The Art Exhibitions Blog

Jean-François Millet -- one of the most influential artists of the 19th century with his depictions of toiling country folk -- is the subject of a free exhibition in just one room at London's National Gallery that opens on August 7. Millet: Life on the Land  mainly features work from British museums, but has a star attraction in the shape of  L’Angélus from the Musée d'Orsay. On until October 19.  In eastern Germany, Chemnitz is one of this year's European capitals of culture, and one of the major exhibitions on their programme starts on August 10. Edvard Munch -- Angst  in the Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz will recall, in part, a visit by Munch to Chemnitz 120 years ago. And, of course, there'll be a version of The Scream . Until November 2.  On the other side of the country, a rather different offering at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn: an exhibition devoted to the German filmmaker Wim Wenders, creator of Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas , and marking his 8...

The revolution won't happen overnight, but it's coming. And it will take place in 1874, when the rebels who'll become known as the Impressionists hold their first exhibition in Paris.  To see how the Impressionists got there, and what they were rebelling against, we've come to Cologne, and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, for an utterly enjoyable exhibition about the art of the 1860s and 70s that found official approval from the French state and from the traditionalist critics -- and the art that didn't. The show is entitled  1863 Paris 1874: Revolution in Art -- From the Salon to Impressionism , and this is the striking image that greets you as you enter, a painting that we've never seen before (it belongs to the Spanish central bank ) but which seems to sum up the entire topic for you in one go.  The Catalan artist Pere Borrell del Caso actually created this trompe l'oeil in 1874, completely independently of the Impressionists. It wasn't originally called ...

We're going to start our September preview in Paris, where an absolute stunner of an exhibition is set to open belatedly at the Petit Palais: The Golden Age of Danish Painting . That Golden Age lasted for just over 60 years from the start of the 19th century when artists such as Christen Købke expressed a growing national pride in works of precision and clarity tinged with romanticism. We got to see this fabulous show early last year at the National Museum in Stockholm. It's on in Paris from September 22 to January 3, and if you get the chance to go, don't hesitate. A few minutes walk away, at the Musée de l'Orangerie,  Giorgio de Chirico: Metaphysical Painting opens on September 16. De Chirico's enigmatic art from the first two decades of the 20th century draws on the German Romantics and prefigures the Surrealists. After it closes on December 14 it will transfer to the Kunsthalle in Hamburg early next year. If you head down the Seine from Paris to the Musé...

Pablo Picasso kicks off the exhibition year in London, with Picasso and Paper  at the Royal Academy bringing together more than 300 works from an 80-year career. Drawing, printmaking, collage and even paper sculpture all feature in this show, running from January 25 to April 13. Just outside the capital, we've enjoyed a couple of shows recently at the Lightbox in Woking, and their new exhibition is David Hockney: Ways of Working . It will look at how one of Britain's most popular artists has explored the possibilities of a wide range of media over 60 years. January 25 to April 19. Edward Hopper  is the subject of the first big show of the year at the Fondation Beyeler, just outside Basel. It will focus on Hopper's landscapes and cityscapes, and it's been put together with the Whitney Museum in New York, which holds the largest collection of his works. January 26 to May 17. Also on in Switzerland, from January 24 to May 24: Canada and Impressionism at the Fonda...

Few painters have inspired as many other artists as Jean-François Millet. For the German Impressionist Max Liebermann, Millet was "the most groundbreaking artist in modern painting", while for Vincent van Gogh, the Frenchman was "that essential modern painter who opened the horizon to many."  What made Millet so thoroughly modern? It was his rough brushwork, his simplified forms with strong contours. These were radically new compositions featuring high horizons and empty expanses. And yet in his own time, Millet's warts-and-all depictions of the harsh reality of rural life were just too avant-garde, too controversial for many. Take  Man with a Hoe from the start of the 1860s.  The critics attacked the ugliness of the man leaning on his hoe, taking a brief breather from his back-breaking work. They decried the style as caricatured. For Millet, though, this was an image full of compassion for the peasant's lot, full of detail like the purple thist...