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Opening and Closing in January

Let's kick off the New Year with something a bit out of the ordinary: Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism at London's Royal Academy. This show features more than 130 works by 10 key 20th-century Brazilian artists, and most of them have never been on show in the UK before, providing a chance to look at modern art in a way that breaks from the European and North American perspective we're so used to. On from January 28 to April 21.   There are more familiar names at Bath's Holburne Museum: Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol among them. Iconic: Portraiture from Bacon to Warhol  focuses on the middle of the 20th century when many artists began to use photographs as sources for their paintings. The exhibition runs from January 24 to May 5.  From January 22, the Louvre in Paris offers the chance to take  A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting . Cimabue, one of the most important artists of the 13th century, was among the...

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Opening and Closing in September

From The Angel of the North to Another Place, Antony Gormley's sculptures provide some fantastic open-air art experiences. How about indoors, though? We'll find out when he takes over the main galleries at the Royal Academy in London from September 21 to December 3.
Over at Tate Britain, the biggest exhibition in 20 years of the works of William Blake opens on September 11. The show is designed to offer visitors the chance to sense how Blake's radical and rebellious art must have come across when first shown two centuries ago. Until February 2.
It's curtain up at the Foundling Museum on September 20 on Two Last Nights! Show Business in Georgian Britain, an exhibition looking at how similar, and how different, theatre-going was then and now. Hogarth is, of course, involved. The fat lady sings on January 5.

And for those of us in south-east England, there's a chance to get a bit better acquainted with the Fauvist-influenced post-Impressionism of the 1920s Scottish Colourists in Burning Bright, a show at the Lightbox in Woking that runs from September 7 to January 12. They're the opposite of dreich.

A lot of new shows are starting in Paris in September, and one of the most appealing looks to be Degas at the Opera at the Musée d'Orsay, which opens on September 24. The opera, with its dancers, singers, musicians and audience members, played a key role in Degas's work over his long career. Until January 19.

At the Musée Maillol, the focus will be on The Great Naïve Masters, with a show including more than 100 works by 'modern primitive' artists including Henri Rousseau and Séraphine Louis. September 11 to January 19.
Across town at the Musée Marmottan Monet, there's a look at what Piet Mondrian was painting before he found the abstract style that we associate with him today. The Figurative Mondrian starts on September 12 and runs through to September 26. 

How much do our closest continental neighbours know of British art? They're about to get a major refresher course in The Golden Age of English Painting at the Musée du Luxembourg. Reynolds, Gainsborough and Turner will be the stars of the show that runs from September 11 to February 16.

And at the Pompidou Centre, there's a look back to the last two decades of the career of one of Britain's most prominent modern artists in Francis Bacon: Books and Painting, which explores the influence of literature on the painter's work. September 11 to January 20.

There always seems to be a Vincent van Gogh exhibition on somewhere, and the latest starts on September 21 at the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch in the the southern Netherlands. Van Gogh's Inner Circle looks at his relationships with family, friends and fellow artists. Until January 12.

Right next door, Den Bosch's Design Museum is holding what it says is the first ever major exhibition to look at the Design of the Third Reich, examining how design contributed to the development of the Nazi regime, from the swastika to the Volkswagen Beetle and the 1936 Berlin Olympics. September 8 to January 19. 
We've seen a number of excellent exhibitions at the Amsterdam outpost of the Hermitage Museum, and their new show promises to be sparkling. Jewels! will bring together two centuries of dazzling costumes, accessories and portraits from the imperial court in St Petersburg. September 14 to March 15.

The Albertina Museum in Vienna is home to the world's biggest collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürerand they'll be joined by other works for a big show starting on September 20 and running through to January 6. With, of course, the most famous hare in the history of art....

Last chance to see....

You have literally a few hours to get to see Hogarth & the Art of Noise, the excellent show at London's Foundling Museum deconstructing Hogarth's The March of the Guards to Finchley, which ends on September 1.

Another highly recommended exhibition coming to an end in London is Cutting Edge at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which closes on September 8. It looks at the printmakers from Pimlico who turned linocuts into fine art in the 1920s and 30s.

Meanwhile, you've got until September 15 to get down to Bath to see the intimate and very well put together Edouard Vuillard exhibition at the Holburne Museum.
Think of Vuillard, and you probably also think of Pierre Bonnard. The show that we saw in London earlier this year ends at the Glyptotek in Copenhagen on September 22. Next stop: Vienna

Also finishing on September 22: one of the most enjoyable exhibitions of 2019 for us, the stunning Bridget Riley retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. The show moves on to the Hayward Gallery in London in October.

At the Prado in Madrid, the show comparing and contrasting the work of Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer and other 17th-century Spanish and Dutch masters ends on September 29. Some great art, but a not totally successful presentation. The exhibition moves to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in October.

And another of our favourite shows so far this year also welcomes its last visitors on September 29: the intriguing, disquieting paintings and prints of Félix Vallotton at the Royal Academy in London. They'll be going on to the Met in New York at the end of October.

Images

Antony Gormley, Lost Horizon I, 2008. Installation view, White Cube, Mason's Yard, London; courtesy of the artist and Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev; © the artist; photo: Stephen White, London
William Blake, Newton, 1795-c. 1805, Tate
Dominique Peyronnet, La Forêt (The forest), undated, Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky, Nice. © City of Nice
Poster for the Olympic Games in Berlin, 1936, Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich
Albrecht Dürer, Young Hare, 1502. © The Albertina Museum, Vienna
Edouard Vuillard, The Candlestick, c. 1900, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. Photo: Antonia Reeve

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