Displaying items by tag: subjects

This fall, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents "Goya: Order and Disorder," a landmark exhibition dedicated to Spanish master Francisco Goya (1746–1828). The largest retrospective of the artist to take place in America in 25 years features 170 paintings, prints and drawings—offering the rare opportunity to examine Goya’s powers of observation and invention across the full range of his work. The MFA welcomes many loans from Europe and the US, including 21 works from the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, along with loans from the Musée du Louvre, the Galleria degli Uffizi, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington) and private collections. "Goya: Order and Disorder" includes some 60 works from the MFA’s collection of Goya’s works on paper, one of the most important in the world. Many of these prints and drawings have not been on view in Boston in 25 years. Employed as a court painter by four successive rulers of Spain, Goya managed to explore an extraordinarily wide range of subjects, genres and formats. From the striking portrait "Duchess of Alba" (1797) from the Hispanic Society of America, to the tour de force of Goya’s "Seated Giant" (by 1818) in the MFA’s collection, to his drawings of lunacy, the works on view demonstrate the artist’s fluency across media.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on August 17, 2013. The exhibition will draw from MoMA’s extensive collection of American art made between 1915 and 1950. Using some of the finest paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures from the period, American Modern will illustrate the evolution of society and culture during the first half of the 20^th century.

Subjects explored in the exhibition will include urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still lifes and portraiture. Works by modern art masters such as George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz and Andrew Wyeth will be arranged thematically.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will be on view at MoMA through January 26, 2014.

Hopper Drawing, which opens today, May 23, 2013 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, is the first major museum exhibition to focus on the drawings and creative process of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Known for his enigmatic renderings of rural and urban American life, Hopper’s paintings of seascapes, cityscapes, and their inhabitants are some of the most significant artworks of the 20^th century.

The Whitney’s exhibition is not just a presentation of Hopper’s best-known works; it is a rare glimpse into the creative process that produced one of the most lauded oeuvres in modern art. Hopper’s drawings illustrate his ever-changing relationships with his subjects, which include the street, the movie theater, the office, the bedroom, and the road. Drawn from the Whitney’s remarkable Hopper collection, which includes 2,500 drawings given to the museum by the artist’s widow, Josephine, Hopper Drawing includes drafts of some of Hopper’s most recognized works alongside their oil painting counterparts. Works on view include Early Sunday Morning (1930), New York Movie (1939), Office at Night (1940), and Nighthawks (1942) together with their prepatory drawings and related works. The exhibition also includes pioneering archival research into the buildings and urban spaces that inspired Hopper’s work.

Drawing Hopper will be on view at the Whitney through October 6, 2013.

On May 22, 2013, Sotheby’s New York will offer a rare John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) painting as part of its annual spring auction of American Art. Marionettes (1903), which is expected to sell for between $5 million and $7 million, was part of Sargent’s personal collection for over 20 years and was passed down through the artist’s family to the present owner.

Best known for his portraits of members of high society, Marionettes is a departure from Sargent’s usual subjects. The painting depicts men from Philadelphia’s large Italian American community performing Sicilian puppet theater at the turn of the 20^th century. When Sargent created the work, he was well established and considered to be the preeminent portrait painter of his time.

Eventually, Sargent grew tired of painting portraits and started traveling to seek out new inspirations. Sargent painted a number of marionette works during a four-month stint in Philadelphia. In 1909, Sargent ceased painting portraits of the elite altogether and decided to paint only what he wanted to.

Only six works by Sargent have ever appeared at auction and carried an estimate in excess of $5 million. Group with Parasols, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2004 for $23.5 million, set the record for the artist at auction.

Marionettes will go on view at Sotheby’s on May 18, 2013.

The New York Public Library is currently hosting the free exhibition Daring Methods: The Prints of Mary Cassatt, which spans Mary Cassatt’s (1844-1926) printmaking career from 1878 to 1898. In 1875, after having two works refused by the illustrious Paris Salon’s jury, Cassatt joined the Impressionist group at Edgar Degas’ (1834-1917) request. Cassatt created her earliest surviving prints a few years later in 1878, a year before she first exhibited with the Impressionists.

Cassatt, a legendary American artist who is well known for her tender paintings of women and children, had a bold approach to printmaking. She experimented with an array of print media, often repeating compositions and fervently reworking her copper printing plates in an effort to achieve the effects she desired.

Daring Methods tracks Cassatt’s evolution as a printmaker from her exploratory black-and-white beginnings to her mastery of the medium and her creation of technically striking color prints. The exhibition is organized chronologically to emphasize Cassatt’s development as a printmaker, illustrating the evolution of her subjects, compositions, and printing methods.

The show features 88 prints from the library’s archive, many of which have never been seen except on request. The works were donated to the New York Public Library in 1900 by Samuel Putnam Avery, a New York-based art dealer who worked closely with Cassatt.

Daring Methods: The Prints of Mary Cassatt will be on view in the New York Public Library’s Print and Stokes Gallery through June 22, 2013.