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Exhibition Review : Expressionists – Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider at Tate Modern from 25 April to 20 October 2024
This major exhibition explores the story of the international circle of artists who came together in the early 20th century to create there own style of modern art. From celebrated artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc and Paul Klee, to previously overlooked figures like Wladimir Burliuk and Maria Franck-Marc, the exhibition reveals the multicultural and transnational nature of this early modernist art.
Drawing on the world’s richest collection of expressionist masterpieces at the Lenbachhaus in Munich alongside rare loans from public and private collections, including some never seen before in the UK, the exhibition celebrate their radical experimentation with form, colour, sound and performance.
The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) was a loosely affiliated and diverse network of artists, connected by their desire to express personal experiences and spiritual ideas. They published their ground-breaking Almanac in 1912, edited by Kandinsky and Marc, and staged two public exhibitions in 1911 and 1912. The collective brought together highly individual artists from across western and eastern Europe and the USA to form ‘a union of various countries to serve one purpose’. They proclaimed that ‘the whole work, called art, knows no borders or nations, only humanity.’
Tate Modern’s exhibition will begin with the collective’s core couple of Kandinsky and Münter and their creative network in pre-First World War Munich. Munich at that time was an artistic hub of experimentation where different cultures and experiences converged.
A room of portraits and self-portraits will introduce this creative community, including Münter’s Listening (Portrait of Jawlensky) 1909.
Themes of sexuality and performance will be explored through Werefkin’s collaboration with free-style performer Alexander Sacharoff, including a 1909 portrait reflecting his androgynous persona.
The urban centre of Munich is contrasted with rural Murnau, a small Bavarian town which became home for Münter and Kandinsky from 1909. This space for creative exchange and artistic experimentation inspired a new search for spirituality and an interest in folk art.
Encounters with the local landscape and culture influenced a move to expressive painterly compositions focused on the power of line and colour,
leading Kandinsky and Münter to new approaches in both abstract and figurative painting
Meanwhile, their friends and collaborators Marc and Franck-Marc explored the animal world
and the creativity of children through works such as Girl with Toddler c. 1913 and Tiger 1912 .
Many artists in the exhibition capture modernism’s fascination with sound, colour and light.
The exhibition concludes by showing how the Blue Rider artists created their own legacy by publishing manifestos and editorials, curating exhibitions, touring shows, and gaining favourable relationships with museums and galleries.
The Expressionists were one of a number of art movements at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century which challenged art convention. The experimentation of this particular group is fascinating because it is influenced by the idea that art can be a part of a ‘brave new world’. This idealism was short lived and quickly dashed by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, when the collective dispersed.
Visiting London Guide Rating – Recommended
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
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Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider at Tate Modern from 25 April to 20 October 2024
Wassily Kandinsky – Riding Couple, 1906-1907, Lenbachhaus Munich, Donation of Gabriele Münter, 1957
This major exhibition will explore the story of the international circle of friends who came together in the early 20th century to influence modern art. From celebrated artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc and Paul Klee, to previously overlooked figures like Wladimir Burliuk and Maria Franck-Marc, the exhibition will reveal the multicultural and transnational nature of this key moment in early modernist art.
Marianne von Werefkin – Self-portrait I, c.1910 Lenbachhaus Munich
Drawing on the world’s richest collection of expressionist masterpieces at the Lenbachhaus in Munich alongside rare loans from public and private collections, including some never seen before in the UK, it will celebrate their radical experimentation with form, colour, sound and performance.
Erma Bossi – Circus, 1909, Lenbachhaus Munich, on permanent loan from the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich
The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) was a loosely affiliated and diverse network of artists, connected by their desire to express personal experiences and spiritual ideas. They published their ground-breaking Almanac in 1912, edited by Kandinsky and Marc, and staged two public exhibitions in 1911 and 1912. The collective brought together highly individual creatives from across western and eastern Europe and the USA to form ‘a union of various countries to serve one purpose’. They proclaimed that ‘the whole work, called art, knows no borders or nations, only humanity.’
Gabriele Münter – Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, 1909 Lenbachhaus Munich, Donation of Gabriele Münter, 1957 © DACS 2023
Tate Modern’s exhibition will begin with the collective’s core couple of Kandinsky and Münter and their creative network in pre-First World War Munich. Munich at that time was an artistic hub of experimentation where different cultures and experiences converged.
Gabriele Münter – Listening (Portrait of Jawlensky), 1909 Lenbachhaus Munich, Donation of Gabriele Münter, 1957 © DACS 2023
A room of portraits and self-portraits will introduce this creative community, including Marianne Werefkin’s Self-Portrait c. 1910 and Münter’s Listening (Portrait of Jawlensky) 1909. Münter’s photographs of the Ethnographic Exhibition of 1901 and Erma Bossi’s bold and expressive Circus 1909 will testify to the stark contrasts of urban experiences,
Marianne von Werefkin – The Dancer, Alexander Sacharoff, 1909, Fondazione Marianne Werefkin, Museo Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Ascona
while themes of sexuality and performance will be explored through Werefkin’s collaboration with free-style performer Alexander Sacharoff, including a provocative 1909 portrait reflecting his androgynous persona.
Wassily Kandinsky – Improvisation Deluge, 1913, Lenbachhaus Munich, Donation of Gabriele Münter, 1957
The urban centre of Munich will be contrasted with rural Murnau, a small sub-Alpine Bavarian town which became home for Münter and Kandinsky from 1909. This space for creative exchange and artistic experimentation inspired a new search for spirituality and an interest in folk art. Encounters with the local landscape and culture influenced a move to expressive painterly compositions focused on the power of line and colour, leading Kandinsky and Münter to new approaches in both abstract and figurative painting such as Improvisation Deluge 1913 and Portrait of Marianne Werefkin 1909.
Maria Franck-Marc – Girl with Toddler, circa 1913 Lenbachhaus Munich © Legal succession of the artist
Meanwhile, their friends and collaborators Marc and Franck-Marc explored the animal world and the creativity of children through works such as Tiger 1912 and Girl with Toddler c. 1913.
Franz Marc – Deer in the Snow II, 1911, Lenbachhaus Munich, Gift of Elly Koehler
Some rooms will offer visitors environments focused on single works which capture modernism’s fascination with sound, colour and light. These will include Kandinsky’s Impression III (Concert) 1911, revealing his interest in the neurodiverse condition known as synaesthesia in which one of the senses is experienced through another, and Franz Marc’s 1911 Deer in the Snow II, whose mysteries will be unlocked through an exploration of colour theory and optics.
Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc – Der Blaue Reiter, R. Piper & Co., Munich, 1912 Book cover © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The exhibition will conclude by showing how the Blue Rider artists ensured their lasting legacy by publishing manifestos and editorials, curating exhibitions, touring shows, and gaining relationships with museums and galleries.
Wassily Kandinsky – Murnau – Johannisstrasse from a Window of the Griesbräu, 1908. Lenbachhaus Munich, Donation of Gabriele Münter, 1957
Münter staged a solo show at Berlin’s Der Sturm, Klee’s Swamp Legend 1919 nearly perished in the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937, while Kandinsky’s text On the Spiritual in Art was translated and is still published internationally across the globe. With the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 the collective was dispersed, but their ideas and aspirations for a transnational creative community is still a powerful message today.
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
London Visitors is the official blog for the Visiting London Guide .com website. The website was developed to bring practical advice and latest up to date news and reviews of events in London.
Since our launch in January 2014, we have attracted thousands of readers each month, the site is constantly updated.
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Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind at Tate Modern from 15 February to 1 September 2024
Installation view of PEACE is POWER, first realised 2017, in ‘Yoko Ono: The Learning Garden of Freedom’ at Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, 2020. Photo © Filipe Braga
In February 2024, Tate Modern will present the UK’s largest exhibition celebrating the ground-breaking and influential work of artist and activist Yoko Ono. Ono is considered a trailblazer of early conceptual and participatory art, film and performance, she is also known as a musician, and a campaigner for world peace. The exhibition spans seven decades of the artist’s practice from the mid-1950s to the present. The exhibition will bring together over 200 works including instruction pieces and scores, installations, films, music and photography.
Yoko Ono, Cut Piece 1964. Performed by Yoko Ono in ‘New Works by Yoko Ono’, Carnegie Recital Hall, NYC, March 21 1965. Photo © Minoru Niizuma
Ideas are central to Ono’s art, often expressed in poetic, humorous and profound ways. The exhibition will start by exploring her role in experimental avant-garde circles in New York and Tokyo, including the development of her ‘instruction pieces’ – written instructions that ask readers to imagine, experience, make or complete the work. Previously unseen photographs will show Ono’s first ‘instruction paintings’ at her loft studio 112 Chambers Street in New York – where she and composer La Monte Young hosted experimental concerts and events and in her first solo exhibition at AG Gallery in 1961.
Yoko Ono, Grapefruit, Page 11, SECRET PIECE, 1964. Courtesy the artist
The typescript draft of Ono’s ground-breaking self-published anthology Grapefruit, compiling her instructions written between 1953 and 1964, will be displayed in the UK for the first time. Visitors will be invited to activate Ono’s instructions, concealing themselves in the interactive work Bag Piece 1964, first performed by Ono in Kyoto, in the same concert in which she performed her iconic work Cut Piece 1964 and bringing their shadows together in Shadow Piece 1963.
Yoko Ono with Half-A-Room 1967 from HALF-A-WIND SHOW, Lisson Gallery, London, 1967. Photo © Clay Perry
The heart of the exhibition will chart Ono’s radical works created during her five-year stay in London from 1966. Here she became embedded within a counterculture network of artists, musicians and writers, meeting her future husband and long-time collaborator John Lennon. Key installations from Ono’s exhibitions at Indica and Lisson Gallery will feature, including Apple 1966 and the poignant installation of halved domestic objects Half-A-Room 1967.
Yoko Ono, Film No. 4 (Bottoms) 1966. Courtesy the artist
Ono’s banned Film No. 4 (Bottoms) 1966-7 which she created as a ‘petition for peace’ will be displayed alongside material from her influential talk at the Destruction In Art Symposium, in which she described the fundamental aspects of her participatory art: event-based; engaged with the everyday; personal; partial or presented as unfinished; a catalyst to creative transformation; and existing within the realm of the imagination.
Visitors will be able to participate in White Chess Set a game featuring only white chess pieces and a board of white squares, with the instruction ‘play as long as you can remember where all your pieces are’, a work first realised in 1966 that demonstrates Ono’s anti-war stance.
Yoko Ono, Sky TV 1966/2014. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Photo © Cathy Carver.
Key themes that recur throughout Ono’s work will be explored across decades and mediums. This includes the ‘sky’ which appears repeatedly as a metaphor for peace, freedom and limitlessness. It appears in the instruction piece Painting to See the Skies 1961, the 1966 installation SKY TV, broadcasting a live video feed of the sky above Tate Modern, and the moving participatory work Helmets (Pieces of Sky), first realised 2001, inviting visitors to take away their own puzzle-piece of the sky.
Yoko Ono, FLY 1970-71. Courtesy the artist
The artist’s commitment to feminism will be illustrated by key films including FLY 1970-1, in which a fly crawls over a naked woman’s body while Ono’s vocals chart its journey,
Yoko Ono, Freedom 1970. Courtesy the artist
and Freedom 1970, depicting Ono as she attempts and fails to break free from her bra.
Ono has increasingly used her art and global media platform to advocate for peace and humanitarian campaigns, initially collaborating with her late husband John Lennon. Acorns for Peace 1969 saw Ono and Lennon send acorns to world leaders, while the billboard campaign ‘WAR IS OVER!’ (if you want it) 1969 used the language of advertising to spread a message of peace. The film BED PEACE 1969 documents the second of the couple’s infamous ‘bed-in’ events staged in Amsterdam and Montreal, during which they spoke with the world’s media to promote world peace amid the Vietnam War.
Yoko Ono’s installation “Add Color (Refugee Boat)” Roma, MUSEO DEL MAXXI 18 12 2019
Il Segretario Generale dell’ONU António Guterres visita il museo accompagnato dalla Presidente Giovanna Melandri. ©Musacchio, Ianniello & Pasqualini
Tate Modern will also stage Ono’s recent project Add Colour (Refugee Boat), first activated in 2016, inviting visitors to add paint to white gallery walls and a white boat while reflecting on urgent issues of crisis and displacement.
The exhibition will culminate in a new version of Ono’s participatory installation My Mommy Is Beautiful, first realised 2004, featuring a 15-metre-long wall of canvases to which visitors can attach photographs of their mother and share personal messages.
Moving beyond the exhibition space, Ono’s work will also extend across Tate Modern’s building and landscape. Gallery windows overlooking the River Thames will feature the artist’s powerful intervention, PEACE is POWER, first shown 2017, translated into multiple languages, while the interactive artwork Wish Tree, first realised 1996, will greet visitors at the entrance to Tate Modern, inviting passers-by to contribute individual wishes for peace.
YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND
15 February – 1 September 2024
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG; Open daily 10.00–18.00
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
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Philip Guston at Tate Modern from 5 October 2023 to 25 February 2024
Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating, 1973 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
In October, Tate Modern presents a landmark exhibition of American artist, Philip Guston (1913-1980). This exhibition is the artist’s first major UK retrospective in 20 years, it features more than 100 paintings and drawings from across Guston’s 50-year career. It offers new insight into the artist’s formative early years and activism, his celebrated period of abstraction, and his thought-provoking late works. With an outlook strongly shaped by his experiences of personal tragedy and by social injustice in the US, the exhibition charts the restlessness of an artist who defied categorisation, and never stopped pushing the boundaries of painting.
Philip Guston, Bombardment, 1937 Philadelphia Museum of Art. © Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Presented chronologically, the exhibition begins with Guston’s early years as the child of Jewish immigrants who had escaped persecution in present-day Ukraine, and the family’s subsequent migration to Los Angeles in 1922. Largely self-taught, Guston was drawn to cartoon imagery, European Old Masters painting, surrealism, and Mexican muralism. Against a threatening backdrop of rising antisemitism and Ku Klux Klan activity that would inform his lifelong stand against racism, the young Guston’s work became increasingly political. Later paintings such as Bombardment 1937 depict the artist’s response to the violence and injustice he saw in the world.
Philip Guston, Sunday Interior, 1941 © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
With Reuben Kadish and Jules Langsner, Guston travelled to Mexico in 1934 to create a radical protest mural The Struggle Against Terrorism 1934-35. Visitors to Tate Modern will be able to view a projection of this work, the first time that one of Guston’s murals will be shown at such a scale. Moving to New York and changing his name from Phillip Goldstein to Philip Guston in 1936, he created murals for the government funded WPA Federal Art Project, before making the first of three artistically significant trips to Italy.
Philip Guston, The Return, 1956-8. Tate. © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Returning to the US, he moved towards an increasingly abstract approach to his work, as seen in paintings like White Painting I 1951, becoming an influential figure in the New York School alongside his high school friend Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.
Philip Guston, Passage, 1957-8 The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the Alice Pratt Brown Museum Fund, 88.35. © Estate of Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photograph © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Will Michels
Several influential works from Guston’s first major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1962 will feature in the Tate Modern exhibition, including Passage 1957-58.
Philip Guston, Flatlands, 1970 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Byron R. Meyer. © The Estate of Philip Guston
By the late 1960s, Guston was becoming disillusioned with abstraction as he contended with the increasingly troubled world around him. He began to wrestle with the concept of evil in his practice. This period culminated in the now infamous show of paintings with hooded figures at Marlborough Gallery in 1970, which included The Studio 1969, in which he interrogated himself as well as the establishment.
In the Marlborough exhibition aftermath, Guston returned to Italy where he created dozens of small paintings evoking the ruins and gardens of Rome. Several of these Roma works will be included in the exhibition.
Philip Guston, Couple in Bed, 1977 The Art Institute of Chicago. © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
On his return to his studio in Upstate New York, he invented a new artistic language of giant eyes, mountains of legs, abandoned shoes, and everyday objects rendered both familiar and strange.
Philip Guston, The Line, 1978 © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
The final decade of Guston’s life, although spent in relative obscurity, was his most productive, when he created some of his most complex and recognisable work.
Philip Guston, Sleeping 1977 © The Estate of Philip Guston. Photograph by Genevieve Hanson, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Throughout this final period, Guston remained as rebellious as ever, creating combinations of dream-like images and nightmarish figures. Sleeping 1977 is his final work in a series of paintings in which the artist is seen in bed, vulnerable and dreaming, the imagery for which he is best known.
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
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Capturing the Moment at Tate Modern from 13 June 2023 to 28th January 2024
Richard Hamilton, Towards a definitive statement on the coming trends in menswear and accessories (a) Together let us explore the stars, 1962. Tate © The estate of Richard Hamilton. Photo: Tate (Oliver Cowling & Lucy Green)
The Capturing the Moment exhibition at Tate Modern will explore the dynamic relationship between contemporary painting and photography. The exhibition will use the work of some of the greatest painters and photographers of recent generations, looking at how the brush and the lens have been used to capture moments in time, and how these two mediums have inspired and influenced each other.
Peter Doig, Canoe Lake, 1997-98. Yageo Foundation Collection, Taiwan © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2023
The exhibition will be a rare opportunity to see works from the YAGEO Foundation Collection, including paintings by Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter and Peter Doig and photographs by Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Hiroshi Sugimoto, shown with many recent additions to Tate’s collection, including works by Lorna Simpson, John Currin, Laura Owens, Michael Armitage and Louise Lawler.
Alice Neel, Puerto Rican Boys on 108th Street, 1955. Tate © The estate of Alice Neel. Photo: Tate
Capturing the Moment begins with some of the most renowned expressive painters of the post-war period. Visitors will discover how the realism of artists like Lucian Freud and Alice Neel developed alongside the emergence of documentary photography and ground-breaking photographers like Dorothea Lange.
Francis Bacon, Study for a Pope VI, 1961, Yageo Foundation Collection, Taiwan. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS
Francis Bacon’s Study for a Pope VI 1961 shows the role that photographic source material played for many artists, while Cecily Brown’s Trouble in Paradise 1999 and George Condo Mental States 2000 reveal the legacy of expressive figurative painting in a world of increasingly prevalent photographic images.
Andreas Gursky, May Day IV, 2000. Yageo Foundation, Taiwan. © Andreas Gursky Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London DACS 2023
The exhibition will also show how the influence runs in the opposite direction, with a series of strikingly painterly photographs. These range from the dramatic large-scale tableaux of Jeff Wall’s A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) 1993 and Andreas Gursky’s May Day IV 2000, to Pushpamala N’s take on grand history painting and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s atmospheric near-abstract seascapes. Photographs by Thomas Struth and Louise Lawler, capturing famous paintings on display and in storage, reveal another way in which the two mediums have influenced each other.
Gerhard Richter, Two Candles, 1982. Yageo Foundation Collection © Gerhard Richter 2022 (0153)
The largest section of the exhibition explores how both art forms attempt to capture points in time or moments in history. Gerhard Richter’s photo-realist paintings such as Two Candles 1982 and Aunt Marianne 1965 encapsulate one approach to this, alongside later works by Luc Tuymans and Wilhelm Sasnal.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Predecessors, 2013. Tate © Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Photo: Sylvain Deleu.
Pop artists like Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Pauline Boty offer another approach, incorporating and collaging photographic images in their paintings, as can also be seen in Lorna Simpson’s Then & Now 2016 and Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s Predecessors 2013.
David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. © David Hockney Photo Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter
Key works by Lisa Brice, Miriam Cahn, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, David Hockney and Paulina Olowska show yet more ways in which the style, composition, content and meaning of contemporary painting exists in dialogue with photography.
Salman Toor, 9PM, the News, 2015. © Salman Toor. Image © Tate (Mark Heathcote and Oliver Cowling)
And as screen-based images become ever more common, recent canvases by Laura Owens, Christina Quarles and Salman Toor offer a glimpse of how digital media is now reshaping the way painters work today.
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
London Visitors is the official blog for the Visiting London Guide .com website. The website was developed to bring practical advice and latest up to date news and reviews of events in London.
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Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle Of Thread And Rope at Tate Modern from 17 November 2022 to 21 May 2023
Tate Modern offer a rare opportunity to explore an body of work by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz known as Abakans. Made of organic materials such as horsehair, sisal and hemp rope, these complex three-dimensional forms broke new ground for art in the 1960s and 70s. Bringing together 26 of these radical works for the first time in the UK, the exhibition will present a forest of sculptures, enabling visitors to explore their forms and earthy scents.
Magdalena Abakanowicz – Untitled 1965, Fondation Toms Pauli, Lausanne. Gift of Pierre and Marguerite Magnenat
All works by Magdalena Abakanowicz are © Fundacja Marty Magdaleny Abakanowicz Kosmowskiej i
Jana Kosmowskiego, Warsaw
With a career spanning over 50 years, Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017) challenged what it meant to be a sculptor and led the way for other artists working with fibre. Having grown up among the rural landscapes outside Warsaw, Poland, she took inspiration from the myth, folklore and spirits of the forest. Although she grew up during the traumatic events of World War II and later lived under the restrictions of an Communist regime, Abakanowicz was determined to engage on a global scale. Gaining international recognition by 1970 for her revolutionary installations, she went on to cross the Iron Curtain more than any other artist, participating in hundreds of exhibitions worldwide.
Magdalena Abakanowicz – Abakan Red 1969, Tate
All works by Magdalena Abakanowicz are © Fundacja Marty Magdaleny Abakanowicz Kosmowskiej i
Jana Kosmowskiego, Warsaw.
Choosing to reject the restrictive definitions of art and craft inherited from previous generations, Abakanowicz created trailblazing fibre installations that were a radical departure from the traditional tapestries produced in Western Europe. Deriving their name from the artist’s own family name, Abakans astounded critics when they were first presented in the late 1960s. Some measuring over five metres tall and displayed far from the gallery wall, these free-hanging woven forms did not appear to be either sculpture or tapestry.
Magdalena Abakanowic- Abakan Yellow 1970, National Museum, Poznan
All works by Magdalena Abakanowicz are © Fundacja Marty Magdaleny Abakanowicz Kosmowskiej i
Jana Kosmowskiego, Warsaw.
Honouring the artist’s wish for her Abakans to be seen and experienced as living works, visitors to Tate Modern will weave throughout a fibrous sculptural landscape. For the first time, Tate Modern will chart the development of these ambitious works, exploring how Abakanowicz’s painted textiles from the mid-1950s transformed into the suspended, multi-faceted shapes of Abakan étroit 1967–8 and the monumental Abakan Red 1969, before eventually becoming full scale environments as seen in Set of Black Organic Forms 1974. Works such as Abakan Yellow 1970 and Abakan – Situation Variable II 1971 incorporate rope, spilling from the sculptures onto the floor. Rope became a key component of Abakanowicz’s organic environments, leading the viewer through gallery and city spaces in her works of the early 1970s.
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
London Visitors is the official blog for the Visiting London Guide .com website. The website was developed to bring practical advice and latest up to date news and reviews of events in London.
Since our launch in January 2014, we have attracted thousands of readers each month, the site is constantly updated.
We have sections on Museums and Art Galleries, Transport, Food and Drink, Places to Stay, Security, Music, Sport, Books and many more.
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Exhibition Review: Cezanne at the Tate Modern from 5th October 2022 to 12 March 2023
Tate Modern presents a once-in-a-generation exhibition of paintings, watercolours and drawings by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). Cezanne remains an influential figure in modern painting whose work has inspired generations of artists.
The exhibition brings together around 80 selected works from collections in Europe, Asia, North and South America, giving UK audiences their first opportunity in over 25 years to explore the breadth of Cezanne’s career.
The exhibition features key examples of his still life paintings, Provençale landscapes, portraits and bather scenes, including over 20 works never seen in the UK before such as The Basket of Apples c.1893, Mont Sainte-Victoire 1902-06 and Still Life with Milk Pot, Melon, and Sugar Bowl 1900-06.
The exhibition explores the events, places and relationships that shaped Cezanne’s life and work.
Cezanne was a young ambitious painter from the southern city of Aix-en-Provence, determined to succeed as an artist in the 1860s, yet constantly rejected by the art establishment.
Although he befriended Camille Pissarro and was for a time associated with the impressionists in the 1870s, he was determined to create his own radical style.
The exhibition traces Cezanne’s artistic development from early paintings made in his twenties such as through to works completed in the final months of his life.
Highlights include a room of paintings depicting the limestone mountain Sainte-Victoire, charting the dramatic evolution of his style.
Another gallery brings together several examples of Cezanne’s bather paintings, a lifelong subject for the artist, including The National Gallery’s Bathers 1894–1905, one of his largest and most celebrated paintings created in the final stage of his career.
The exhibition also considers his important relationships, particularly his wife Marie-Hortense Fiquet and their son Paul, immortalised in paintings such as Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair c.1877 and Portrait of the Artist’s Son 1881-2.
This fascinating and comprehensive exhibition challenges the idea that Cezanne was a solitary figure by considering his relationships with family, friends and fellow artists. The exhibition suggests that Cezanne did not want to be constrained by belonging to a group or school of art and he understood the importance of developing your own style and experimenting with materials and techniques.
Visiting London Guide Rating – Highly Recommended
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
London Visitors is the official blog for the Visiting London Guide .com website. The website was developed to bring practical advice and latest up to date news and reviews of events in London.
Since our launch in January 2014, we have attracted thousands of readers each month, the site is constantly updated.
We have sections on Museums and Art Galleries, Transport, Food and Drink, Places to Stay, Security, Music, Sport, Books and many more.
There are also hundreds of links to interesting articles on our blog.
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Maria Bartuszová at the Tate Modern from 20 September 2022 to 16 April 2023
Tate Modern will present the UK’s first major exhibition of the work of Maria Bartuszová (1936-1996), an artist who created a world of sculpture on her own terms using innovative methods in plaster casting. From raindrops and eggs to the human body, Bartuszová took inspiration from organic forms and cycles in the natural world. Spanning the breadth of her remarkable 30-year career, this show will reveal a prolific body of tactile, sensual, and evocative sculptures, shaped by the artist’s personal experiences and deep love of nature.
Bringing together over 50 of Bartuszová’s delicate plaster works alongside bronze casts and aluminium reliefs, many of which have never been shown in this country before it will offer a rare chance to discover how this little-known artist created her own world of abstract sculpture.
Although born in Prague, Bartuszová spent the majority of her career in Košice, the second largest city in what was then Czechoslovakia, near the border with Hungary and Ukraine. Closed off from direct contact with European and global events during the Cold War, she worked in relative seclusion, with few opportunities to exhibit during her lifetime. Despite this, Bartuszová built an outstanding legacy of around 500 sculptures which remain a testament to her unique vision and persistent experimentation.
The exhibition will explore how Bartuszová worked inventively and quickly, using the fleeting and liquid process of casting to create simultaneously solid and delicate artworks. In the early 1960s, she created abstract shapes by pouring plaster into rubber balloons and moulding it using pressure and tension, a method she coined ‘gravistimulation’.
Maria Batuszová in her studio in Košice, Slovakia, with her sculptures c.1987 – photo: Gabriel Kladek
Experimenting further in the 1980s, Bartuszová developed a new practice of plaster shaping she termed ‘pneumatic casting’, in which she blew air into balloons and poured plaster over their surface. This created empty, negative volumes and ever more fragile, hollow shapes resembling shells and eggs – described by the artist as “a tiny void full of a tiny infinite universe”. Works from Bartuszová’s Endless Egg series will be displayed alongside elaborate eggshell clusters such as Untitled (1984), expressing feelings of personal crisis in their fragility and destruction.
Bartuszová continually explored ways in which sculpture could engage the imagination and activate the senses. In the mid-1960s she began creating plaster sculptures composed of interlocking shapes, such as Folded Figure (1965), and later bronze and aluminium puzzle-like sculptures such as Folded Figure, Horizontal, Haptic, (1974 cast 1975) which could be taken apart and reassembled to spark creative thinking. A range of rarely seen archive photographs by art historian and photographer Gabriel Kladek document how her sculptures were innovatively used in expressive workshops for blind and partially sighted children.
The exhibition will also highlight how forms and themes that the artist developed in her studio were brought into public spaces through her state-funded commissions for buildings, monuments, playgrounds and fountains. The elongated droplets of Rain (1963) are echoed in the bronze fountain she created for the Institute for Physically Disabled Children in Košice (1967–71), while her geometric wall-based works inspired her monumental reliefs for the Southern Slovak Paper Mill (1973–5) and Eastern Slovak Steelworks (1974). Visitors will also discover the futuristic models Bartuszová designed for playground climbing frames and slides and explore the making process behind her monumental public sculpture Metamorphosis, Two-Part Sculpture (1982) at the entrance to the Košice crematorium.
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
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Surrealism Beyond Borders at Tate Modern from 24 February to 29 August 2022
This ground-breaking exhibition at Tate Modern explores the wide range of this radical Surrealism movement, which very quickly moved beyond the confines of a single time or place. Based on extensive research undertaken by Tate and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition spans 80 years and 50 countries to show how Surrealism inspired and united artists around the globe, from centres as diverse as Buenos Aires, Cairo, Lisbon, Mexico City, Prague, Seoul and Tokyo. Expanding our understanding of Surrealism, Tate Modern will show how this dynamic movement took root in many places at different times, offering artists the freedom to challenge authority and imagine a new world.
Surrealism had its origins in Paris in the 1920s, Surrealism prioritised the unconscious and dreams using humorous works like Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone to René Magritte’s train rushing from a fireplace to challenge views of reality. It soon was used by artists around the world as a serious weapon in the struggle for political, social, and personal freedom.
The exhibition feates over 150 works ranging from painting and photography to sculpture and film, many of which have never been shown in the UK, this exhibition explores the collective interests shared by artists across regions and considers the conditions under which they worked and how this in turn impacted Surrealism. Among the rarely seen works are photographs by Cecilia Porras and Enrique Grau, as well as paintings by exiled Spanish artist Eugenio Granell.
Visitors will see iconic paintings such as Max Ernst’s Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale 1924 alongside lesser known but significant works including Antonio Berni’s Landru in the Hotel, Paris 1932, which appeared in the artist’s first exhibition of Surrealist works in Argentina, and Toshiko Okanoue’s Yobi-goe (The Call) 1954, addressing the daily experience of post-war Japan. Photographs by Hans Bellmer focusing on the female body are contrasted with Ithell Colquhoun’s Scylla 1938 a double image exploring female desire and works by both French Surrealist Claude Cahun and Sri-Lankan-based artist Lionel Wendt.
The exhibition also considers the locations around the world where artists have converged and exchanged ideas of Surrealism. From Paris at the Bureau of Surrealist Research; to Cairo, with the Art et Liberté group; across the Caribbean, where the movement was initiated by writers; in Mexico City, where it was shaped by the creative bonds of women artists; and Chicago, where Surrealism was used as a tool for radical politics. Special loans including the photographs of Limb Eung-Sik and Jung Haechang from Korea and a film by Len Lye from New Zealand, will offer further insight into the adaption of Surrealism across the globe. For the first time in the UK, Ted Joans’ 36-foot drawing, Long Distance 1976-2005 will go on display, featuring 132 contributors from around the world. Accompanying Joans on his travels, this cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) drawing took nearly 30 years to complete and united artists located as far apart as Lagos and Toronto.
Surrealism Beyond Borders is organised by Tate Modern and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
London Visitors is the official blog for the Visiting London Guide .com website. The website was developed to bring practical advice and latest up to date news and reviews of events in London.
Since our launch in January 2014, we have attracted thousands of readers each month, the site is constantly updated.
We have sections on Museums and Art Galleries, Transport, Food and Drink, Places to Stay, Security, Music, Sport, Books and many more.
There are also hundreds of links to interesting articles on our blog.
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Lubaina Himid at Tate Modern from 25 November 2021 to 3 July 2022
Tate
© Lubaina Himid
Over four decades, Lubaina Himid’s work has made her an increasingly influential figure in contemporary art from her role in the British Black arts movement of the 1980s to winning the Turner Prize in 2017. Tate Modern presents Himid’s largest solo exhibition to date, incorporating new paintings and significant highlights from across her career. Taking inspiration from the artist’s interest in opera and her training in theatre design, the show unfolds across a sequence of scenes which put the visitor centre-stage.
A Fashionable Marriage, 1986
installation view, 2017 © Nottingham Contemporary
Photo: Andy Keate
Courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens
The exhibition presents over 50 works that bring together painting, everyday objects, poetic texts and sound. Early installations including the well-known A Fashionable Marriage 1984 will enter into a dialogue with recent works such as her series of large format paintings Le Rodeur 2016-18, while new paintings created during lockdown will go on public display for the first time.
An early fascination with pattern, influenced by her mother’s career as a textile designer, has always been central to Himid’s work. A series of suspended cloth flags inspired by East African kanga textiles will welcome visitors to the exhibition at Tate Modern.
There Could Be an Endless Ocean 2018
Courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens
Throughout her career, Himid has explored and expanded the possibilities of storytelling, encouraging the viewer to become an active participant in her work. A fictional architecture competition inspires the installation Jelly Mould Pavilions for Liverpool 2010, in which a series of hand-painted ceramic models celebrate the contributions of the African diaspora and invite viewers to reflect on the role of monuments in public space. Displayed at Tate Modern alongside a range of works including Metal Handkerchiefs 2019 in a room addressing architecture and the built environment, Himid poses the question: ‘We live in clothes, we live in buildings. Do they fit us?’
A major highlight of the exhibition will be the presence of sound installations, including Blue Grid Test 2020, created by Himid in collaboration with artist Magda Stawarska-Beavan. Displayed in the UK for the first time, this 25-metre-long painting features 64 patterns from all over the world, each painted a different shade of blue on top of a variety of objects pinned to the gallery walls. Coupled with a sound installation layering instrumental music with Himid’s voice, the work creates a visual and sonic embrace.
The show will culminate in a group of recent paintings and painted objects, which centre on extraordinary moments of everyday life which are rarely portrayed. The series Men in Drawers 2017-19 features tender portraits of imaginary figures inside vintage wooden furniture, while works like Cover the Surface 2019 depict intimate interactions and moments of indecision between men. Himid also continues to explore women’s creativity in her recent paintings, including The Operating Table 2019.
For more information or to book tickets, visit the Tate Modern website here
London Visitors is the official blog for the Visiting London Guide .com website. The website was developed to bring practical advice and latest up to date news and reviews of events in London.
Since our launch in January 2014, we have attracted thousands of readers each month, the site is constantly updated.
We have sections on Museums and Art Galleries, Transport, Food and Drink, Places to Stay, Security, Music, Sport, Books and many more.
There are also hundreds of links to interesting articles on our blog.
To find out more visit the website here
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