There are some familiar names and familiar paintings in Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 at Southampton City Art Gallery, but it's the unfamiliar that makes it especially worth the trip to a venue you might not normally consider for an exhibition. This show provides an excellent overview of art trends in this country in the first half of the 20th century. And it's free! Southampton has a very good collection, but we often get the feeling that a lot of interesting works are in store behind closed doors. Pleasant surprises await when they finally see the light of the day, in this case in combination with a selection from the extensive Ingram Collection of modern British art. In all, there are more than 100 works by over 100 artists, demonstrating how the British reacted to the latest developments in art on the Continent. So let's start with a couple of hidden gems from the Southampton treasure trove, first of all a Landscape that really stoppe...
The Weimar Republic: Germany in the 1920s. Berlin's clubs and cabarets are teeming with life amid a remarkable cultural upsurge that sees the birth of the Bauhaus and masterpieces in the new medium of film like Metropolis and The Blue Angel . But as the nation struggles to pay reparations for World War I, hyperinflation renders millions penniless and violent extremism stalks a splintered democratic system, paving the way for the Nazis to seize power in 1933. This, then, is the backdrop to Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33 at Tate Modern in London. Drawn largely from the George Economou Collection in Athens, this is a sweep through a swathe of German figurative painting and graphic works, featuring big names like Otto Dix and George Grosz but also plenty of artists you may scarcely have heard of. If you've seen Aftermath , the show at Tate Britain about British, French and German art in the wake of World War I, this exhibition will take you deeper into some of t...