The Art Exhibitions Blog

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 conte...

House more than a century old? In need of renovation? Perhaps a friendly acquaintance can look after some of those valuable pictures you have while the workmen are in.  It's the Frick Collection in New York that's having the makeover, and they've sent 10 of their Dutch Golden Age masterpieces back to Holland for a few months, paintings that have mostly been in America for over 100 years, since the industrialist Henry Clay Frick bought them for his stunning art collection. They're now on display at the Mauritshuis in The Hague in  Manhattan Masters: Rembrandt and Friends from the Frick NYC . Rembrandt and Friends? Yes indeed: Vermeer, Hals, Cuyp. This is a high-quality show, beautifully presented, and almost guaranteed to instil feelings of inner calm and satisfaction in the viewer. Frick may have been a ruthless entrepreneur (there's an interesting introductory film) but he was also an enthusiastic and ambitious collector, even if some of the supposed Rembrandts he...

We've all had that sort of conversation about a book; one person praises the fantastic use of language, the brilliant descriptions, the thought-provoking dialogue -- and the other reader says they only made it to page 35: "I just couldn't get into it."  Well, that's a bit like the feeling we had with Winslow Homer: Force of Nature at the National Gallery in London; we just couldn't get into it, somehow (though we did make it all the way to the end, and it gave us plenty to talk about during and afterwards).  Homer (1836-1910) is one of the great names in American art, famed in the States for his realistic depictions of Civil War fighting, the reconstruction of the South, nature and above all storm-lashed coastlines and mariners in distress. A lot of drama. There is, however, not a single work by him in a British public collection. So it's a great chance to discover an unfamiliar artist, the sort of show we normally love. Sometimes, as with Glyn Philpot r...

No need to slink in surreptitiously through the separate models' entrance; come right up to the brand new main front door; they've done a splendid job refurbishing the Leighton House Museum in west London, the old home and studio of Frederic, Lord Leighton, one of the giants of the Victorian art scene.  One of the giants? That's an understatement. He was president of the Royal Academy for 18 years, and his house in Holland Park was like no other artist's residence in London, with its extraordinary Arab Hall, inspired by the interiors and gardens of North Africa and the Middle East, as the sumptuous pièce de résistance.  The house reopens to the public on October 15, and we were most impressed with the results of the four-year renovation at a preview for the press; we can remember visiting several times over the past two decades and finding the visitor facilities a little on the poky and drab side. The modern extension is in harmony with the house and the new entrance ha...

There are a tremendous number of exhibitions opening this month, starting in London with Paul Cezanne at Tate Modern. Cezanne's painting revolutionised art at the end of the 19th century, and the Tate is promising us a "once-in-a-generation" show, the first big retrospective in the UK for more than 25 years, with around 80 works, more than 20 of them never before seen in Britain. They include The Basket of Apples from the Chicago Institute of Art, where the previous version of this show earned rave reviews. Cezanne is on in London from October 5 to March 12.  It's certainly not once in a generation for an exhibition about Lucian Freud, but it is the 100th anniversary of his birth this year, and his seven-decade career is surveyed at the National Gallery. Lucian Freud: New Perspectives will have more than 60 paintings, from early, intimate works to his late monumental fleshy nudes. It runs from October 1 to January 22, before heading to the Thyssen-Bornemisza muse...

You've just been to one exhibition about Canaletto and Venice, and then a second one comes along straight away, a bit like delayed vaporettos on the Grand Canal.  Canaletto's Venice Revisited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich contrasted the painter's classic views of the lagoon city with the threat it faces today from rising sea levels and mass tourism, and  Canaletto and Melissa McGill: Performance and Panorama  at the Lightbox in Woking takes a similar tack. But if Greenwich's display of statistics about population decline and increasing flooding and an array of disposable plastic boots for tourists left us rather depressed, we found something surprisingly soothing and uplifting about the American artist Melissa McGill's attempt to alert us to the same problems.  Back in 2019, McGill created the Red Regatta project, which saw dozens of traditional Venetian sailing boats hoisted with sails she had hand-painted in varying shades of red traversing the ci...

Many of the big names in the history of American art are relatively little known in Europe, and so the idea of a show devoted to one of them at London's National Gallery is a tempting prospect. Winslow Homer: Force of Nature , from September 10 to January 8, features around 50 works, many focusing on man's relationship with nature and the elements. This introduction to the artist, who lived from 1836 to 1910, is organised together with the Metropolitan Museum in New York, whose own larger Homer show this summer had largely positive reviews.   Can you name Lithuania's most famous artist? Thought not. We'll put you out of your misery: It's Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). Dulwich Picture Gallery has a fine tradition of introducing you to art you never knew existed, and M.K. Čiurlionis: Between Worlds , running from September 21 to March 12, will feature more than 100 works that often have an ethereal, fantastical quality. Most will be on show in the...