Art

Modern sensibilities have made Paul Gauguin a deeply controversial figure, yet he played a pivotal role in the development of portrait art, shifting the focus from sitter to painter. CLAUDIA PRITCHARD reports A head is a matter of two eyes, a nose and a mouth, arranged any way you like. So said Picasso, in whose […]

Claudia Pritchard looks at the Guildhall Art Gallery’s Architecture of London exhibition Fire and water, riots and war, need and fashion, demolition and construction. The forces at work on the architecture of London come from all sides, never letting up, as an exhibition featuring 400 years of the capital’s depiction in art shows. And it […]

Félix Vallotton may have been long overshadowed by his contemporaries but a new exhibition aims to redress the balance. The Lie (Le Mensonge), 1897. Credit: The Baltimore Museum of Art. – Credit: Archant Politics and poetry, reviews and radical polemics… the editorial mix in the fortnightly La Revue blanche, on the cusp of the 19th […]

Avant-Garde Artist Natalia Goncharova was an Exponent of ‘everythingism’, producing work that spanned techniques and styles. Claudia Pritchard reports on an exhibition that reflects her dazzling varied output. “I am by no means European,” declared the Russia-born artist Natalia Goncharova as she pursued her studies in Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century, just […]

For 500 years, Verrocchio has been overshadowed by his more famous pupil, Leonardo Da Vinci. Claudia Pritchard reports on a new exhibition attempting to draw him into the limelight. The distinctions between painter, sculptor, goldsmith and architect were more blurred in 15th century Italy than today, and it was not uncommon for artists and craftsmen […]

Still life may lack the drama and passion of other forms of art. But, as CLAUDIA PRITCHARD discovers at an exhibition of one of its great proponents, it is no less intense Battle scenes, expansive nudes, eye-popping abstracts and ravishing views compete in the art gallery to catch the eye, with their scale of ambition, […]

Of two major new exhibitions dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh, one focuses on the artists he admired at the beginning of his career, while the other looks at an artist who looked up to him. With its neat fields and slender trees that pierce a heavy sky, a single picture plays a pivotal role in […]

Dorothea Tanning was a rare female protagonist of surrealism and bridged many art disciplines and movements. A new exhibition pays due tribute to this pioneer, says CLAUDIA PRITCHARD. One door opens and another door opens in both the life and the art of Dorothea Tanning. A surrealist painter and sculptor, designer and writer, in her […]

Loathed by Picasso, praised by Matisse, Pierre Bonnard is an artist who split opinion, writes Claudia Pritchard. A major new exhibition of his work shows how he still does. Nude in the Bath c. 1936-8, by Pierre Bonnard Picture: Tate – Credit: Archant ‘Don’t talk to me about Bonnard,’ protested Picasso around the time of […]

A new exhibition shows why the works of Anni Albers rank alongside the output of the greatest abstract expressionists. Claudia Pritchard reports Under ‘W’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1963 the long entry on weaving was written by an expert in that craft who made a point of attributing the greatest skill to people who […]

It is home to the world’s tallest people and boasts 200 recorded spellings, but Leeuwarden’s real claim to fame is its artistic outlook. CLAUDIA PRITCHARD reports on a city which has taken the Capital of Culture title, and given it a twist There are only 79 known Ru ceramic objects in the world. One, a […]

A new exhibition seeks to reclaim Lee Miller’s legacy as an artist in her own right, rather than a muse for others. It does so rather well, says CLAUDIA PRITCHARD When Britain’s first International Exhibition of Surrealism opened in London on 1936, the photographer, model and artist Lee Miller was, in true surrealist style, both […]

Facing upheaval in Europe, modern art found a very special refuge in New York. So, says CLAUDIA PRITCHARD, a new blockbuster MoMA exhibition in Paris represents something of a homecoming When the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York was founded in 1929, it had no museum building, and precious little art. But it […]

Britain’s entry into Europe was a long, painful process – with clear lessons for our even more painful departure, says EDWARD BICKHAM, curator of a new exhibition on this pivotal period in British history During the late 1940s, Winston Churchill had been the darling of many European political salons as a result of making trenchant […]