The Estorick Collection, a gallery of early 20th-century Italian art in north London, is due to reopen on 13 January after a £600,000 refurbishment. The museum has added a new conservatory and upgraded and reinstalled its galleries. The inaugural exhibition examines the experience of British forces in Italy during the First World War and comprises loans from London’s Imperial War Museum (War in the Sunshine: The British in Italy 1917-1918, until 19 March).
The Estorick’s collection was donated by the US sociologist-turned-art dealer Eric Estorick and his wife Salome. Estorick, who moved to London in 1941, established the Grosvenor Gallery in 1960. By this time, he had also begun to collect Modern Italian art, with a focus on Futurism. His holdings included work by Umberto Boccioni, Amedeo Modigliani and Gino Severini. Shortly before his death in 1993, he donated his art to a charitable foundation.
The Estorick Collection opened five years later in a converted 1810 house in Canonbury, where it now attracts around 20,000 visitors a year. The recent building work was paid for by its endowment fund, which was established from the sale of Giorgio de Chirico’s Melanconia (1912) for £8m in 2007.
