Fils du ciel – Exposition au Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles

Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles

Fils du ciel
10.10.2009 > 24.01.2010

Selon la mythologie chinoise, Pangu, le maître de l’univers, a séparé le ciel et la terre. Entre les deux est apparu le fils du ciel, souverain devant maintenir l’harmonie au sein de l’univers.

Exposition Fils du Ciel

Kanxi Emperor
©Palace Museum

L’exposition retrace l’histoire du dialogue rituel avec le ciel, du néolithique (ca. 3500 av. J.-C) à la dernière dynastie, les Qing (1644-1912).

Les rites magiques des premiers temps se complexifient pour finalement faire appel à l’astronomie. Vaisselle sacrificielle de bronze, linceul de jade, orfèvreries, robes impériales et porcelaine pour le culte au ciel, à la terre, au soleil, et à la lune, instruments d’astronomie et rouleaux peints donnant un aperçu de la vie des empereurs, sont autant d’oeuvres fascinantes qui ramènent ce dialogue avec le ciel à la vie.

250 oeuvres provenant de 6 provinces de Chine ainsi que du Musée de la Cité Interdite à Beijing créent un spectacle unique.

Exhibition Son of Heaven

Official in koutou posture, Terracotta,
Tang Mausoleum of Li Xian Shaanxi Archaeological Institute
© Li Xian Shaanxi Archaeological Institute

Exhibition Son of Heaven

Robe officielle de l’empereur Jiaqing 1796-1820 Jiaqing
© Palace-Museum

Courtesy BOZART
Images © Tous les droits réservés

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City Stroller Photo – São Paulo – Bovespa Building

Published on City Stroller October 21, 2009

City Stroller

São Paulo – Bovespa Building

Photography © Massimiliano Turci
All rights reserved

The headquarters of the Bovespa is a building of the 40’s, built in neoclassical style, in downtown São Paulo. The Bovespa [Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias & Futuros de São Paulo] is Latin America’s largest stock exchange.

Even though the Bovespa is a completely electronic market, as all trades are performed via the electronic system, a visit is still very interesting and worthwhile.

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Niki de Saint-Phalle – Roma, Museo Fondazione Roma

Museo Fondazione Roma, Roma

Niki de Saint-Phalle
4 novembre 2009 – 17 gennaio 2010

Per la prima volta in Italia una mostra presenta oltre 100 opere di Niki de Saint-Phalle, (Neuillysur-Seine, 1930 – San Diego, 2002), pittrice, scrittrice, performer che ha legato il suo nome a un percorso artistico straordinario che va oltre le classificazioni e le mode, e si mescola con una vita tumultuosa e affascinante: un’energia che ritroviamo in tutte le sue opere, dalle policrome sculture (Nanas) al famosissimo giardino dei Tarocchi di Capalbio.

Niki de Saint-Phalle

Niki de Saint-Phalle
Les trois Grâces (Le tre Grazie), 1994
Resina sintetica e colore vinilico
66 x 79 x 89 cm
© Niki Charitable Art Foundation. All rights reserved.

Dopo il grande successo della mostra “Hiroshige. Il maestro della natura”, la Fondazione Roma si distingue ancora una volta per una scelta culturale coraggiosa e innovativa. La rassegna si svolgerà infatti presso il Museo della Fondazione Roma (già Museo del Corso), dal 4 novembre 2009 al 17 gennaio 2010 ed è promossa dalla Fondazione Roma, presieduta dal Prof. Avv. Emmanuele Francesco Maria Emanuele che ha voluto rendere omaggio all’artista francese portando in Italia una mostra antologica di una celebre esponente della pop art.

Una mostra con caratteristiche eccezionali, anche dal punto di vista della fruizione da parte del pubblico: tutti i bambini fino a 14 anni potranno visitare la rassegna con ingresso gratuito grazie all’impegno della Fondazione Roma e di Arthemisia Group. Una iniziativa che si incontra con lo speciale rapporto che Niki de Saint-Phalle aveva con i bambini: l’artista li invitò spesso a fruire da vicino le sue opere, particolarmente adatte al pubblico dei più piccoli, chiedendo anche di interagire con esse. Per questa ragione, il Presidente Emanuele ha deciso di offrire ai giovani questa straordinaria opportunità.

Niki de Saint-Phalle

Niki de Saint-Phalle
La Force (La Forza), 1987
Poliestere stratificato e vernice acrilica
36 x 52 cm
Photographer: Laurent Condominas
© Niki Charitable Art Foundation. All rights reserved.

Niki de Saint-Phalle

Niki de Saint-Phalle
Tree of Liberty (Albero della libertà), 2000-2001
Poliestere dipinto, foglia d’oro
48 x 50 x 54 cm
© Niki Charitable Art Foundation. All rights reserved.

L’itinerario individuato dal curatore segue il percorso interiore dell’artista e permette lo sviluppo parallelo di un’esposizione che allinea numerosi dipinti del primo periodo dell’artista, degli anni cinquanta e sessanta, insieme alle celebri sculture policrome (Nanas) per le quali Niki de Saint-Phalle è famosa in tutto il mondo.

Le oltre 100 opere che compongono la mostra provengono per la maggior parte dalla Niki Charitable Art Foundation di San Diego in California, e raccontano una storia affascinante, fatta di esperienze vissute, sia dal punto di vista artistico, sia da quello umano e personale.

Niki de Saint-Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle, 1972
© Niki Charitable Art Foundation. All rights reserved.

Femminismo, mitologia, violenza, le inquietudini private e quelle sociali, sono i temi che permeano le opere di Niki de Saint Phalle. Opere mai disgiunte dalla sua vita e attraverso la mostra, che presenta anche una serie di fotografie, sarà possibile percepire il fil-rouge che collega le diverse e intersecate esperienze della sua tormentata vicenda artistica.

Courtesy ARTHEMISIA GROUP SRL / Museo Fondazione Roma
Images © Niki Charitable Art Foundation. All rights reserved.

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Revolution on Paper: Mexican Prints 1910 – 1960 at the British Museum

British Museum

Revolution on Paper: Mexican Prints 1910 – 1960
22 October 2009 – 5 April 2010
Room 90

The exhibition is the first in Europe to focus on the great age of Mexican printmaking in the first half of the 20th century. It features 130 works by over 40 artists including prints by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera
Emiliano Zapata and his horse. 1932. Lithograph.
© Copyright 2009, Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico D.F. / DACS

Between 1910 and 1920 the country was convulsed by the first socialist revolution, from which emerged a strong left-wing government that laid great stress on art as a vehicle for promoting the values of the revolution. This led to a pioneering programme to cover the walls of public buildings with vast murals, and later to setting up print workshops to produce works for mass distribution and education. All the prints in the exhibition come from the British Museum’s collection which has been acquired thanks to the generosity of the Aldama Foundation, Dave and Reba Williams and The Art Fund.

Some of the finest of these prints were produced by the three great men of Mexican art of the period known as ‘los tres grandes’: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The best-known print is Rivera’s Emiliano Zapata and his horse which has achieved iconic status in twentieth century Mexican art. Other prints including Rivera’s portrait of Frida Kahlo, Siqueiros’ Dama Negra, Orozco’s The Masses, demonstrate the extraordinary breadth, imagination, and quality of the works shown. In addition to the Los Tres Grandes, many other artist were involved and rose to prominence, especially after the founding of the Taller del Gráfica Popular (TGP) in Mexico City in 1937. The range of material is fascinating: as well as single-sheet artists’ prints, there are large posters with designs in woodcut or lithography by these same artists, and illustrated books on many different themes. The exhibition will also include earlier works around the turn of the century by the popular printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada, who was adopted by the revolutionaries as the archetypal printmaker who worked for the people, and whose macabre dances of skeletons have always fascinated Europeans.

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera
Seated female nude. Diego Rivera.1930. Lithograph.
© Copyright 2009, Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico D.F. / DACS

Roberto Hinojosa

Roberto Hinojosa
‘Justicia Social en Mexico, segundo Congreso de Estudiantes Socialistas de Mexico’. Mexico City. 1935.
© Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum

Printmakers in Mexico often belonged to groups, societies and movements which were underpinned by their commitment to politics. The earliest movement was Stridentism, an avant garde group which was launched 1921 and was similar to the Italian Futurist movement because it rejected the past. The Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) was formed in 1937 by Luis Arenal, Leopoldo Méndez and Pablo O’Higgins as a graphic arts workshop which was influenced by communism. TGP members had access to printing equipment at the workshop and did not need to have artistic training. The collective produced prints for posters, flyers and portfolios which were printed on cheap paper. Their prints often supported the campaigns of trade and workers unions in Mexico. For example, Pablo O’Higgins and Alberto Beltrán collectively made a poster advertising the first Latin American Petrol Workers conference. The TGP was also particularly committed to the fight against international Fascism. Angel Bracho’s striking red and black poster, Victoria! (1945), which celebrates the allied victory over the Nazi’s in 1945, is a key example of the TGP’s anti-Fascist stance. Other printmakers addressed subjects such as corruption, capitalism and Mexican daily life in their prints.

Isidoro Ocampo

Isidoro Ocampo
Japanese Fascist: Facism. The Japanese Facist, 1939.
© Copyright Copyright Trustees of the British Museum

In 1957, the TGP held a major exhibition at the Fine Arts Palace in Mexico City to celebrate its twentieth anniversary as a printmaking collective and its activity continues even today on a minor scale. Members of the TGP and other artists’ groups have published extensively in support of the visual arts. Other artists associated with the TGP went on to establish art schools, institutions or museums.

Courtesy The British Museum
Images © Their respective owners. All rights reserved

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John Gibbons: Portraits / National Portrait Gallery, London

National Portrait Gallery, London

John Gibbons: Portraits
12 September 2009-14 March 2010
Room 32 (Admission free)

The first display of portraits by the sculptor John Gibbons has opened at the National Portrait Gallery. It is the latest in the Gallery’s Interventions series focusing on twentieth-century artists who have developed innovatory approaches to portraiture.

John Gibbons

John Gibbons
Your Story/White Blackbird, 2008-9
© John Gibbons
Photo: Noah Da Costa

This display, comprising dramatic works in welded steel, explores Gibbons’s treatment of the human head as a ‘container’ for experience, identity, personality and mind. A special wall-mounted installation has been constructed to showcase five powerful sculptures, dating from 1981 to the present, which transform industrial materials into enigmatic cage-like forms. Three of the sculptures appear to float high up on angled shelves built into the Gallery walls whilst two smaller ones are given a more intimate setting at a low level.

During a career that now extends for over 30 years, John Gibbons (b.1949) has secured a reputation as one of Britain’s leading sculptors. Like Sir Anthony Caro, with whom he worked as an assistant in the late1970 s, Gibbons’s work is closely associated with large, abstract, floor-based sculpture in welded steel. As a student at St Martin’s School of Art (1972-6), he was the assistant to the portrait sculptor Oskar Nemon who was an important early influence. Both these affinities are apparent in Gibbons’s work which, although apparently abstract, has always been infused with references to a human presence.

The earlier sculptures, Darragh’s Place and Portrait of Sharon, named after the artists’ son and daughter, began as evocations of place before assuming human attributes. Their small, cube-like shapes recall tabernacles or reliquary boxes, both containers of a spiritual nature. The holy sites, rituals and sacred objects associated with the artist’s Roman Catholic upbringing in County Clare in Western Ireland inform these sculptures. However, while working on these pieces, increasingly Gibbons saw them in terms of the human head, recognising the associations they prompted with his son and daughter.

John Gibbons

John Gibbons
Grainne/ Saying Hallo, 2008-9
© John Gibbons
Photo: Noah Da Costa

John Gibbons

John Gibbons
Portrait of Sharon, 1981-4
© John Gibbons
Photo: Noah Da Costa

The three most recent works evoke members of his family and friends. In some instances more than one individual is suggested by the same sculpture. Now employing more open forms, linear stainless steel rods and bar, these sculptures continue to engage with the sitter’s inner life – that mysterious place which Gibbons perceives at the core of portraiture.

Paul Moorhouse, 20th Century Curator of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: ‘In some respects Gibbons seems an unlikely artist for the Gallery’s displays. At first, his work appears to have little connection with portraiture. At a fundamental level, however, Gibbons has not only engaged with portraiture but has extended the language of this genre in radical ways.’

Courtesy National Portrait Gallery
Images © John Gibbons

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