August is always one of the quietest months for new exhibitions, and this year is no different, but we do have one big event to alert you to, as well as two splendid shows that only have weeks to run. The one major opening is Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Running from August 1 to January 4, this is a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the woman perhaps now seen as Wales's most significant artist, born 150 years ago this year. Maybe a little too comprehensive, according to some of the reviews of the show when it was on at the National Museum in Cardiff. The exhibition goes on to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in February and then at the end of July next year to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. We saw a rather smaller Gwen John exhibition in Chichester in 2023. Last chance to see.... Ending on August 23 is the exhibition at the Lakenhal in Leiden ...
There seems to have been a point about 90 years ago when many of the features of modern life were starting to become if not commonplace, then at least a lot more familiar: the radio, the telephone, aeroplanes, talking pictures, electric trains. And yet amid all that technological progress, an art school in Pimlico was showing that a less sophisticated medium could also be revolutionary. At Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London, they're celebrating the emergence of the linocut as a serious art form. Between the wars, a group of artists captured speed and movement in vibrantly coloured prints that tell a story of rapid change. Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking features names you may never have heard of, but it's art that's hugely appealing. The linocut was seen as a basic printmaking technique for children when Claude Flight set up his extremely informal Grosvenor School of Art in Pimlico in 1925. He regarded it as an egalitarian art form in keeping with...