El Greco y la Pintura Moderna (El Greco and Modern Painting), Prado Museum, Madrid, 24 June – 5 October 2014.
The latest of the exhibitions in Spain devoted to the Cretan’s art and influence focuses on the rediscovery of El Greco by nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern and avant-garde artists in France, Germany, Spain and North and South America. 26 works by El Greco alongside more than 80 modern paintings and drawings, including Cézanne’s version of the Lady in an Ermine Wrap (lent to Spain for the first time), and works by Manet, Picasso and Expressionist groups amongst others. The exhibition aims to reveal how El Greco’s influence extended through Expressionism and Cubism to post World War II Abstract Expressionist artists in America such as Jackson Pollock and the angst-ridden figuration in the UK of Francis Bacon. It will also include works by Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall André Derain, Robert Delaunay, Alberto Giacometti, Oskar Kokoschka, August Macke, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, Egon Schiele, and Chaïm Soutine. It has been organised by Javier Barón, curator of nineteenth-century art at the Prado.
España de Moda, Madrid
España de Moda (Fifty years of Spanish Fashion), Museo del Traje, Madrid, 13 May – 31 August 2014. Exhibition of dress, drawings and posters. Includes interviews with leading Spanish fashion designers from the 1960s onwards, who developed from being producers of luxury goods to adapting to new economic factors in the 1970s and introducing prêt-a-porter garments; to the present position with young designers working for established world-renowned companies.
Cristina Rodriguez: Manchester Cathedral
Cristina Rodrigues: Women from My Country, Manchester Cathedral, 3 July – 21 September. A 3-part installation, sponsored by the Arts Council, will be unveiled by the Portuguese-born Manchester-based artist. The 3 works are individually entitled The Queen, Enlightenment and Blanket, the latter made from adufes, square tambourines traditionally played by women in central inland Portugal, woven together with Portuguese lace and multi-coloured ribbons braided by local Manchester women.
Aztecs in Liverpool
Aztecs in Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 3 July – 26 October 2014. Part of the Liverpool Biennial. The celebrated composer Michael Nyman, best known for his soundtracks to several Peter Greenaway films and to Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano, has turned photographer and film-maker. His two-screen video installation Aztecs in Liverpool was inspired by his first encounter, on a visit to Liverpool, with the late 15th to early 16th-century, Aztec Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, owned by World Museum Liverpool, the Walker’s near neighbour. A reduced-size 4-metre replica of the Codex will be shown within the display. Nyman has used the rituals and format described by the Codex pictograms as a conceptual framework for the still and moving images of Mexican street-life and high art – from pre-hispanic artefacts to contemporary culture – which he has captured over the past 20 years in his newly adopted home of Mexico. Nyman’s visual engagement with Mexican regional traditions, rituals and music is also influenced by Mexican literary and visual artists particularly their street photographers, whose work he collects. For conservation reasons the original Codex will not be on display in either the Walker of World Museum Liverpool.
Carlos Cruz-Diez, Liverpool
Carlos Cruz-Diez (b.1923), Liverpool, 12 June 2014 – Winter 2015.
The artist has been commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art and Tate Liverpool to commemorate the centenary of the beginning of World War I by creating his contemporary version of a World War I ‘dazzle-ship’ in Liverpool’s Albert Dock, adjoining the river Mersey. A dazzle-ship’s abstract geometric-form of camouflage was devised in 1917 (and applied by the English artist Edward Wadsworth) to distort optically a ship’s shape, so that it was difficult for German submarines to calculate the course it was travelling on, and so know from what angle to attack. But so far the Venezuelan artist’s ‘take’ on a dazzle-ship has been met by Scouse wits comparing it to a tube of Refreshers, the 1970s British sweet!
Radical Geometry: Modern Art of South America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, London
Radical Geometry: Modern Art of South America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, Royal Academy Sackler Wing, 5 July – 28 September 2014. Explores the innovative geometric abstract art that South American avant-garde artists created from the 1930s to the 1980s. The exhibition co-curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Director of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection in New York and Caracas, and Adrian Locke (of the Royal Academy, who curated last year’s RA exhibition of Mexican art 1910-1940), includes works by Argentinian, Brazilian, Uruguayan and Venezuelan artists. It investigates their relationship to the continent’s social, political and cultural circumstances, such as the links between modern geometries in 1930s and 1940s Uruguay and the work of Joaquín Torres-García and those of the ancient Inca. Other artists include the Brazilian Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark and Venezuelan op-artist Carlos Cruz-Diez
Spanish drawings: From Valdés Leal to Sorolla, London
Spanish drawings: From Valdés Leal to Sorolla, London (Master Drawings & Sculpture Week, 2014)
José de la Mano showing at Mackinnon 5 Ryder Street, St James’s, London, 4 – 11 July 2014
Includes drawings by Valdés Leal, including The Apparition of Christ to Saint Ignatius on his Way to Rome, (1660-1664) in black and red chalk, Ramón Bayeu (1744-1793) and a Vicente López. portrait of 1812.
PintaLondon 2014
PintaLondon, Earls Court Exhibition Centre, London, 12-15 June 2014. London’s modern and contemporary Latin American Art fair, which also includes Spanish and Portuguese artists.
This year’s focus is on monochrome Spanish art from 1950 to 1970 curated by the Madrid art dealer José de la Mano.
Entry ticket price £15; ticket + catalogue £25.
Made in Mexico: The Rebozo in Art, Culture & Fashion, London
Made in Mexico: The Rebozo in Art, Culture & Fashion Fashion and Textile Museum, South London, 6 June – 31 August. (Closed Mondays, nearest tube station London Bridge).
The first-ever exhibition in the UK on the rebozo – the classic Mexican shawl made famous in 20th-century culture by Frida Kahlo. ‘Made in Mexico’ explores the key role textiles have played in promoting Mexican culture worldwide from the 17th century to the present day. Rebozos on display include major loans from: the Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City; the Museum of Textiles, Oaxaca; the British Museum and rebozos from private collections that have never before been shown in public. Contemporary Mexican and UK artists, photographers, fashion and textile designers – including Francisco Toledo, Graciela Iturbide, Carla Fernandez, Zandra Rhodes and Kaffe Fassett – also present new work created in response to the rebozo and Mexican textiles. Entry ticket £8.
Chillida On Miró, London
Chillida on Miró, Ordovas Gallery, Savile Row, London, 5 June – 26 July
Display focusing on the close friendship between Eduardo Chillida and Joan Miró, which flourished during summers spent with their families at St Paul de Vence. Among the highlights are a major Miró canvas from 1945, Femme dans la nuit, that has not been exhibited in the UK for 50 years, and an unseen drawing by Miró given to Chillida in 1971. The seven sculptures by Chillida range from a monumental two-metre high work to two small terracotta figures gifted to Miró. Miró’s work is viewed through Chillida’s eyes and letters between the two artists and poetry sent to each other are published in the accompanying catalogue.
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