly white ground. But if one looks closely, intimations of landscape and the female figure become apparent. Untitled XXI might be called a retrospective of sorts, encapsulating in a single painting everything that de Kooning had achieved in the decades before. Here we find an ecstatic combination of gestural abstraction and the light of East Hampton, much of it rendered in the sumptuous pink-and-white palette for which he is famous.
Barrett White, Christie’s Executive Deputy Chairman, Post-War & Contemporary Art, remarks, “This vibrant 1977 canvas by Willem de Kooning stands as a triumph of his career. With thick winding strokes of jewel-toned pigment, de Kooning successfully combines the passionate brushwork that characterized his New York paintings of the ‘50s with the serenity his work acquired after he moved to East Hampton. Contemplative and joyful all at once, this luminous canvas represents the very best of de Kooning.”
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Wayne Thiebaud from Gladstone Institutes
WAYNE THIEBAUD (1920-2021)
City Views
triptych—oil on canvas
left panel: 71.3/4 x 48 in. (182.2 x 121.9 cm.)
center panel: 71.7/8 x 53.7/8 in. (182.6 x 136.8 cm.)
right panel: 71.3/4 x 48 in. (182.2 x 121.9 cm.)
Painted in 2004.
Estimate: $10 million – 15 million
Christie’s has announced Wayne Thiebaud’s City Views (estimate: $10 million – 15 million) will highlight the Spring Marquee Week 20th Century Evening Sale at Rockefeller Plaza on Thursday, 12 May 2022. City Views is a striking triptych, standing as one of the largest landscapes ever painted by Thiebaud. The work is being sold by the nonprofit biomedical research organization Gladstone Institutes, with proceeds going to a dedicated fund that supports its scientific training and mentoring programs.
Gladstone has disrupted the traditional research model to accelerate discovery and cure development. Their vision is to overcome unsolved diseases through transformative biomedical research, particularly in the areas of cardiovascular, viral, and immunological diseases as well as neurodegenerative disorders. Gladstone also seeks to mentor and train future generations of scientific innovators. Created as a commissioned installation for the Gladstone Institutes in 2004, this May marks the first time City Views will be sold. Prior to the sale, the work will be on view in Christie’s San Francisco and Christie’s New York galleries.
Deepak Srivastava, President, Gladstone Institutes, remarks, “Mr. Thiebaud placed great value on teaching and mentoring, with many of his mentees going on to become influential American artists themselves. As a tribute to this legacy, all of the sale proceeds will go directly to a new, named fund to support our postdoctoral fellows along their journey to become leaders in biomedical science.”
Ellanor Notides, Christie’s, Chairman, West Coast, remarks, “Painted specifically for the Gladstone Institutes in 2004, City Views is a breathtaking and timeless rendering of San Francisco. Wayne Thiebaud—both local hero and internationally celebrated artist—was known for his map-like urban landscapes, and this is an absolutely superb example. The painting is an homage to our great city and we at Christie’s are so proud to steward it this Spring, and I am truly elated that proceeds will benefit innovation and discovery science and furthering the great work that the Institutes continues to achieve for the betterment of global health.”
City Views is a demonstrative of Thiebaud’s skill and telegraphs the enthusiasm with which the iconic Californian continued to paint the Bay Area throughout the entirety of his career. Thiebaud, who passed away last December at the age of 101, first began painting San Francisco in the 1970s, creating faithful iterations of that which he saw before him. As time went on, he began to combine different vantage points into fantastic larger-than-life cityscapes. City Views is exemplary, with roadways flattened out into geometric panels to form a quilt-like grid with buildings and sky. Bordering on the edge of abstraction, the formal composition is amplified through its triptych format, the three canvasses coalescing in a delightful interplay of color, texture and shape in a singular reimagining of the modern West coast landscape.
Thiebaud painted City Views over the course of about one year, finishing it six months prior to the completion of the Gladstone building in which it would eventually be installed. With the canvasses still in the studio, Thiebaud continued to fiddle with the composition, incorporating in new playful elements and hidden gems for the perceptive viewer. The median in the road in the central panel became a necktie, and the trees became cupcakes dotting the landscape, recalling his infamous cake series. In a way, the outcome is a complete retrospective of the artist contained within a single work.
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Donatello, the Renaissance
From 19 March to 31 July 2022 the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello host ç, an historic, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition which sets out to reconstruct the astonishing career of one of the most important and influential masters of Italian art of any age, juxtaposing his work with masterpieces by artists who were his contemporaries such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo.
Curated by Francesco Caglioti, professor of medieval art history at the Scuola Normale di Pisa, the exhibition showcases over 130 works of art including sculptures, paintings and drawings, with unique loans, some of which have never been granted before now, from almost sixty of the world’s leading museums and institutions. Hosted in two venues, Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Donatello, the Renaissance allows visitors to explore the life, works and legacy of this “master of masters.” The supreme sculptor of the Quattrocento, Donatello triggered the revolutionary age that was the Renaissance, developing new ideas and figurative solutions that were to mark the history of Western art for ever. Through his work Donatello regenerated the very notion of sculpture, combining the most recent discoveries in the field of perspective with the psychological dimension of art, embracing the full range of human emotions in all their deepest diversity.
The Exhibition
In Palazzo Strozzi, the exhibition reconstructs Donatello’s artistic career through one hundred masterpieces such as his marble David and his Amorino-Attis from the Bargello, his Spiritelli from Prato Cathedral pulpit and his bronzes from the high altar in the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua, in addition to numerous exhibits on loan from the leading museums of the world such as the Louvre in Paris or the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Such works as the celebrated Feast of Herod from the baptismal font in Siena or the superb doors from the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo in Florence, only two of the fourteen works specially restored in connection with the exhibition, are also on display after leaving their homes for the first time in their history.
The exhibition continues in the Donatello Room at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, where the exhibits include the master’s St. George and his bronze David in dialogue with other celebrated works. The final sections of the exhibition illustrate Donatello’s crucial influence on the work of Mannerist and later artists with a series of unprecedented comparisons and juxtapositions.
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Matisse in the 1930s
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
October 19, 2022–January 29, 2023
Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie,
February 27, 2023–May 29, 2023
Musée Matisse Nice,
June 23, 2023–September 24, 2023
Henri Matisse "Large Reclining Nude" 1935. 26 1/8 × 36 3/4 inches (66.4 × 93.3 cm). Oil on canvas Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, 1950.258. © 2022 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and the Musée Matisse Nice, will present the first exhibition ever dedicated to the pivotal decade of the 1930s in the art of Henri Matisse (1869–1954), one of the giants of twentieth-century art. Opening first in Philadelphia, the only United States venue, the exhibition Matisse in the 1930s will present more than 100 works, ranging from both renowned and rarely seen paintings and sculptures, to drawings and prints, to illustrated books. It will also feature documentary photographs and films. The exhibition will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated scholarly catalogue. Matthew Affron, Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Cécile Debray, President of the Musée National Picasso-Paris; and Claudine Grammont, Director of the Musée Matisse Nice, comprise the curatorial team.
Henri Matisse "Woman with a Veil" 1927. 24 1/4 × 19 3/4 inches (61.6 × 50.2 cm). Oil on canvas Museum of Modern Art, New York: The William S. Paley Collection, SPC22.1990. © 2022 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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Scenes of Transcendent Beauty: Thomas Moran’s Yellowstone
The National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) will open Scenes of Transcendent Beauty: Thomas Moran’s Yellowstone on May 14, 2022, an exhibition celebrating Yellowstone National Park’s 150th Anniversary this year. The exhibition will be on view through August 23, 2022.
Scenes of Transcendent Beauty explores the impact of Yellowstone on Thomas Moran and of Moran on Yellowstone. This symbiotic relationship changed the course of Moran’s life and proved vital in the creation of the world’s first national park. This exhibition includes 20 watercolor field sketches on loan from the Yellowstone Heritage and Resource Center in Gardiner, Montana. These intimate sketches provide a rare window into Moran’s artistic process and give the viewer insight into Moran’s Yellowstone.
Moran received an assignment as a painter on the first official expedition into Yellowstone, the Hayden Expedition of 1871. Upon seeing Yellowstone with his own eyes, Moran and his fellow explorers on the expedition struggled for words to describe the breathtaking scenes of “transcendent beauty.” This phrase comes directly from Moran’s own writings and serves as the inspiration for this exhibition.
"The earlier descriptions of Yellowstone sounded like science fiction to anyone who lived in the east," says Tammi Hanawalt, Curator of Art at NMWA. "By Moran returning from Yellowstone with his sketches and paintings, he made it real, and helped people realize Yellowstone was a truly unique place that needed to be protected."
Moran cemented his connection to Yellowstone by adopting the nickname Thomas “Yellowstone” Moran, signing his works with the related monogram “TYM” after 1872. He last visited Yellowstone in the 1920s, shortly before he died, and wrote in a diary of his expedition. The original diary is part of Yellowstone National Park's museum and archives and will be included in this exhibition. The exhibition will also feature interactive digital watercolor stations, where visitors can try their hand at depicting Yellowstone’s unbelievable landscapes.
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Distinguished American Paintings
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Heritage May 10 American Art Signature® Auction
Heritage Auctions has announced one of the most comprehensive – and jubilant – American art events in recent memory. In the words of Senior Vice President Aviva Lehmann, the May 10 American Art Signature® Auction, featuring 150 works, is “a museum-quality auction showing off our strength and ability to curate a perfect sale that covers every genre of American Art.”
The event, which is now open for bidding, spans the breadth of American art, from Ashcan to Impressionism, Regionalism to Hudson River, illustration to sculpture. Here, collectors are treated to everything from Rembrandt Peale’s iconic portrait of George Washington to a coveted still-life by the master of the form, Severin Roesen; from a beloved advertisement (for baby food!) by Norman Rockwell to a birthday-party painting of Max and his Wild Things by their beloved creator Maurice Sendak.
The names featured in this auction offers a wide-ranging roster of American masters, legends and influences, among them Alfred Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Hart Benton, Leroy Neiman, N.C. and Andrew Wyeth, Margaret Keane, Gertrude Abercrombie, Ernie Barnes and, of course, Joseph Christian Leyendecker, whose magazine covers have become among the most sought-after works in American art in recent years. It’s a history of and love letter to the men and women whose images have defined this country over centuries, whose portraits of its landscape and inhabitants have shaped our perceptions of what it means to be an American no matter the vast space and differences between us.
“My goal with this auction was clear: I wanted to tell the complete story of American art by offering some of the finest examples of each genre,” says Lehmann, Heritage’s director of American art. “To be honest, that’s because I feel it’s our responsibility as America’s largest auction house to bring to our collectors an entire syllabus of American history as represented by its greatest artists. With this sale, I believe we achieved that goal; I could not be prouder. And the results will speak for themselves.”
Befitting such an event, Heritage is proud to offer Rembrandt Peale’s circa-1855 “porthole” portrait of this country’s first president – and among the most iconic images in this country’s history. This Washington painting is extraordinarily significant, too, as it comes from the collection of Melvin “Pete” Mark, the prominent Portland real estate executive and philanthropist who was also among this country’s preeminent collectors of presidential artifacts and American historical treasures.
Mark’s American treasures, an assemblage so important the Oregon Historical Society hosted five different exhibits over the years, are being offered by Heritage Auctions on May 7. But it would not be an American art auction without his portrait, which Lehmann says is among the finest Peales to reach market, especially in terms of condition and provenance.
“I love it,” she says. “It almost comforts me, as Peale painted Washington in way that’s both paternal and regal – that three-quarter stance, that little smile. I find it a little reassuring, in a way, this portrait of a founding father from an artist who so dearly valued American history.”
One of the most historic works in this auction comes from German-born Severin Roesen, among the most important American still-life artists whose last name isn’t Peale. And Still Life with Fruit and Flowers in a Landscape, painted in 1850 (only two years after Roesen’s arrival in this country), is as significant a Roesen collectors will find at auction: It is, as our catalog notes, “opulent, majestic and strikingly theatrical.” And, as Lehmann notes, there is a “fantastic landscape behind it, which was only reserved for Roesen’s best works.”
This auction also features several masterworks from J.C. Leyendecker, who is having his moment in the sun with record-setting sales and the documentary short Coded: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker.
Heritage is particularly honored to present his First Long Suit, painted for the Sept. 18, 1937, cover for The Saturday Evening Post. It’s a definitive work from the artist best known for his “paintings of fashionable men and women in a sleek, idealized style,” as the Norman Rockwell Museum puts it. But as Lehmann notes, this almost Rockwellian work, in which a mother dabs away a tear while her young son tries on big-boy trousers, is far more than just one the fashion-ad illustrations Leyendecker was often commissioned to paint by clothing-makers Arrow and Kuppenheimer.
“Leyendecker is the master of welcoming his viewer into a scene and making us related to that moment,” she says. “Here, he offers the impeccable detail of watching a child grow up right before their eyes. It’s such a heartfelt, bittersweet moment that shows him to be, within the space of a single image, a masterful storyteller along the lines of Rockwell. First Long Suit is easily the most complex Leyendecker composition to come to market in a long time.”
This event also features a much earlier but no less significant Leyendecker: Playing Hooky, which first appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on June 13, 1914. That was just a few months before the appearance of the artist’s Beat-up Boy, Football Hero, which sold at Heritage Auctions one year ago for a record-setting $4,121,250, the first Leyendecker to surpass seven figures.
Playing Hooky is among the touching, whimsical works painted by the artist during this period, most notable for the creation of his beloved New Year’s Baby for The Post. Looking at this portrait of the young boy startled by the nibble on the other end of the line, it’s little wonder collectors and historians often consider his paintings of children among Leyendecker’s finest works.
And this painting in particular has an astonishing backstory: Its current owner inherited it from her father, who was among those charged with cleaning out Leyendecker’s New Rochelle estate upon his death in 1951. The artist’s sister was throwing away his artwork, including Playing Hooky, and the consignor’s father rescued it from the garbage. Seldom has the phrase “trash to treasure” meant more.
There has never been any dispute about the significance of this piece: Jervis McEntee’s 1862 oil on canvas The Fire of Leaves, which is not merely among the finest and most important masterworks by the artist to ever come to market, but a simple, pointed nod to the ongoing Civil War.
This work, featuring two boys – friends, perhaps, or rivals meant to represent North and South – sitting next to a campfire amid a rugged, tranquil, luminous landscape, is almost a work of “wishful thinking,” says Lehmann, the artist’s subtle but impactful way of “begging his country to come to peace.”
The Fire of Leaves has been displayed in myriad exhibitions – most recently in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York only nine years ago, as one of the centerpieces of “The Civil War and American Art.”
Another oft-exhibited work in this auction is something far more contemporary: George Tooker’s Un Ballo in Maschera, a tempera on gessoed board laid on board from 1982. Most recently displayed at the Columbus Museum of Art for a Tooker retrospective, this is among the artist’s most reproduced works, where neoclassicism and modernism collide in something quite dreamlike, surreal. And it’s not as though Tooker’s pieces often come to market: Given his use of tempera, and his slow and meticulous methods, he produced only a couple of paintings each year.
“So much skill and love and time goes into a work like this,” says Lehmann. “And it’s such a unique niche in the arena of American art that I am so excited we have this work in this sale.”
Lehmann’s enthusiasm and affection for this sale especially comes through when she speaks about Abercrombie’s Lonely House from 1938, when it was painted for the Illinois Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration. It was painted when Abercrombie was 30 years old, and it’s an honest, cheeky work whose intention is far more than a depiction of the rural “American Scene” requested by the WPA.
“As a scholar, a curator and, most of all, as a woman, I just love this work,” Lehmann says. “It was her way of working out her frustrations of being a woman in a man’s world. It was, essentially, a self-portrait – the artist trapped and closed off like the boarded-up house. Abercrombie wanted to be herself – to smoke and drink like a man. But she was told no. This was her screw-you to the establishment.”
Ernie Barnes’ circa-1979 Pool Hall is another highlight of this auction, among the most recognizable pieces by the former pro footballer once fined by the Denver Broncos’ head coach for sketching during team meetings. Barnes, perhaps best known for his painting Sugar Shack used on Good Times and for a 1976 Marvin Gaye album, had one of the 20th century’s most distinctive – and imitated – styles, “almost like a more modern Thomas Hart Benton or El Greco,” Lehmann says.
“You can see it in Pool Hall, with these elongated, exaggerated forms and how Barnes saw black and white men interacting,” she says. “It’s lyrical, as close to dancing as a painting can get.”
As though one needed further proof every work in this auction is a highlight, look no further than the children’s-books illustrations here, among them Ludwig Bemelmans’And Afraid of a Disaster and Madeline; The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, a dazzling work almost entirely in crayonby Jumanji creator Chris Van Allsburg; and, especially, Sendak’s Let the Wild Rumpus Start! (Happy Birthday Wild Things!), painted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Where the Wild Things Are in 1988.
“Everyone loves Sendak, and it’s high time for him to climb to the level of Rockwell,” Lehmann says. “For this auction I wanted pieces that were joyful – works that feel like spring, that makes you happy, and that is most decidedly what Sendak does.”
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Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on 27 April Hong Kong
Dora Maar was a commanding presence and this portrait by Picasso conveys her beauty and intellect to powerful effect. Painted in the French tricolor of red, white and blue – and prominently signed and dated – it captures a real sense of Maar’s personality and speaks eloquently of Picasso’s feelings. Interest in Picasso has been surging among Asian collectors, as we witnessed last year with two consecutive auction records for the artist in Asia, most notably for a portrait of Picasso’s second wife Jacqueline Roque. This season we are thrilled to present a museum-quality work that ranks among the best examples by the artist to come to auction in the region.
FELIX KWOK, HEAD OF MODERN ART, SOTHEBY’S ASIA
This April in Hong Kong, Sotheby’s will offer a compelling portrait by Pablo Picasso of his lover, Dora Maar, from a hugely important period in the artist’s life. The appearance of the work not only marks the first time a Dora Maar portrait by the artist has come to auction in Asia, it also comes at a moment when demand for Picasso in the region is at an all-time high – hot on the heels of two consecutive auction records achieved for the artist in Asia by Sotheby’s last year across the spring and autumn sales seasons. Painted in 1939, when the European continent was on the brink of war, the portrait is particularly alluring, and unusual in its calm elegance, given that many of Picasso’s portraits of Dora Maar show her face in anguish and fractured into a cubist treatment of her features.
Estimated in excess of HK$138 million / $17.6 million, Dora Maar will be offered as part of Sotheby’s spring sales series in Hong Kong, alongside a strong selection of works from the modern period – by artists such as Chen Yifei, Wu Guanzhong, Chu Teh-Chun and Zao Wou-Ki – in the Modern Evening Auction on 27 April. The sale will be complemented by a similarly broad and strong offering of Contemporary Art in an evening auction on the same day, led by Louise Bourgeois’ (almost) seven-foot Spider IV – the first Spider by the artist to be presented at auction in Asia.
Picasso and Dora Maar
The love story between Dora Maar and Picasso is arguably one of the most turbulent in 20th-century art history. Their affair was a partnership of intellectual exchange as well as of intense passion, and her influence on the artist resulted in some of the most daring and most renowned portraits of his career.
Picasso met Maar, the Surrealist photographer, in early 1936, and was immediately enchanted by her intellect and beauty, and by her commanding presence. Although still romantically involved with Marie-Thérèse Walter and married to Olga Khokhlova at the time, Picasso became intimately involved with Maar. Unlike the more docile and domestic Marie-Thérèse, Maar was an artist, spoke Picasso’s native Spanish, and shared his intellectual and political concerns.
During this period of drama in his personal life, Picasso balanced Maar and Walter in an increasingly complex and acrimonious domestic environment. At the same time, world events were also coming to a climax and making themselves felt in Picasso’s work. When Picasso embarked on the great masterpiece Guernica – in response to the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica in April 1937 – Maar assisted as well as producing a photo-documentary of the work in progress. They would remain together until 1943.
Maar’s arrival marked an important stylistic change for Picasso that very quickly made itself felt in his art, with a distinct shift from the sweeping curvilinear forms of Marie-Thérèse Walter towards more sharply delineated forms that captured the essence of the multiple and often conflicting facets of Maar’s personality. With her head resting on her hand, in Dora Maar she looks pensively toward the viewer, conveying a sense of characteristic intensity and gravity. This is only further contrasted by the fiery red background, a symbolic reference to Maar’s equally passionate and spirited character. The portrait shows Maar in a self-possessed and proud pose, her captivating face both contemplative and inscrutable. Her most striking features, powerfully rendered here, were her thick mantle of rich black hair – which she kept long at Picasso’s request – and her dazzling soulful eyes.
Picasso’s choice of a panel for Dora Maar was of artistic significance. Throughout his career, Picasso often selected different media to allow full reign for his creative freedom, switching effortlessly between canvas, panel, paper, or whichever other medium he felt compelled to use. He began painting on panel during his Blue Period and his Surrealist period, and continued to do so through the 1950s.
Dora Maar belongs to a small group of oils on panel painted between 27th and 29th March 1939, including examples held in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The painting was last offered at auction in 1988, when it graced the cover of the sale catalogue.
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Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Masterpieces from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia,
The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg (MFA)
February 12 through May 8, 2022
At the dawn of the seventeenth century, a new generation of artists emerged in Rome that would develop an artistic movement known as the Baroque period. Following the Renaissance, this eccentric new style spread rapidly through Europe and reached to the Americas. Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Masterpieces from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia explores the genesis of this artistic movement. Through a selection of works from 40 artists, including 10 works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, this exhibition illuminates Bernini’s influence and explores how it resonated across the Baroque movement.
Carlo Maratti, called “Il Maratta” and Mario Nuzzi, called “Mario de’ Fiori”, The Summer, 1658-59, Oil on canvas, Palazzo Chigi, Ariccia.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, artists definitively set aside the Caravaggesque model for a more transversal dialogue between the real and the supernatural, the superfluous and the necessary. After the death of the famous Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, the debate between “naturalists” and “classicists” (respectively, followers of the styles of Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci) originated a new figurative language, namely the “Baroque,” which found in Gian Lorenzo Bernini its undisputed protagonist. Thanks to the masterpieces conserved in Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, we can trace the spectacular path by which the “Baroque” became a universal vernacular expression.
Note: images below title
Portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Baciccio
Medallion with Androcles and the Lion, Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Stop 3: Panoramic View of Ariccia, Giovan Battista Falda
Decorative Ceiling Lamp, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Nelli
Bacchus, or the Allegory of Taste, Pier Francesco Mola
Orpheus and Eurydice, Giuseppe Cesari
Agar and Ishmael, Guillaume Courtois
Lot and his Daughters, Giacinto Brandi
Saint Lucy, Giovanni Battista Salvi
Plague Scene, Mattia Preti
The Suicide of Cleopatra, Domenico Fetti
Portrait of Cardinal Flavio Chigi, Ferdinand Voet
Sanguis Christi, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Guillaume Courtois
The Flagellation, Pietro Da Cortona
The Jesuit Missionary Roberto de’Nobili in Madras, Jacques Stella
Saint Ivo Distributes Charity, Ciro Ferri
Bernini and the Roman Baroque comprehensively maps the rich spectrum of genres and pictorial styles that characterize Baroque aesthetics. Its many luminous examples of these diverse categories—not only history painting but also alternative genres such as portraiture, self-portraiture and landscaping, as well as preparatory sketches used for large decorative frescoes—epitomize Baroque’s ultimate goal of elevating the viewer in mind and soul, communicating the moral and spiritual messages of the Catholic Church.
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Wealth and Beauty: Pier Francesco Foschi and Painting in Renaissance Florence
Pontormo, del Sarto, Foschi. One of these names is much less of a household name when it comes to 16th-century Italian art, but the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia aims to change that this January. “Wealth and Beauty: Pier Francesco Foschi and Painting in Renaissance Florence,” organized by Nelda Damiano, the museum’s Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, is the first exhibition dedicated to Pier Francesco Foschi (1502 – 1567), a highly prolific and fashionable Florentine painter whose career spanned nearly five decades. Despite his success at the time, he fell into nearly complete obscurity after his death. “Wealth and Beauty,” on view January 28 to April 24, 2022, offers a timely and critical reevaluation of this versatile and innovative Renaissance master.
Visitors will have the opportunity to discover the significant contribution of a long-forgotten but important artist who helped to shape the cultural landscape of Florentine art. Born in Florence to a family of painters, Foschi trained with Andrea del Sarto, one of the most influential artists of the Renaissance. He received commissions from numerous prominent families of Florence, including the Medici, Pucci and Torrigiani. His assignments included small devotional images and large church altarpieces and frescoes, but he is best known today for his portraits. In his own lifetime he became one of the most sought-after portraitists in his city, celebrated for his ability to convey the gravitas of his subjects and represent the objects that connoted their social and economic status.
“Wealth and Beauty” represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for audiences in Georgia. It will include exceptional works of art from world-renowned museums including the Gallerie degli Uffizi (Florence), the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze (Florence), the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid), the Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford)
OSCHI, PIER FRANCESCO DI JACOPO (1502-67)
The head of St Peter c.1540
Black chalk | 23.5 x 16.6 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 905158
and the Royal Collection Trust (London), some of which have never been presented in the United States.
The exhibition will also shed light on overlooked pictures in American museums, such as
Pier Francesco Foschi (1502 – 1567), "Portrait of Bartolomeo Compagni,” 1549. Oil on panel, 40 1/2 × 32 1/2 inches. Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida. Purchased with funds from the Cummer Council. Inv. AP.1984.3.1.
Foschi’s “Portrait of Bartolomeo Compagni,” at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida;
Foschi’s “Portrait of Bartolomeo Gualterotti,” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Puligo’s “Portrait of a Woman,” at the David Owsley Museum of Art in Muncie, Indiana;
and Bronzino’s “Portrait of a Woman” at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., is lending two paintings, one by del Sarto and one by Pontormo.
Damiano said, “We are extremely honored to present an exhibition of this scope at the Georgia Museum of Art. This project has benefited from the tremendous support and generosity of museums, art dealers, private collectors, sponsors and scholars in North America and in Europe. We are excited to share with our visitors beautiful works of art from the Renaissance and bring to light an overlooked and fascinating artist like Foschi.”
Foschi has never been the subject of a dedicated monograph, and no scholars have assessed his relevance in the context of Florentine art in a comprehensive way. This exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the museum and including essays and entries by leading international experts. A version of the exhibition will open at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze following its presentation in Georgia.
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Diego Rivera’s America
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
July 16, 2022–January 2, 2023
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present Diego Rivera’s America, the most in-depth examination of the artist’s work in over two decades. Diego Rivera’s America brings together more than 150 of Rivera’s paintings, frescos and drawings—as well as three galleries devoted to large-scale film projections of highly influential murals he created in Mexico and the U.S. On view in San Francisco from July 16, 2022–January 2, 2023, the traveling exhibition focuses on his work from the 1920s to the mid-1940s, the richest years of Rivera’s prolific career. During these two key decades, Rivera created a new vision for North America, informed by his travels in Mexico and the United States.
“Rivera was one of the most aesthetically, socially and politically ambitious artists of the 20th century,” notes guest curator James Oles. “He was deeply concerned with transforming society and shaping identity—Mexican identity, of course, but also American identity, in the broadest sense of the term. Because of his utopian belief in the power of art to change the world, Rivera is an essential artist to explore anew today, from a contemporary perspective.”
The exhibition travels to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art from March 11 to September 30, 2023.
Diego Rivera’s America builds on SFMOMA’s collection of over 70 works by Rivera, one of the largest in the world. It also features paintings, drawings and frescos borrowed from public and private collections in Mexico, the U.S. and the U.K., reuniting many for the first time since the artist’s death. Iconic and much-loved works, such as The Corn Grinder (1926), Dance in Tehuantepec (1928), Flower Carrier (1935) and Portrait of Lupe Marin (1938), will be shown alongside paintings that have not been seen publicly since leaving the artist’s studio.
The exhibition is the first to examine Rivera’s work thematically, with galleries dedicated to places like Tehuantepec and Manhattan that captured his imagination, and to his favorite subjects, such as street markets, popular celebrations and images of industry. It begins with Rivera’s first mural commission, Creation (1922–23), a project that—like much of his work—looks to past artistic traditions while also embracing avant-garde strategies. In the 1920s, working mainly in Mexico, Rivera established his mature style, distinguished by rounded forms, intense colors, and increasingly dense compositions. He cemented an interest in allegory, popular culture, family, labor, and the proletarian revolution, themes that would be central to his famous murals in San Francisco, Detroit and New York of the early 1930s, and that would resonate in his paintings and drawings through the 1940s.
The culmination of the exhibition is Rivera’s last U.S. mural, a colossal work measuring 22 feet high by 74 feet wide, painted for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1940. The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on the Continent—commonly known as Pan American Unity—is free to all visitors to view in SFMOMA’s Roberts Family Gallery. This 10-panel portable fresco, on loan from City College of San Francisco until 2024, explores his vision of a shared history and future for Mexico and the U.S.
Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886–1957) believed in the power of art to educate, inspire action and transform society. He considered art an essential weapon in the utopian struggle for greater social equality and justice. Paintings such as The Tortilla Maker (1926) and Weaving (1936) illuminate Rivera’s desire to focus on everyday people as the protagonists of national narratives. From the early 1920s to the mid-1940s, he reimagined Mexican national identity on a vast scale, embraced the industrial age in the U.S. and conceived of a greater America in which unity, rather than division, was paramount.
Rivera’s idea of “America” was hemispheric and transnational, and did not refer only to the United States, as he stated in 1931: “I mean by America, the territory included between the two ice barriers of the two poles. A fig for your barriers of wire and frontier guards.” Above all he believed that the U.S. and Mexico shared a similar historical foundation in which a rich Indigenous past had been suppressed by colonial violence. He also believed the countries shared a creative force and revolutionary impulse that distinguished them from Europe. Diego Rivera’s America invites audiences to reflect on the shared histories and challenges that connect us across political borders.
The exhibition proposes new interpretations of some of Rivera’s most famous paintings, including Flower Seller (1926), on loan from the Honolulu Museum of Art, and a 1938 surrealist landscape from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. A suite of his humorous designs for the modernist ballet H.P. (Horsepower), on loan from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, will be presented together along with the first recreations of Rivera’s costumes since 1932. The presentation also unveils paintings lost to scholars or never exhibited before, among them a stunning double portrait commissioned by the mother of Jane and Peter Fonda in 1941.
The galleries devoted to Rivera’s U.S. murals feature large-scale preliminary sketches and cartoons for works such as his censored Rockefeller Center project of 1933, as well as two fresco panels painted in New York. His timely invitation to return to San Francisco in 1940 to paint a large mural in front of a live audience at the worlds’ fair held on Treasure Island allowed him the ideal opportunity to envision a collective American response to a world collapsing again into war.
San Francisco was particularly important to Rivera; it was the first place he painted murals in the U.S. Likewise, his work was deeply influential to artists and muralists across the Bay Area. Through their work, Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo became deeply connected to local cultural figures. San Francisco was also where Rivera and Kahlo remarried in 1940, after their brief divorce. The exhibition will present portraits of their wide circle of friends in San Francisco, including three important paintings by Frida Kahlo.
Diego Rivera’s America features two galleries dedicated to Rivera’s San Francisco projects, with preparatory drawings for two murals from 1930–31: Allegory of California and The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City. The exhibition will also incorporate Rivera’s portable fresco Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees (1931), originally painted for a private home and now in the collection of the University of California, Berkeley. Brought together for the first time, these works provide unparalleled insight into Rivera’s time in San Francisco and highlight the artist’s role in helping to establish a legacy of politically engaged muralism that remains an indelible part of the city’s identity and built environment.
Diego Rivera’s America spotlights paintings that depict life in Mexico and in the U.S. and concludes with a vast fresco that unites both countries. Rivera’s work invites us to consider the past while also asserting the power of art to envision solutions to cultural, economic and political challenges and shape the present.
Diego Rivera’s America is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with more than 300 illustrations, and essays by James Oles, Maria Castro, Claire F. Fox, John Lear and Sandra Zetina, and contributions by Michelle Barger and Kiernan Graves, Dafne Cruz Porchini, Jennifer A. González, Rachel Kaplan and Adriana Zavala. The catalogue is edited by James Oles and published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with University of California Press.
In tandem with Diego Rivera’s America, SFMOMA has produced The Mission Muralismo Audio Zine Vol.I, for listeners to take audio stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District, learning about the murals seen throughout the neighborhood and the artists who collaborated to create them. In this 48-minute audio story narrated by Camilo Garzón, local writers Olivia Peña and Josiah Luis Alderete interweave their perspectives on the history of the Mission Muralismo movement with stories from the muralists themselves.
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