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Symphonies and Nocturnes on Canvas

The  James McNeill Whistler  exhibition at Tate Britain is big, probably a bit too big, but it's packed with beautiful pictures and it's not in the least bit boring.  That's not surprising as Whistler led a colourful life, never shying from controversy and confrontation -- notably pursuing a high-profile libel case against John Ruskin  -- and he produced art that was groundbreaking, hugely influential and enormously atmospheric. Including, of course, probably one of the most recognisable paintings in art history, that of his mother in profile, dressed in black. It's in this show, and we'll be taking a look at it shortly.  But we start in Whistler's studio, where the artist has painted himself at work, palette and brush in his hands, and looking out directly at us, the viewers. This is the first picture you see in the show, and we're told that for Whistler, the studio was a place for public performance, as well as making art. So here he is, making a statemen...
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Ukrainian Art Heads West

As war continues to rage in Ukraine, the country's art galleries have sent some of their prized works to safety in western Europe, and they'll be on show over the winter in exhibitions in Switzerland and Spain.  

More than 100 pictures from Kyiv's National Art Gallery, formerly known as the Kyiv Museum of Russian Art, will be on display at both the Kunstmuseum in Basel and the Musée Rath in Geneva. The Kyiv gallery, one of Ukraine's biggest, has been marking its centenary this year. It suffered damage in a Russian rocket attack and approached the Kunstmuseum in the spring seeking temporary homes for some of its collection of over 14,000 works. 

The show in Basel, entitled Born in Ukraine, runs until April 30 and features 63 paintings by 40 Ukrainian artists from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Entry is free of charge. As the name indicates, all the artists featured were born on what is present-day Ukrainian territory, though many trained in Russia. There are a lot of unknown names for a western audience, but the biggest is Ilya Repin, perhaps the most renowned of 19th-century Russian artists, who was born in the region round Kharkiv. 
The show in Geneva, on from December 8 to April 23, is called From Dusk to Dawn, and it reprises an exhibition that the National Gallery put on in Kyiv in 2021, with 19th- and 20th-century paintings and graphic works that reveal blazing sunsets, hopeful dawns and the contrast between darkness and light. Repin is represented here too, as are Mikhail Vrubel and Mariupol-born Arkhip Kuindzhi; you can expect to see the names spelt differently, using a transliteration from Ukrainian instead of Russian. 
 
More recent art is on view at Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, with In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s. On until April 30, this show is made up of about 70 works, many of them from the National Art Museum of Ukraine and the State Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine. It shows the rapid development of figurative and abstract art against the backdrop of World War I, the collapse of the Russian Empire, the creation of the Soviet Union, a Ukrainian war of independence and the horrors of famine and repression under Stalin. 
Among the artists featured are Kiev-born Kazemir Malevich, El Lissitzky and Odessa-born Sonia Delaunay. The exhibition moves on to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne from June 3 to September 24. 

Images

Kliment Redko, Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, 1914, Kyiv National Art Gallery
Oleksandr Bohomazov, Sharpening the Saws, 1927, National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv

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