From the Bowes to the Wallace

Oct25

El Greco to Goya – Spanish Masterpieces from The Bowes Museum, The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London, W1, until 7th January 2018

Jose Antolinez
The Immaculate Conception, 1650-75
Credit @ The Bowes Museum

While we usually think of the Wallace Collection as a haven of French 18^th century art and taste it is of course much more than that as its works by Murillo and Velazquez testify. It is therefore appropriate that this group of Spanish paintings, spanning three centuries, should come on loan from the Bowes Museum in County Durham and mark the start of a partnership between these two remarkable places. The museums have similar origins as they are both the gifts of illegitimate sons of aristocratic fathers to the British nation.

Francisco Jose Goya
Interior of a Prison, 1793-94
Credit @ The Bowes Museum

Xavier Bray, Director of the host museum says: “El Greco to Goya is not only an unprecedented opportunity to see Spanish art of extraordinary power and significance in London, but also the beginning of an exciting relationship between the Wallace Collection and The Bowes Museum. Both institutions share a commitment to making great art accessible to wider audiences and we are looking forward to working closely together to develop a long term connection between London and the North East.”

Domenikos Theotokopoulos ‘El Greco’
The Tears of St Peter, 1580-89
Credit @ The Bowes Museum

His counterpart at the Bowes Museum, Adrian Jenkins, says: “In 1892, when The Bowes Museum first opened its doors to the public, it had the largest public collection of Spanish paintings in the UK. As we mark 125 years since the creation of the museum, it is highly appropriate that the key works from this collection should be shared with London audiences, in keeping with John and Joséphine Bowes’ belief that great art should be made accessible to all. Neither John nor Joséphine Bowes survived to realise their vision, and they would be delighted to think that the best of their acquisitions would be shown at the Wallace Collection during this anniversary year, recognising that their gift to the people of County Durham is also a gift to the nation.”

Well worth a peek!

Antonio Pereda y Salgado
Tobias Restoring his Father’s Sight, 1652
Credit @ The Bowes Museum

wallacecollection.org / @WallaceMuseum / #ElGrecotoGoya

Antoni Tàpies

Mar1

Antoni Tàpies: Revulsion and Desire, Timothy Taylor Gallery, 15 Carlos Place, London W1, until 18^th March 2017

Antoni Tàpies – Installation View
Photo: Sylvain Deleu
Image Courtesy Timothy Taylor

One can see why the Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) exerted such an influence on Spanish art for more than sixty years. These works created since 2000 show that even in his later years he had lost none of his impact and reflect his 1955 observation: “If forms are not capable of wounding, irritating or inducing society to meditate, to make it realise how backward it is, if they are not a revulsive, then they are not authentic works of art.”

Antoni Tàpies – Installation View
Photo: Sylvain Deleu
Image Courtesy Timothy Taylor

He used a mixture of materials in creating these abstract pieces, including sand, marble dust, chalk, dirt and human hair. The works on show very much suggest the body, especially Cames i AT, 2011 which hints at sexual congress while others have a hint of violence and confrontation His use of a cross-like motif evokes the idea of the ‘signature’ or mark of someone who cannot write and he also used numbers as well. They are works that leave a lasting impression on the viewer.

Antoni Tàpies – Installation View
Photo: Sylvain Deleu
Image Courtesy Timothy Taylor

http://www.timothytaylor.com

Chillida at Ordovas

Apr1

Chillida: Rhythm-Time-Silence, Ordovas, 25 Savile Row London W1, until 23^rd April 2016

Chillida: Rhythm-Time-Silence installation view,
photography by Mike Bruce,
Chillida Belzunce Family Collection © Zabalaga-Leku, DACS, London, 2016

This exhibition comes to London from the gallery’s pop-up space in New York where it formed the inaugural show. It examines through the three large-scale pieces on show the Chillida’s fascination with the concept of space as material. The sculptures are made from corten steel – reflecting the blacksmithing heritage of his native Basque country – and granite.

Chillida: Rhythm-Time-Silence installation view,
photography by Mike Bruce,
Chillida Belzunce Family Collection © Zabalaga-Leku, DACS, London, 2016

I can only concur with Pilar Ordovas who says “My intention is to continue to increase international awareness of his major innovations in the field of sculpture and serve to introduce his work to new generations of audiences, scholars and collectors.”

Chillida: Rhythm-Time-Silence installation view,
photography by Mike Bruce,
Chillida Belzunce Family Collection © Zabalaga-Leku, DACS, London, 2016

WWW.ORDOVASART.COM

Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga Requests The Pleasure of Your Company

Nov6

GOYA: THE PORTRAITS, The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2, until 10^thJanuary 2016

One of the pictures in this show is well-known to me through my interest in interior decoration. It is the famous portrait of Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga, who in this exhibition is reunited with Goya’s portraits of his father and mother and sister.

Francisco de Goya
Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga
1788
Oil on canvas
127 x 101.6 cm
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.41)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The portrait was bought from the famed art dealer Joseph Duveen by the American banker Jules S Bache in 1926 and it is believed that his daughter Kathryn was the driving force behind this purchase. The latter was better known as Kitty Miller, wife of the renowned theatre producer Gilbert Miller, and she employed the noted designer Billy Baldwin to decorate their homes in New York, London and Mallorca.

It is her New York home that is the focus of this story for when Bache donated his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1949 there was a specific condition and that was that the picture could hang in Kitty’s drawing room for half the year. In his book Billy Baldwin Remembers Baldwin recalls that when the painting was first hung in the drawing room the Millers sent out cocktail party invitations to New York society to come and meet Don Manuel Osorio de Zuñiga. So each year it hung there to Kitty’s great delight until her death in 1979, although in Legendary Decorators of the 20th Century, the famous interior decorator Mark Hampton says that “As she grew older, it became annually more difficult for the Met to get the painting back”.

Well, one can totally understand why she had such affection for this painting and now it is our turn to go and meet him. While there are no cocktails being served there is the delicious treat of seeing more than sixty of Goya’s remarkable portraits. It is such a good show you will most likely want to visit more than once – just like visiting the Miller’s!

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Chillida on Miró, Ordovas, London

Jul11

Chillida on Miró, Ordovas, 25 Savile Row, London W1, until 26th July

Chillida on Miró installation view,
Photography by Mike Bruce © Zabalaga-Leku, DACS, London, 2014 / © Successió Miró / ADAGP, Paris and DACS London 2014.

There is still time to see this rather special exhibition that celebrates two of Spain’s most well-known artists who first met in Paris when they and their respective wives (both named Pilar) were staying in the same hotel . It is a story of friendship and family because the artists, their wives and children would holiday each year in Saint-Paul de Vence and there the two artists would work together and grow in mutual respect. Chillida regarded Miro as a revolutionary in his art and in his championship of causes he believed in and indeed in the 1970s Chillida received Miro’s support over his controversial sculpture Lugar de Encuentros III.

Joan Miró, Projet pour un monument,1979, Private Collection © Successió Miró / ADAGP, Paris and DACS London 2014.

“Miró was a fantastic person, his work inspires an unusual feeling. Everyone has
always noticed him because of colour, but I look at the drawings of Miró. The
drawings are very important; all the curved lines were always convex, never
concave. This was an important problem: I drew concave lines and his were
convex. He changed my way of looking at the line and space.” (Eduardo
Chillida, quoted in Sculpture Magazine, November 1997, vol. 16, no. 9)

Eduardo Chillida, Lurra 57, Executed in 1980, Private Collection © Zabalaga-Leku, DACS, London, 2014

The family association and collaboration continues to this day because Chillida’s children and Miró’s grandson have loaned unpublished letters and poems and personal photographs. Thus this show gives a heart-warming glimpse into the lives of both artists.

Joan Miró, Maternité, 1967, Private Collection © Successió Miró / ADAGP, Paris and DACS London 2014

Eduardo Chillida,
Elogio del Hierro II,
Executed in 1990,
Chillida Belzunce Family Collection
© Zabalaga-Leku, DACS, London, 2014

ordovasart.com

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Tag Archives: Spanish art

From the Bowes to the Wallace

Antoni Tàpies

Chillida at Ordovas

Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga Requests The Pleasure of Your Company

Chillida on Miró, Ordovas, London