Skip to main content

Opening and Closing in May

Art history? No, we're starting this month with an exhibition that we'll be tagging #artherstory on social media. Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920  opens at Tate Britain in London on May 16, with the aim of charting the path of women to being recognised as professional artists over the centuries. More than 100 will be represented: relatively widely known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman , Gwen John and Laura Knight , as well as the more obscure or neglected -- Levina Teerlinc, Mary Beale and Sarah Biffin . It's on till October 13, and as we've just seen a show in Germany focused on women artists over much the same timescale, we'll be keen to compare and contrast. Let's stick with a female theme. A short stroll up Millbank and across Lambeth Bridge, and you're at the Garden Museum, where from May 15 to September 29 you can see Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors . The show takes you around the gardens of Vane

Subscribe to updates

Opening and Closing in November

German women Expressionists at the Royal Academy in London: This may be the exhibition you've long been waiting for, or the one to make you run a mile. Making Modernism focuses on the often very vibrant work of Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin, the intense portraits and self-portraits of Paula Modersohn-Becker and the frequently harrowing prints and sculptures of Käthe Kollwitz. Most of the 65 works have never been shown in the UK before. It's on from November 12 to February 12.
A free display at the National Gallery features two JMW Turner paintings on loan from the Frick Collection in New York of the harbours at Dieppe and Cologne that the artist made on his frequent travels round Europe. Turner on Tour runs from November 3 to February 19. 

Back at Tate Britain from November 24 to February 26 is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in League with the Night, a show whose run in 2020 was curtailed by lockdown. Around 70 works are on show in a retrospective of a contemporary painter whose portraits are not of real people but fictitious characters drawn from found images or her imagination.

The Philip Mould gallery in Pall Mall will be telling the story of Sarah Biffin, born disabled in 1784 but who taught herself to draw and paint using her mouth and shoulder and established herself as a professional artist, taking commissions from royalty and the nobility. 'Without Hands': The Art of Sarah Biffin includes portraits, landscapes and still lifes and is on from November 1 to December 21. 

Sussex has played a not inconsiderable role in the development of art in Britain, and its Downs and coastline have been the inspiration for innumerable artists. Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester from November 12 until April 23 includes work by Turner, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, among others. 
The touring retrospective of the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth finally makes it to Tate St Ives on November 26. Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life, which was previously to be seen in Wakefield and Edinburgh, will have a focus on Hepworth's decades in Cornwall on this leg; her home and studio are not far away. On until May 1, if you don't fancy Cornwall in winter. 

To Frankfurt now, where the Schirn Kunsthalle is staging a show on the period when the colourful fantasy world of Marc Chagall turned a shade darker. Chagall: World in Turmoil from November 4 to February 19 covers the 1930s and 40s, when the Jewish artist became increasingly concerned by the rise of the Nazis in Germany before going into exile in the US. 
As the days shorten in the northern hemisphere, there's one thing we long for: the Sun. But you can still admire a beautiful sunset, and the Kunsthalle in Bremen has collected more than a hundred of them for Sunset: A Celebration of the Sinking Sun from November 26 to April 2. Caspar David Friedrich, Claude Monet, Anna Ancher and Félix Vallotton are among the artists featured. 

We've longed to go to Samarkand, the Central Asian city on the Silk Road famed for its magnificence and the glories of its architecture. The Splendours of Uzbekistan's Oases at the Louvre in Paris will take visitors on a journey in space and time to see gold, silver, ceramics, silks and paintings, many of which are leaving Uzbekistan for the first time. November 23 to March 6. 

Last chance to see....

The exhibition at the Lighthouse in Woking highlighting the perils faced by Venice and featuring the spectacular if very different art of Canaletto & Melissa McGill ends on November 13. 

Images

Erma Bossi, Portrait of Marianne Werefkin, c. 1910, Gabriele Munter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung, Munich. © The Estate of Erma Bossi
William Nicholson, Whiteways Rottingdean, 1909, Private collection. © Pallant House Gallery. Photo: Barney Hindle
Marc Chagall, Bonjour Paris, 1939-42, Private collection. © VG Bild Kunst, Bonn 2022. Photo: Archives Marc et Ida Chagall

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Opening and Closing in October

There's been a spate of exhibitions over the past few years aimed at redressing centuries of neglect of the work of women artists, and the Italian Baroque painter  Artemisia Gentileschi is the latest to come into focus, at the National Gallery in London, starting on October 3. Most of the works have never been seen in Britain before, and they cover a lengthy career that features strong female figures in Biblical and classical scenes, as well as self-portraits. Until January 24.  Also starting at the National on October 7 is a free exhibition that looks at Sin , as depicted by artists from Diego Velázquez and William Hogarth through to Tracey Emin, blurring the boundaries between the religious and the secular. This one runs until January 3.   Tate Britain shows this winter how JMW Turner embraced the rapid industrial and technological advances at the start of the 19th century and recorded them in his work. Turner's Modern World , starting on October 28, will include painting

The Thrill of Pleasure: Bridget Riley

Prepare yourself for some sensory overload. Curves, stripes, zig-zags, wavy lines, dots, in black and white or colour. Look at many of the paintings of Bridget Riley and you're unable to escape the eerie sensation that the picture in front of you is in motion, has its own inner three-dimensional life, is not just inert paint on flat canvas, panel or plaster. It's by no means unusual to see selections of Riley's paintings on display, but a blockbuster exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh brings together 70 years of her pictures in a dazzling extravaganza of abstraction, including a recreation of her only actual 3D work, which you walk into for a perspectival sensurround experience. It's "that thrill of pleasure which sight itself reveals," as Riley once said. It's a really terrific show, and the thrill of pleasure in the Scottish capital was enhanced by the unexpected lack of visitors on the day we went to see it, with huge empty sp

What's On in 2024: Surreal Impressions

In 2024, we'll be marking the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition and the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto. There'll be lots more shows focused on women artists. It's 250 years since the birth of the great German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich, and Roy Lichtenstein was born 100 years ago. We've picked out some of the exhibitions coming up over the next 12 months that have caught our eye, and here they are, in more or less chronological order.  February Let's start at Ordrupgaard on the outskirts of Copenhagen with Impressionism and Its Overlooked Women , described by the gallery as a "magnificent exhibition featuring works from across the world". The show focuses on five female artists, including Berthe Morisot , Mary Cassatt and Eva Gonzalès , as well as some of the models who featured in the most iconic Impressionist paintings. The exhibition is on in Denmark from February 9 to May 20, after which it transfers to the Na