Art Of The Day Weekly
#329 - from 16 January 2014 to 22 January 2014
Joseph Wright of Derby, Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples, c. 1776-80. Oil on canvas, 122 x 176.4 cm © Tate, London 2013 (exhibition at Holburne Museum, Bath)
30 EXHIBITIONS IN EUROPE (1st PART:NORTHERN EUROPE)
After reviewing France last week, we now present to you, in two parts, a choice of “not-to-be-missed” exhibitions in Europe this winter. The “Northern” selection spanning from Great Britain to Austria must be enlarged to include the two European cultural capitals, Umea in Sweden –with in particular a retrospective on Leonor Fini- and Riga in Latvia –which focuses on 1914 –which we will come back to very soon.
AUSTRIA
Vienna-Berlin
VIENNA – The exhibition, an international coproduction as the name shows, was first shown in Germany before reaching the Belvedere. It shows the vitality of two cities that are often compared - modern, American-style Berlin in face of Baroque and decadent Vienna - during the first decades of the XXth century, going from World War I to the Roaring twenties. All the major movements appear, such as the Secession, Expressionism, Dada, the New Objectivity, as well as famous and not so famous names: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele, Liebermann, Kiesler…
• From 14 February to 15 June 2014
© National Kremlin Museums, Moscow.
Fabergé
VIENNA – The name has become a synonym of Imperial jewelry but is not limited to the famous diamond-incrusted eggs. During the last thirty years of Czarism (as of 1885) Fabergé produced exceptional pieces of which some one hundred have been brought from the Kremlin and the Fersman museum in Moscow to be shown at the Kunsthistoriches Museum.
• From 18 February to 9 June 2014.
BELGIUM
Francisco de Zurbarán, A Cup of Water and a Rose, ca. 1630, oil on canvas, 21,2 x 30,1 cm, National Gallery, London.
Zurbarán
BRUSSELS – Following an Italian stopover in Ferrara, the Spanish master of darkness has arrived in Belgium for a long-awaited retrospective. Saint Jean-Baptiste, the archangel Gabriel, Saint Casilda: the figures of Christianity hold an important role in the work of this master of the XVIIth century, the alter ego of Vélasquez. But he also produced beautiful still-lives, the “bodegones” of an austere refinement.
• From 29 January to 25 May 2014
Ravaged
LOUVAIN – This title clearly says what the M Museum aims at showing: the list of the horrors art works are submitted to during times of conflict. Whether it is the leveling out of a whole town by bombers or the burning of books or paintings, the iconoclast rage, against “papal idolatry” or, more recently, against the Buddhas of Bamyan: no era and no continent is spared by this epidemic…
• From 20 March to 1 September 2014
DENMARK
View of the Hilma af Klint exhibition at Museo Picasso, Malaga.
Hilma af Klint
HUMLAEBEK - Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is a Swedish artist inspired by the Theosophic movements. She carried out chromatic and formal research similar to those of Kandinsky. In 2013 she was rediscovered and this exhibition at the Louisiana Museum, including some 200 works, is the last phase of a very successful itinerary. It has gone from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm to the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and all the way to the Picasso museum in Malaga.
• From 7 March to 16 July 2014.
GERMANY
Emil Nolde, Frau T. with Red Necklace, 1930. Watercolor on paper, 47,9 x 35,5 cm. © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll
Emil Nolde
FRANKFURT – The Städel Museum pays a tribute to one of the great Expressionists through some 150 works. Indeed Emil Nolde’s long career (1867-1956) allowed him to dip into all genres. From his first Swiss landscapes to the portraits, from the paintings influenced by primitive art (in 1913 he accompanied a German scientific expedition to New-Guinea), to his “silent watercolors”, when he was considered ‘persona non grata’ by the Nazi regime to which he was favorable at the beginning, the exhibition treats us to examples of every period.
• From 5 March to 15 June 2014
Rembrandt Bugatti, Panther walking, ca 1904, private collection. Photo : Peter John Gates.
Rembrandt Bugatti
BERLIN – Rembrandt Bugatti, brother of the famous car builder Ettore, nephew of painter Segantini, was one of the sculptors most in vogue in Europe during the Belle Epoque. A retrospective is dedicated to this artist who was more fascinated by the animal world than by that of humans, one century after he committed suicide at age 31 in 1916, traumatized by the war. The event will not go by unnoticed, as the Alte Nationalgalerie has indeed brought together 80 works, representing one fifth of his total production.
• From 28 March to 27 July 2014
GREAT BRITAIN
Hanna Höch
LONDON – The Whitechapel Gallery pays a tribute to a forgotten figure of the Dada movement, Hanna Höch (1889-1978), a feminist artist and a virtuoso of collage and photomontage in line with Schwitters and John Heartfield.
• From 15 January to 23 March 2014
Joseph Wright of Derby
BATH – Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797) was a master of colors, an erudite with light and had a passion for inventions. The Holburne Museum looks into his sojourn in Bath: 18 months –from the end of 1775 to the beginning of 1777 – during which he perfected his spectacular Italian landscapes.
• From 25 January to 5 May 2014
Richard Hamilton
LONDON – Less known than their American cousins, but working in the same vein as Warhol or Lichtenstein, British Pop Art had its own stars. Richard Hamilton for one is currently shown at the Tate Modern. His portrait of Mick Jagger (Swingeing London), one of the icons of the sixties, reminds us of course of Warhol’s Jacky Kennedy.
• From 13 February to 26 May 2014
Ruin Lust
LONDON – Hubert Robert symbolizes for us the attraction exerted by the beauty of ruins, which was in full swing in the beginning of the XVIIIth century. In England, this taste developed a bit earlier as can be seen in this true investigation carried out by the Tate Britain, combining Turner, John Martin and contemporary creators such as Tacita Dean.
• From 4 March to 18 May 2014
Vikings
LONDON – Scandinavians, a people of sailors and raiders, terrorized Western Europe from the VIIIth to the XIth centuries. But they were not only cruel predators as is shown in this survey-exhibition at the British Museum. To inaugurate its new Sainsbury wing it presents metal weapons, coins and boat remains.
• From 6 March to 22 June 2014
Veronese, Lucretia, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, ca 1580-85, oil on canvas, 109 x 90,2 cm
Veronese
LONDON – The great Venetian colorist is one of the stars of this season at the National Gallery which presents, next to its own extraordinary corpus of ten works, loans from Venice and Verona –his birthplace in 1528-, Vienna, the Louvre Museum (the Bella Nani) or even Rennes…
• From 19 March to 15 June 2014
THE NETHERLANDS
World War II through 100 objects
ROTTERDAM – While all of Europe will be almost exclusively turned to the events of 1914, the Kunsthal has chosen to focus on World War II from an original perspective: by presenting 100 personal objects found in 25 Dutch museums, each telling a very moving story.
• From 5 February to 5 May 2014.
Heads of Demons Battling a Rider, Ustrushana, Bunjikat, 8th–9th century, Fresco-secco wall painting
The Silk Road
AMSTERDAM – The Amsterdam antenna of the Hermitage museum presents a selection of pieces brought by Russian archeological missions to the Orient. From Sogdiana in Bactrian, from the desert of Gobi to the desert of Taklamakan, thirteen important excavation campaigns, from the end of the XIXth century to our day are presented with their emblematic objects.
• From 1 March to 5 September 2014.
