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Aberdeen, United Kingdom
Aberdeen Art Gallery
The Scots in Spain
Dates: 12 Sep 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Schoolhill Aberdeen AB10 1FQ
Tel: +44 (0)1224 523 700 Website
Barcelona, Spain
CaixaForum Barcelona, Fundació “la Caixa”
The Look of the Artist: Luis Gordillo
Dates: 18 Nov 09 - 11 Apr 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida Marqués de Comillas, 6-8 Barcelona 08028
Tel: +34 (0)93 476 86 00 - 934 Website
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB
Cerdà and the Barcelona of the Future: Reality Versus Plan
Dates: 20 Oct 09 - 28 Feb 10
Categories: Design
Address: Casa de Caritat, Montalegre 5 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 93 306 4100 Website
Centre D’Art Santa Monica
Agusti Centelles
Dates: 29 Sep 09 - 29 Nov 09
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: La Rambla Santa Monica, 7 Barcelona 08002
Tel: +34 3 316 2810 Website
Mireia Sentis
Dates: 29 Sep 09 - 29 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: La Rambla Santa Monica, 7 Barcelona 08002
Tel: +34 3 316 2810 Website
Fundació Joan Miró
Pipilotti Rist
Dates: 18 Jun 09 - 31 Oct 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Parc de Montjuíc Barcelona 08038
Tel: +34 (0)93 443 9470 Website
Museo Nacional d’Arte de Catalunya (MNAC)
Masterpieces from the Krugier-Poniatowski Collection
Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 30 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: Palau Nacional, Parc de Montjuïc Barcelona 08038
Tel: +34 93 622 0360 Website
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
Ray Johnson: Please Add to and Return
Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Post-War (1945-70)
Address: Plaza dels Àngels, 1 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 (0)93 412 0810 Website
Modernologies
Dates: 23 Sep 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza dels Àngels, 1 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 (0)93 412 0810 Website
MACBA moves into theoretical territory with this group exhibition that aims to investigate modernity in contemporary culture and question its place in artistic practice. The exhibition brings together nearly 40 artists, including Dan Graham, Falke Pisano and Gordon Matta-Clarke, and art collectives, who explore the concept through works in mediums including relief sculpture and film projection. Issues tackled in the exhibition include the production of space, the role of contemporary architecture, the idea of an aesthetic language and the authority of authorship. The underlying difference between modernity and modernism is addressed through examples of modern work influenced by modernity. R.C.
Gordon Matta-Clark, Window Blow-Out, 1976
The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage and Experimental Art
Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Post-War (1945-70)
Address: Plaza dels Àngels, 1 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 (0)93 412 0810 Website
The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage and Experimental Art
Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: Plaza dels Àngels, 1 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 (0)93 412 0810 Website
Ray Johnson
Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza dels Àngels, 1 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 (0)93 412 0810 Website
The Malady of Writing: a Project on Text and Speculative Imagination
Dates: 9 Oct 09 - 9 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza dels Àngels, 1 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 (0)93 412 0810 Website
This show brings together 15 international artists to present their views on the role of text and narrative in contemporary art. The exhibition consists of proposals from each of the artists that will, along with talks and seminars, create a forum in which words and their relationship to the modern art production are discussed. Artists including Will Holder, the founder of DotDotDot magazine, Falke Pisano, whose work engages with problems of language and text, conceptual New York artist Seth Price, and the Bernadette Corporation collective, whose work investigates strategies of art production, all present text pieces. The museum has created an “active space for reading” where visitors will be able to take in the written proposals from the artists involved. Rob Curran
Museu Picasso
Picasso: Erotic Prints in Dialogue with 19th-century Japanese Shunga Prints
Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 14 Feb 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Modern (1900-1945)
Address: Calle Montcada 15-23 Barcelona 08003
Tel: +34 (0)93 319 6310 Website
Bilbao, Spain
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
From Private to Public: Collections at the Guggenheim
Dates: 26 Jun 09 - 1 Jan 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida Adandoibarra, 2 Bilbao 48001
Tel: +34 (0)94 435 90 80 Website
Frank Lloyd Wright
Dates: 22 Sep 09 - 14 Feb 10
Categories: Design
Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida Adandoibarra, 2 Bilbao 48001
Tel: +34 (0)94 435 90 80 Website
Laboratories: Insights into the Permanent Collection
Dates: 15 Sep 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Post-War (1945-70)
Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida Adandoibarra, 2 Bilbao 48001
Tel: +34 (0)94 435 90 80 Website
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao
The Young Murillo
Dates: 19 Oct 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: Museo Plaza 2 Bilbao 48011
Tel: +34 (0)94 439 60 60 Website
This is an exhibition of about 50 paintings by the Spanish Counter-Reformation artist par excellence, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617/18-82). Murillo’s reputation has waxed and waned over the years—being the object of the highest admiration in his lifetime and in the 18th and early 19th centuries, through a steady decline in the latter half of the 19th to its nadir throughout most of the 20th century.
At first admired for his soft, idealised, melting forms (particular in his Immaculate Conceptions), sweet expressions and soft, sfumato colourings, he was later castigated for his sentimentality and sugariness. Now his work is better appreciated by being viewed historically and this exhibition of 50 paintings from the early part of his career (that is roughly before 1660 when he was appointed the joint president of Spain’s first painting academy, in Seville) focuses on his artistic education.
With works such as St Francis, around 1645-50, St Lesmes, around 1655, St Peter Weeping, around 1650-55, and St Jerome, 1665-75, from the Bilbao and the Seville Fine Arts Museums, the viewer can observe the emergence of Murillo’s characteristics—tenebrism, naturalism and his soft, lucent brushstrokes.
The exhibition is curated by Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Benito Navarrete. Illustrated above, The Holy Family with a Little Bird, around 1650. Donald Lee
The Holy Family with a Little Bird, around 1650
Cuenca, Spain
Museo de Arte Abstracto Español Fundación Juan Mar
Casper David Friedrich: the Art of Drawing
Dates: 16 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: Casas Colgadas Cuenca 16001
Tel: +34 96 921 2983 Website
Frankfurt, Germany
Museum für Angewandte Kunst
André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732): a New Style for Europe
Dates: 30 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Decorative
Address: Schaumainkai 17 Frankfurt D-60594
Tel: +49 (0)69 212 34037 Website
The influence on European furniture culture of the renowned sculptor and cabinet maker to Louis XIV André Charles Boulle is explored in this major show of about 150 pieces of furniture, bronzes, clocks, tapestries, paintings and drawings selected by art historians Jean Nérée Ronfort and Jean Dominique Augarde with Ulrich Schneider, director of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst.
Boulle found success early, being invited by Louis XIV into his workshops at the Palais du Louvre before the age of 30, and his designs soon became symbols of prosperity and success, a position they still hold, with his designs featuring in the world’s leading museums and private collections. The king of Spain and the electors of Saxony and Bavaria were drawn to his elaborate works that combined such materials as gilt bronze, exotic woods, tortoiseshell and brass to create elaborate ornaments and floral marquetry.
Objects have been loaned by 44 institutions, including the Hermitage, St Petersburg, Le Mobilier National, Paris, and the Royal Collection of Sweden, signifying Boulle’s widespread and lasting international influence. The show is under the patronage of Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, and Horst Köhler, President of Germany.
Sphinx, 17th century.
Indianapolis, USA
Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA)
Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World
Dates: 11 Oct 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: 4000 Michigan Road Indianapolis 46208-3326
Tel: +1 317 923 1331 Website
Leon, Spain
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon (MU
Jorge Galindo
Dates: 11 Jul 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 Leon 24008
Tel: +34 987 09 00 00 Website
Kyong Park
Dates: 11 Jul 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Design
Address: Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 Leon 24008
Tel: +34 987 09 00 00 Website
A Kassen
Dates: 24 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 Leon 24008
Tel: +34 987 09 00 00 Website
Printed Matter: Learn to Read Art
Dates: 11 Jul 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 Leon 24008
Tel: +34 987 09 00 00 Website
Ugo Rondinone: the Night of Lead
Dates: 11 Jul 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 Leon 24008
Tel: +34 987 09 00 00 Website
Swiss-born, New York-based artist Ugo Rondinone’s only museum show of 2009 is also his solo debut in Spain. Curated by Augustín Pérez Rubio, Musac’s acting director, the show encompasses many aspects of Rondinone’s eclectic practice—with sculpture, painting, video, collage and installation—and consists of more than 50 objects arranged across five rooms. “He’s never shown anything in Spain, so that’s why it’s such a huge presentation,” Mr Rubio told The Art Newspaper.
The overriding theme is of fantasy, poetry and ritual, and the exhibition begins with an installation of six ancient olive trees, painted white. This is a new version of Get Up Girl a Sun is Running the World shown at the 2007 Venice Biennale when Rondinone represented Switzerland with Urs Fischer. Because of the generous scale of Musac’s exhibition spaces, the trees reach up to 4.5 metres in height, compared to the three-metre forms in Venice. In the centre a giant sculpture of a light bulb hangs from the ceiling, and strong white light fills the room to create the sensation of “white night”, says Mr Rubio. In another room Rondinone is showing his Star paintings, a brand new series of 13 works, all around 4x3 metres. “He wants to install them altogether as a tribute to Rothko’s chapel,” Mr Rubio told TAN. “Each painting is like a cosmos, showing the stars by night. He wanted to create the feeling of night and loneliness, and in the middle of the room is the sculpture of a clown lying on the floor. For Ugo, the idea of the clown is somebody who looks human but is also a creation. You never know if it’s a man or a woman—it’s like a human being in process.” In the final room is Still.Life (John’s Fireplace), a 2008 installation showing a replica of US poet John Giorno’s fireplace from his apartment in New York. Poetry is a strong influence: the show weaves together disparate elements that build up poetic layers of symbolism and personal narrative, at times menacing, at times more dreamlike.
On a different register, one of Rondinone’s bright rainbow sculptures, Hell, Yes!, 2001, adorns the façade of the New Museum, New York, until 19 July. Rosie Spencer
Get Up Girl a Sun is Running the World
London, United Kingdom
National Gallery
The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700
Dates: 21 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Latin American
Old Master
Address: Trafalgar Square London WC2 5DN
Tel: +44 (0)20 7747 2885 Website
Today’s audience is familiar with the quest for the hyper-real in work by contemporary artists such as Duane Hanson, Robert Bechtle and Ron Mueck. But what are the precedents for this tradition? The National Gallery mounts an exhibition devoted to religious art from 17th-century Spain—the country’s artistic Golden Age—when hyperrealistic paintings and polychrome sculpture reigned supreme. This landmark presentation pairs 15 paintings by artists such as Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbáran alongside 14 examples of Spain’s lesser known art form—painted sculptures—to show how artists who painted on canvas were inspired and often competed with those who painted sculpture. This is the first major exhibition of Spanish polychrome sculpture ever staged and contains many pieces never before shown outside of the Iberian peninsula. Works are drawn from the museum’s collection as well as private and public collections in Spain, the UK and the US.
According to the exhibition’s curator, Xavier Bray, from the museum’s 17th- and 18th-century paintings department: “In Spain, sculpture was the preferred artform to make religion more immediate, more direct. It was a shock to the senses,” adding: “We want to reintroduce this lost art form.” Scenes of the Passion were especially popular, with artists exercising their entire repertoire, including using glass for eyes, pieces of bark to simulate coagulated blood and real bone for toe and fingernails, to create the most realistic pieces.
As some of the sculptures are still used as devotional objects, Bray was presented with difficulties in term of both negotiating loans and displaying the objects. In order to secure the loan of an Immaculate Conception work from a Spanish convent, Bray agreed, after a five-hour conversation, to mark the feast day (8 December) by bringing a priest into the museum. “We want to respect religious decorum as much as we can,” said Bray. One of the biggest coups is the sculpture St Francis Standing in Meditation, 1663, by Pedro de Mena. The work has never before left the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral and access to it is so limited that an Emperor of Brazil was even denied access.
The exhibition also sees the return to Europe of two major paintings by Zurbáran. St Serapion, 1628, is on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, US, and The Crucifixion, 1627, considered lost until it was purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952. Both pieces have not been on view in Europe in more than 50 years.
Accompanying this presentation is the focused exhibition “The Making of Spanish Polychrome Sculpture”, which features as its centrepiece the recently conserved sculpture St John of the Cross, 1675, by Francisco Antonio Ruiz Gijón. Above, Pedro de Mena, Christ as the Man of Sorrows, 1673.
Coinciding with the National Gallery show is “The Mystery
of Faith: an Eye on Spanish Sculpture 1550-1750” at Matthiesen Gallery. The display features 30 terracotta, stone and wood sculptures by leading Spanish artists. E.S.
Pedro de Mena, Christ as the Man of Sorrows, 1673
Madrid, Spain
CaixaForum Madrid, Fundació “la Caixa”
Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy
Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Design
Address: Paseo del Prado, 36 Madrid 28014
Tel: +34 91 330 7300 Website
Manolo Valdés in Madrid
Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 31 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Paseo del Prado, 36 Madrid 28014
Tel: +34 91 330 7300 Website
Spanish Thinkers
Dates: 5 Oct 09 - 30 Nov 09
Categories: Curious
Address: Paseo del Prado, 36 Madrid 28014
Tel: +34 91 330 7300 Website
Old World Religion
Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 24 Nov 09
Categories: Curious
Address: Paseo del Prado, 36 Madrid 28014
Tel: +34 91 330 7300 Website
Fundación Juan March
Caspar David Friedrich: the Art of Drawing
Dates: 16 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: Castelló 77 Madrid 28006
Tel: +34 91 435 4240 Website
From the age of 24, the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) lived for the most part in Dresden where he quickly absorbed at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste the great Saxon tradition of drawing from nature, as well as the technique of sepia drawing, the two basic techniques that underpinned his painted work which he began in 1807. This show features more than 60 works on paper by the artist, including gouaches and watercolours, curated by Christina Grummt, a fellow of Stiftung Alfried Krupp, Greifswald, who is also compiling the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s drawings. The aim of the exhibition is to relate the drawings to Friedrich’s painted works, showing how he progressed from plein-air studies to the final works. To do this, the works are grouped according to his frequently repeated motifs such as architecture and ruins, and trees. The works are on loan from those German state museums where most of Friedrich’s works are found today: the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremburg, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Berlin, and the Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, as well as other collections. Above, Hill near Teplice, 1835. D.L.
Hill near Teplice, 1835
Museo del Prado
Juan Bautista Maíno
Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: Paseo del Prado Madrid 28014
Tel: +34 (0)91 330 2800 Website
View and Plan of Toledo
Dates: 2 Jun 09 - 1 Nov 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: Paseo del Prado Madrid 28014
Tel: +34 (0)91 330 2800 Website
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
León Ferrari and Mira Schendel: Objects of Silence, Written Paintings
Dates: 22 Sep 09 - 21 Dec 09
Categories: Latin American
Post-War (1945-70)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Thomas Schütte
Dates: 13 Oct 09 - 4 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Pamplona Encounters
Dates: 10 Nov 09 - 4 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
René Daniëls
Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 31 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Francis Alÿs
Dates: 28 Oct 09 - 21 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Francesco lo Savio
Dates: 13 Oct 09 - 11 Jan 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Joëlle Tuerlinckx
Dates: 9 Oct 09 - 22 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
David Maljkovic: Out of Projection
Dates: 8 Sep 09 - 18 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Georges Vantongerloo
Dates: 4 Nov 09 - 25 Feb 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism
Dates: 20 Oct 09 - 22 Feb 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: Plaza Santa Isabel, 52 Madrid 28012
Tel: +34 (0)91 774 10 00 Website
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Tears of Eros
Dates: 20 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: Paseo del Prado 8 Madrid 28109
Tel: +34 (0)91 369 01 51 Website
Jan Van Eyck: Grisailles
Dates: 3 Nov 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: Paseo del Prado 8 Madrid 28109
Tel: +34 (0)91 369 01 51 Website
Jan Van Eyck’s Annunciation Diptych, 1441, from the museum’s own collection is at the centre of this exhibition of 18 paintings, illuminations, textiles, ivories and sculptures that examines the variety of grisaille works in late medieval art. The monochromatic technique employed by artists is based on the gradual application of a single colour, usually grey, to create a sculptural, sometimes trompe l’oeil effect. The Annunciation is brought together with another Van Eyck work, Saint Barbara, 1437, from the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. Whereas the Annunciation is painted with a reduced palette to create two sculptural figures, Saint Barbara is “either an unfinished painting or one of the first independent drawings that has survived”, says the curator, Till-Holger Borchert. “The works on show come out of the idea that art history has always interpreted [grisaille] in a certain way by looking at specific genres. The paintings have received the most attention, but painting scholars don’t always know manuscripts, let alone sculptures, and suddenly you end up with explanations that are short of covering the whole ground.”
Jean Le Noir, Psalter of Bonne de Luxembourg, around 1360.
Soledad Lorenzo
Jorge Galindo
Dates: 15 Oct 09 - 21 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Orfila 5 Madrid 28010
Tel: +34 913 082 887 Website
Malaga, Spain
Centro de Art Contemporánea (CAC) Málaga
Chema Cobo
Dates: 16 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Calle Alemania Malaga 29001
Tel: +34 (0)95 212 0055 Website
Museo Picasso Malaga
Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Dates: 19 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Palacio de Buenavista, San Agustín, 8 Malaga 29015
Tel: +34 952 12 76 00 Website
Swiss-born Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) is an artist whose work transcends boundaries. A real “renaissance artist”, Taeuber-Arp embraced many disciplines, from painting and embroidery to puppetry and interior design, with equal vigour and intensity. She was greatly admired by contemporaries such as surrealist Hugnet, Kandinsky and her husband, fellow artist and collaborator Jean Arp, and the German artist Hugo Ball once said: “Everything to do with Taeuber has the luminosity of sunlight…she is full of invention, whim and extravagance”. An active member of multiple avant-garde movements, her work shows elements of dada, constructivism and abstraction. Curated by Spanish scholar Estrella de Diego, this exhibition—the first of its kind in Spain—brings together 130 pieces including paintings, textiles, drawings, furniture, photographs, plans, puppets and collages drawn from public and private collections in Germany, France, Switzerland and the US.
The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first, “Broken Rhythms” focuses on her early work when constructivism and dada coexisted openly. This section contains Portrait of Jean Arp, 1918, one of the artist’s iconic “dada heads”. “Inhabiting Spaces” explores her involvement in interior design and architectural projects. The final section, “Living Geometry” is devoted to the display of a series of her striking, geometrical abstractions. E.S.
Portrait of Jean Arp, 1918
Paris, France
Musée Jacquemart-André
Brueghel, Memling, Van Eyck: the Brukenthal Collection
Dates: 11 Sep 09 - 11 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: 158, boulevard Haussmann Paris 75008
Tel: +33 (0)1 42 89 04 91 Website
Continuing its series of exhibitions focused on major collectors, the Jacquemart-André Museum presents 50 Flemish, Italian, German and Dutch works amassed by Baron Samuel von Brukenthal (1721-1803). The pieces are drawn from the Brukenthal National Museum in Romania—home to one of the most prestigious art collections in Central Europe.
A career politician, Brukenthal was made governor of his native Transylvania by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who considered him a close personal adviser. He began acquiring his collection in Vienna and quickly earned a reputation as an insatiable collector with a discerning eye, purchasing nearly 16,000 books, 800 etchings, 12,000 paintings and a number of objets d’art. Particularly rich in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings—the Golden Age of Art in the Low Countries—the collection was supplemented by a number of works presented to him by Maria Theresa. His baroque palace in Sibiu, central Romania, was constructed as a showcase for his collection and upon his death in 1803 it was opened to the public.
The exhibition aims to show the quality of his collection by presenting the very best pieces amassed by Brukenthal. Most of the works are Flemish, a school particularly popular with 18th-century Viennese collectors. The show is arranged in five thematic sections: portraits, landscapes, genre paintings, still-lifes and history painting.
The segment dedicated to portraiture is dominated by works by the Flemish Primitives, a group of 15th-century artists concerned with the precise rendering of details such as jewellery, fabrics and furs. The oldest portrait by Van Eyck, Portrait of the Man in a Blue Turban (1430-33), shows the artist’s desire to include details like the sitter’s fur coat and beard, and Hans Memling’s Portrait of Reading Man (1485) shows the careful rendering of the book’s gilded pages. Included in the section devoted to landscapes is one of Bruegel’s best known works, Massacre of the Innocents (1566-67), a piece depicting villagers being slaughtered by soldiers following the orders of Philip II of Spain. Visitors can see genre paintings by Dutch artists David Teniers and Frans Van Mieris, still-lifes by Jan Davidsz de Heem and Erasmus Quellinus and history paintings by Jacob Jordaens. Pieces by Italian masters Lorenzo Lotto and Titian are also included in the display.
The show is curated by Flemish art specialist Jan de Maere and Jacquemart-André curator Nicolas Sainte Fare Garnot. E.S.
Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents, 1566-67
Santiago de Composte, Spain
Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC)
Dora García: Where Do Characters Go When the Story Is Over?
Dates: 8 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Rua Ramon del Valle Inclán Santiago de Composte 15704
Tel: +34 98 154 6619 /32 Website
Creation and Neo-vandguards, 1945-80
Dates: 29 Sep 09 - 26 Jan 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Rua Ramon del Valle Inclán Santiago de Composte 15704
Tel: +34 98 154 6619 /32 Website
Familiar Feelings: on the Boston Group
Dates: 10 Sep 09 - 13 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Rua Ramon del Valle Inclán Santiago de Composte 15704
Tel: +34 98 154 6619 /32 Website
Seville, Spain
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC)
Hungarian Cartel 1924-42
Dates: 22 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa Maria de las Cuevas Seville
Tel: +34 95 503 7070 Website
Optical Devices
Dates: 8 Oct 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Design
Address: Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa Maria de las Cuevas Seville
Tel: +34 95 503 7070 Website
Valencia, Spain
Institut Valéncia d’Art Modern (IVAM)
Alberto Bañuelos
Dates: 30 Sep 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Guillem de Castro 118 Valencia 46003
Tel: +34 (0)96 386 3000 Website
Vienna, Austria
Liechtenstein Museum
The Entry of the Arts into Bohemia
Dates: 20 Nov 09 - 12 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: Fürstengasse 1 Vienna 1090
Tel: +43 (0)1 319 57 670 Website
Rudolf von Habsburg was born in 1552 in Vienna, the eldest son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II. He spent his formative years, from the age of 11 to 19, at the stiffly formal court of his uncle, Philip II, King of Spain, an experience that seems to have made him pensive, melancholy, secretive, reserved and aloof. He developed a great love of the arts and (occult) sciences. He succeeded his father as Emperor in 1576 and moved the court to Prague (he was also King of Bohemia, as well as of Hungary and Archduke of Austria) where he created a Wunder- and a Kunstkammer, the former consisting of natural curiosities and specimens, musical instruments, clocks, water works, astrolabes, compasses, telescopes and other scientific instruments, and the latter containing over 2,000 works by such cutting-edge artists as Bartholomäus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, Giambologna, Josef Heintz, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Aegidius Sadeler, and Adrian de Vries, as well as “old masters” such as Dürer and Brueghel. He patronised the botanist Charles de l’Ecluse and the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, and kept a menagerie of exotic animals and botanical gardens. He never married. His reigned was marked by inconclusive wars with the Ottomans and a revolt by his Hungarian subjects, as well as the turmoil brought about by the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church’s retrenchment. These events came to overwhelm him and, stripped of all power, save the imperial, by his younger brother and successor, Matthias, he died in 1612.
The conventional (and teleological) view has been that while he was a great patron of the arts, he was an inept and disastrous ruler, taking steps that made the Thirty Years War (which saw the complete dispersal of his collections) inevitable. Revisionist views have come to emphasise his far-sightedness in looking to the arts and sciences as means of surmounting theological and ideological differences, his tolerance of Judaism and Protestantism, his backing of the moderate protagonists of the Counter-Reformation and his ambiguous sexuality as modern man avant la lettre.
This exhibition is the fourth in 20 years to have focused on Rudolf II, and each successive show has reconfigured him according to the temper of the times. Collectors and collecting studies, much in fashion in the 1970s and 80s, informed
“Prag um 1600” at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and the Villa Hügel, Essen, in 1988-89, while “Rudolf II and Prague” at the Wallenstein Palace and the Prague Castle Museum in 1997 clearly reflected the Czech Republic’s need to assert its European roots and identity, after decades of
occident-phobic and Russophile Soviet domination. (Under communism, Rudolf was portrayed as a fool.) Interestingly, the Prince von und zu Liechtenstein refused to lend works of art to this exhibition in protest at the seizure, first by Czechoslovakia and then by the communists, of his family estates at Valtice and Feltrice in Moravia.
Hard on the heels of the Liechtenstein Biedermeier show at the Pushkin Museum earlier this year, this exhibition may well be another gesture of the House of Liechtenstein’s recent Ostpolitik, underscoring the family’s connections with Eastern Europe and, in this case, emphasising the Liechtenstein hand in Bohemian culture and life.
From around 1597, Rudolf relied on Prince Karl I (1569-1627) to advise and help him to assemble his art collection. (The Emperor made him steward of the imperial household in 1600 and the viceroy of Bohemia in 1622.) The prince himself owned a considerable collection, works from which feature in this show, particularly two works recently acquired and restored: Diana with her Hounds and Two Companions, with Actaeon in the Background, 1602, and the Coronation of the Virgin, 1602, by Joseph Heintz the Elder.
Coronation of the Virgin, 1602 (detail)
Vigo, Spain
Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo (MARCO)
Mirrors/Espellos
Dates: 2 Oct 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Rua Principe 54 Vigo 36202
Tel: +34 98 611 3900 Website
Nicolas Combarro
Dates: 30 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Rua Principe 54 Vigo 36202
Tel: +34 98 611 3900 Website
Jorge Barbi
Dates: 16 Oct 09 - 14 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Rua Principe 54 Vigo 36202
Tel: +34 98 611 3900 Website
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