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The Fabric of Faith

We must confess that religious paintings are not our favourite subject, and we've tended to regard Spanish Catholic art as being, well, just a little too religious to cope with. So we approached the Francisco de  Zurbarán  exhibition at the National Gallery in London with a certain amount of trepidation. A degree of contrition is due.... Yes, there were monks, altarpieces and lots of saints, but we were blown away by Zurbarán's ability to depict textures and fabrics and to convey an intensity of feeling.  It's an absolutely excellent exhibition, full of truly beautiful paintings. Such religious art was intended to bring the faithful closer to God, to bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth, in an age when many could not read. Zurbarán was a master at it. Let's start with a saint: Just take a look at the fabrics, trimmings and gems in this picture. And the garments are even more striking when you are stood in front of this nearly life-size figure.  This is Casild...
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Opening in August

August tends to be a relatively thin month for exhibition openings, but we do have a couple of events to tell you about in London, as well as three in and around Berlin.  

August 3 marks the 300th anniversary of the death of Grinling Gibbons, Britain's greatest ever woodcarver, and appropriately it's the opening day of a touring exhibition to celebrate his legacy. Grinling Gibbons: Centuries in the Making will run until August 27 at Bonhams in London's New Bond Street, featuring some of Gibbons' finest Baroque works, including his astonishing imitation-lace cravat. Entry is free. The show can then be seen at Compton Verney in Warwickshire from September 25 to January 30. 

Just before this year's (or should it be last year's?) Olympics close in Tokyo, an exhibition opens looking back to how the previous games in the city brought Japan into the modern era with innovations such as the Shinkansen bullet train. Tokyo 1964: Designing Tomorrow at Japan House London on Kensington High Street will run from August 5 to November 7 and include original posters, costumes and architectural models. This is another show to which admission is free of charge. 
Alexander Calder revolutionised sculpture with the invention of the mobile (no, not the phone!), and there are mobiles and stabiles large and small and lots more in an exhibition being staged at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin as part of the museum's reopening after five years of restoration and refurbishment. One of Calder's more monumental pieces stands outside the modernist building by Mies van der Rohe. Alexander Calder: Minimal/Maximal is on from August 22 until February 13.
Back in 2019, we saw a fascinating exhibition at the Design Museum in Den Bosch about design in the Third Reich, which featured the work of artists like Arno Breker, one of Hitler's favourites and creator of sculptures for the Führer's chancellery. But what happened after the war to those painters and sculptors who worked for the Nazis? Find out at Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum from August 27 in 'Divinely Gifted': National Socialism's Favoured Artists in the Federal Republic. Until December 5.

Coming to the Museum Barberini in Potsdam on August 28 is Impressionism in Russia: Dawn of the Avant-Garde, an exhibition delayed from last winter because of the coronavirus pandemic. With over 80 works, this show aims to place Russian art from around 1900 in the context of of western European modern art. On until January 9, the exhibition is being staged in cooperation with the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. 

Images

1964 Tokyo Olympics Official Poster, The Hinomaru (Sun) Flag. Courtesy of Prince Chichibu Memorial Sports Museum
Alexander Calder, Têtes et Queue, 1965, in front of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie/Reinhard Friedrich
Mikhail Larionov, Lilacs, 1904-5, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020

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