The Art Exhibitions Blog

Tate Britain offers a double-header of 20th-century British artists this month with  Edward Burra -- Ithell Colquhoun . Though they were close contemporaries, it's not an obvious combination; Burra is perhaps best known for his depictions of sometimes seedy inter-war nightlife, Colquhoun for her Surrealist work. This show features more than 80 pictures by Burra and over 140 Colquhoun exhibits. On from June 13 to October 19.  At the National Portrait Gallery, you can see  Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting , featuring 45 works from across the career of the contemporary British artist known for her large-scale, close-up paintings of the human body. June 20 to September 7. Another double bill, this time at the Royal Academy, where contemporary artist Anselm Kiefer is paired with one of the all-time greats, Vincent Van Gogh. As a teenager Kiefer received a travel grant to follow in Vincent's footsteps. From June 28 to October 26 Kiefer/Van Gogh  looks at the Dutchman...

Let's start the New Year in Edinburgh, with two of the biggest names in Pop Art.  Eduardo Paolozzi, perhaps the pioneer of the genre with his collages from the late 1940s, was born in the Scottish capital a century ago, and you can see a retrospective of his varied work from January 27 in National Galleries Scotland's Modern Two building. Paolozzi at 100 is on until April 21.  Meanwhile, in Edinburgh's Old Town, Dovecot Studios will be presenting an exhibition of Andy Warhol's colourful commercial textile designs, dating back to the 1950s, before he found fame in New York. Andy Warhol: The Textiles is on from January 26 to May 18, when it might just be warm enough for you to enjoy an ice-cream sundae, if your tastebuds have been tickled by Warhol's fabric.  Rembrandt's earliest known works from the time when he was starting out as a painter in Leiden are pictures depicting four of the senses, and they're brought together at the city's Lakenhal museum f...

Winter is approaching in the French village of Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, and so the flowers are dying back in his glorious gardens, even those famous waterlilies in the lake that were such an inspiration for his paintings. But just down the road, at the Musée des impressionnismes, summer lives on, and the blooms are vibrant, celebrating the power of flowers in art. We called in to the museum just before Monet's Garden closed for the season, possibly the only people among the many hundreds of visitors in the village that day who'd gone to Giverny specifically to see the exhibition called Flower Power . We weren't disappointed; the curators have put together an opulent bouquet of painting, sculpture, photography and design.  The Musée des impressionnismes is, we suspect, a bit of an irrelevance to the great mass of tourists in Giverny determined to tick the footbridge over Monet's lily pond off their selfie photo list. But for the more discerning art-lover like y...

We'll start this month at the almost brand-new Young V&A in London's East End -- Bethnal Green to be precise. It opened in July, as a museum specifically designed to appeal to children and families. October 14 sees the arrival of the first big exhibition there, called  Japan: Myths to Manga . It explores landscape, history, folklore, culture, technology and design -- with toys, games and cartoons playing a big part as well as superb art like Hokusai's Great Wave . On till August 11. If you missed the magnificent Gwen John exhibition at Pallant House in Chichester this summer (and there's still a week to go!), a version will be coming to the Holburne Museum in Bath from October 21. In the Holburne's somewhat smaller exhibition space, the show, running until April 14, will have an increased focus on the intensity and intimacy of John's late work. There are pictures too by contemporaries including Vuillard, Bonnard and Hammershøi. Also on at the Holburne unti...