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Opening and Closing in January

Let's kick off the New Year with something a bit out of the ordinary: Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism at London's Royal Academy. This show features more than 130 works by 10 key 20th-century Brazilian artists, and most of them have never been on show in the UK before, providing a chance to look at modern art in a way that breaks from the European and North American perspective we're so used to. On from January 28 to April 21.   There are more familiar names at Bath's Holburne Museum: Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol among them. Iconic: Portraiture from Bacon to Warhol  focuses on the middle of the 20th century when many artists began to use photographs as sources for their paintings. The exhibition runs from January 24 to May 5.  From January 22, the Louvre in Paris offers the chance to take  A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting . Cimabue, one of the most important artists of the 13th century, was among the...

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Opening in February

Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon are the stars of Tate Britain's big overview of British 20th-century figurative painting, All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life, which starts on February 28 and runs until August 27. It promises about 100 works, with Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer and Frank Auerbach among the other artists featured. 

Over at the National Gallery, a small free display in Room 1 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Bartolome Esteban Murillo by showcasing his only two known self-portraits. They can be seen from February 28 to May 21.

Dulwich Picture Gallery's new exhibition is devoted to the Canadian artist David Milne, a contemporary of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, the subjects of an enlightening Dulwich show a few years ago. David Milne: Modern Painting opens February 14 and is on until May 7.
The Victoria & Albert Museum has a new show looking at the golden age of luxury sea travel: Ocean Liners: Speed & Style. Running from February 3 to June 10, it will explore in more than 250 objects the design and cultural impact of a mode of a transport that's now virtually disappeared.

Outside London, Chichester's Pallant House Gallery will draw on its significant collection for POP! Art in a Changing Britain, which starts on February 24. Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi are among the artists featured until May 7.

Finally, there's a big Rubens exhibition arriving at thStädel Museum in Frankfurt from Vienna, where it had good reviews. Rubens: The Power of Transformation includes 31 paintings by the Flemish master, and Titian and Tintoretto are also represented. Running from February 8 to May 21, the exhibition aims to show how Rubens drew on the art of previous generations and why he's still an artist to be reckoned with. 

Image

David Milne, Pink Reflections, Bishop's Pond, 1920, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Gift from the Douglas M. Duncan Collection, 1970. Photo: NGC. (c) The Estate of David Milne.

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