Displaying items by tag: Europe

Incredible exhibitions are opening this fall in Europe, including major two group shows, and solo presentations dedicated to William N. Copley, Théodore Rousseau, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and other world-famous artists. Here are some of the highlights so you can plan your October art exhibition calendar.

We all know about NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, but TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership currently being brokered between the United States and European Union, has received some attention in Europe and remarkably little in the US. The Partnership, which has been under development since 2013 and isn’t expected to be in place until next year, is aimed at facilitating trade between the two unions. It would streamline national and international regulations and make it easier for companies from one region to do business in the other.

Measures up for inclusion in TTIP, which is being hashed out in closed-door meetings from which the press and watchdog organizations have been barred, would discourage governments from introducing any legislation that might negatively affect companies’ profits — even laws intended to ensure the safety of consumers and the environment — and would enable corporations to sue governments that did pass such measures. But what does TTIP have to do with art?

The Museum of Modern Art in New York will honor the legendary gallerist and collector Ileana Sonnabend with an exhibition of works that were shown in her galleries in Paris and New York between the 1960s and 1980s. Sonnabend, who opened the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris in 1962, was instrumental in bringing American art of the 1960s, most notably Pop Art and Minimalism, to Europe. Sonnabend opened a New York outpost in 1970 and conversely, popularized European art of the 1970s, including the Arte Povera movement, in the U.S.

Ileana Sonabend: Ambassador for the New will open on December 21, 2013 and celebrates the Sonnabend family’s generous bequest of Robert Rauschenberg’s seminal mixed media assemblage Canyon (1959) to MoMA. The exhibition will present works by approximately 30 artists including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, John Baldessari and Jeff Koons. Works will be pulled from MoMA’s own collection as well as other public and private holdings.  

Ileana Sonabend: Ambassador for the New will be on view at MoMA through April 21, 2014.

Genre-defying painter, sculptor, and illustrator, Richard Artschwager (1923-2013), died February 9, 2013 in Albany, NY. He was 89.

Artschwager, who was often linked to the Pop Art movement, Conceptual Art, and Minimalism, resisted classification through his clever genre mixing. His most well known sculpture, Table with Pink Tablecloth (1964) is an amalgamation of Pop Art and Minimalism and consists of a box finished in colored Formica, creating the illusion of a wooden table draped in a pink tablecloth. Artschwager often used household forms in his work including chairs, tables, and doors. In his paintings, Artschwager often painted black and white copies of found photographs and then outfitted them with outlandish frames made of painted wood, Formica or polished metal.

Artschwager was born in 1926 in Washington, D.C. and went on to study at Cornell University. In 1944, before he could finish his degree, he was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe. Upon returning to the United States after World War II, Artschwager completed his degree and decided to pursue a career in art. He moved to New York City and began taking classes at the Studio School of the painter Amédée Ozenfant, one of the founders of Purism. With a growing family and bills to pay, Artschwager took a break from making art to start a furniture-making business. After a fire destroyed his workshop, Artschwager returned to making art, developed his defining style, and was taken on by the Leo Castelli Gallery, which represented him for 30 years.

A few days prior to Artschwager’s death, the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan closed a major career retrospective of his work. It was the second of its kind to be organized by the museum.    

A major exhibition titled Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind is now on view at the British Museum in London. With works dating as far back as 40,000 years, the show presents ice age objects from across Europe alongside works by modern masters including Henry Moore (1898-1986), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). The juxtaposition is meant to illustrate the fundamental human desire to explore life and oneself through art.

Many of the ice age-era works on view are made of mammoth ivory and reindeer antler and tend to be diminutive in stature. Highlights include a 40,000-year-old flute made from a vulture’s wing bone, a mammoth tusk carved to resemble a pair of reindeer, and a 23,000-year-old abstract ivory sculpture found in Lespugue, France that had a profound influence on Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) sculptural work of the 1930s.

The works, which range from 10,000 to 40,000 years old, will be on view through May 26, 2013.

On February 21, 2013 Lichtenstein: A Retrospective will open at the Tate Modern in London. Part of the show, which features 125 paintings and sculptures, is pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923-1997) only film, a triptych titled Three Landscapes. This will be the first time the film will be viewed in Europe; since debuting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1971, the film has been exhibited once in the United States at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2011.  

The little-known film was made in 1971 during Lichtenstein’s residency at LACMA. The residency program he attended paired artists with high-tech companies in Southern California. Lichtenstein, who employed a cinematic quality in his works, was paired with Universal Film. During his time at Universal, Lichtenstein was treated to a studio tour, a visit to the set of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Topaz, and lessons in film techniques such as editing and special effects. Three Landscapes was the first and last time Lichtenstein experimented with film as a medium.

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective will be on view through May 27, 2013. Three Landscapes will be shown in the Tate’s Tanks gallery from March 9-12 and 14-24.

The heirs of Alfred Flechtheim, a prominent Jewish art dealer who fled Nazi Germany during World War II, are urging the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia to return artworks belonging to their relative. The paintings in question, which are by Paul Klee (1879-1940) and Juan Gris (1887-1927), are currently part of the Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen’s collection in Dusseldorf.

Before the perils of World War II took hold, Flechtheim was an established art dealer in Europe, representing a variety of well-known artists including Klee, Max Beckmann (1884-1950), and a number of French Cubists. Flechtheim ran galleries in Dusseldorf and Berlin, organized many exhibitions, and founded an art magazine. However, Flechtheim’s high standing in the art world made him an easy target for the Nazis. He fled Germany in 1933 shortly after a stream of hateful articles ran in the Nazi press. Flechtheim escaped to Zurich, then Paris before settling in London. After his getaway, Flechtheim’s Dusseldorf gallery was seized and turned over to his former employee Alex Voemel, a Nazi. Flechtheim’s gallery in Berlin was liquidated and his collection, which included works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Fernand Leger (1881-1955), Georges Braque (1882-1963), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954), was sold.    

Mike Hulton, Flechtheim’s great-nephew, claims that Klee’s Feather Plant (1919) and Gris’ Still Life (Violin and Inkwell) (1913) were part of Flechtheim’s private collection and sold under duress for well below their value when he fled Germany. The Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen does not believe there is enough evidence to support Hulton’s claim. In addition, owners of archives that could help in the case are refusing to let provenance researchers access their information, bringing the dispute to a standstill. Officials from the Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen assert that if it was proven that Flechtheim was forced to sell the works by Gris and Klee or that he received little to no money for them, that they would part with the paintings, but the current evidence is inconsequential.

Flechtheim’s heirs are currently pursuing restitution for over 100 paintings in museums in the United States, France, Germany, and other European countries.

Kicking off New York City’s 2013 “Americana Week” show schedule is The New York Ceramics Fair (January 23–27), with an opening night preview party on January 22. At the Bohemian National Hall (321 East 73rd Street) for the third year in a row, the Ceramics Fair brings together forty galleries from England, Europe, and across the US. Offerings include porcelain, pottery, glass, cloisonné and enamels, as well as an educational lecture series. Visit www.caskeylees.com.

The Metro Show NYC opens its second year at the Metropolitan Pavilion (125 W. 18th Street) with a preview reception January 23 and extends through January 27. This year the show recasts the “A” word (antiques) into the now trendy Historical Design. New dealers include Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts and Fred Giampietro Gallery. The Metro Show welcomes Editions | Artists’ Book Fair to the adjoining building. Visit www.metroshownyc.com or call 800.563.7632.

Opening on January 25 and running through the 27, Antiques at the Armory, Lexington Avenue at 26th street, 69th Regiment Armory, features one-hundred select exhibitors of American & European antiques, period furniture, Americana, folk art, garden and architectural artifacts, fine art and prints, and much more. Shuttle service is available between the Armory show and the Winter
Antiques Show. Visit www.stellashows.com or call 973.808.5015.

Opening the evening of January 24 with a gala preview to benefit East Side House Settlement, the Winter Antiques Show, 67th and Park Avenue, marks its 59th year as the most prestigious antiques
show in the country. Through February 1, seventy-five exhibitors will offer works from antiquity through the 1960s with one-third of the show’s exhibitors specializing in Americana with the rest featuring English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts. This year’s loan exhibit features “Newport: the Glamour of Ornament,” celebrating The Preservation Society of Newport County. Popular lectures relating to the exhibition and the Expert Eye series are held through the duration of the show. Among the new exhibitors is Allan Katz Americana. Visit www.winterantiquesshow.com or call 718.292.7392.

Though after Americana Week, be sure to visit Outsider Art Fair at Center 548, 548 West 22nd Street in Chelsea, from February 1–3 with a preview party January 31. Under new ownership (Wide Open Arts), the fair celebrates its twenty-first year. Visit www.outsiderartfair.com or call 212.337.3338.

Manet: Portraying Life opens on January 26, 2013 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The first exhibition to focus solely on French Impressionist Edouard Manet’s (1832-1883) portraits, Portraying Life has already sold more advanced tickets than the museum’s blockbuster Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) exhibition in 2010. Certain timed ticket entrances have sold out entirely.

The show, which took six years to organize, spans Manet’s entire career and features works from Europe, Asia, and the United States. Portraying Life is comprised of 50 paintings and a few pastels and includes portraits of Manet’s favorite sitters such as his wife, Suzanne Leenhoff (1829-1906), and luminaries from the time period including Antonin Proust (1832-1905) and Émile Zola (1840-1902). Manet, who often painted family, friends, and important political as well as artistic figures, invigorated scenes of everyday life with his modern and progressive approach to portraiture.

While Portraying Manet is expected to be a hit show, there has been a hiccup in plans. London’s snowy weather has left one painting stranded in Brazil’s São Paulo airport; the portrait of Mademoiselle Marie Lefébure is awaiting flight clearance before it can be exhibited at the Royal Academy. Sadly, the painting was not present at the press preview on January 22, 2013, which included VIP guests, patrons, and sponsors. Officials hope the work will arrive in time for exhibition’s public opening on Saturday.

Manet: Portraying Life will be on view through April 14, 2013.  

Built in the 1930s in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park on land donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr., The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a sight to be seen. Assembled from architectural elements dating from the 12^th through 15^th century, The Cloisters, which includes landscaped gardens, features a collection of nearly 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

Besides an impressive collection and scenic gardens, The Cloisters boasts a picturesque view of the Palisades, a line of steep cliffs that run along the lower Hudson River. Rockefeller’s grandson, Larry, is teaming up with the Met, to preserve the vista, which risks being obscured by LG Electronics’ new corporate headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

The plans for the new LG location have the building stretching upward 143 feet, standing several stories above the tree line almost directly across the Hudson River from the Cloisters. Rockefeller, who has met with LG officials to discuss altering the building’s plans, is not alone in his concerns. A number of environmental groups have also filed lawsuits asking the company to reduce the new headquarters’ height. The Met has also written letters pleading with LG as well as a judge handling one of the environmental cases.  

Designed by architecture giant HOK, LG will begin construction on 27 acres this year. The project is expected to conclude by 2016.