News

28.05.2019

 Titsian. Abduction of Europe. 1562. Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, Boston. Source: Artguide

For the first time in 300 years, a series of paintings by the Italian wizard of the Renaissance Titian will be united in one exhibition.

Titian wrote a series of paintings for the Spanish King Philip II between 1551 and 1562. The king left the artist the right to choose a plot of paintings, and he drew scenes from Ovid’s poem “Metamorphoses”. Titian called this series “poetry in the figurative form”.

The paintings were split in 1704 when the Spanish court began selling canvases. Five of the six series works will feature Titian: Love Desire Death (“Titian: Love, Desire, Death”).

The exhibition will be open at the National Gallery of London in March 2020 and will be departing from June to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston.

The exhibition will be held from March 21, 2020, to May 9, 2021:

from March 16 to June 14, 2020; National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom;

from July 6 to September 27, 2020; National Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland;

from October 20, 2020, to January 10, 2021; National Museum of Prado, Madrid, Spain;

from February 11 to May 9, 2021; Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, Boston, Mass., USA.

Source: https://artslooker.com/vpershe-za-300-rokiv-seriya-kartin-italiys/

20.05.2019

The market for impressionist and modernist work that has survived the recent recession is reviving. This was shown by the auctioned Christie’s auction house on Monday, May 13th. The works of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Amedeo Modigliani, Balthus, and Pierre Bonnard were sold for impressive eight-figure sums. The paintings of two of the last artists have set world records. As a result, the sale brought $ 399 million.

 Still Life of Field Cézanne “The Honey and Fruits” (1888/90)

Still life of Paul Cezanne “Pitcher and Fruits” went for $ 59.3 million with a hammer, taking into account fees. The final rate was made by the president of the Asian branch of Christie’s – Rebecca Wei on behalf of the client by phone. True, the amount earned for the picture is not enough to surpass Cezanne’s auction record, set in May 1999. Then one – still unknown – the bidder shook the world, paying $ 60.5 million for “Still Life with Drapery, a Jug and a Vase with Fruits”. It should be noted that, given inflation, this price is now almost $ 93 million.

 Vincent van Gogh, “Trees in a garden shelter” (1889)

Vincent van Gogh’s “Trees in the Umbrian Garden” landscape became the second-largest lottery this evening and also surpassed expectations. The score on demand was $ 25 million, but this amount was exceeded during a competition between two participants on the phone. As a result, the winner presented 40 million with the prize.

The third record holder of the evening was the sculptural “Head” Amedeo Modigliani. The only bidder bought it for an initial $ 30 million. The result did not justify an ambitious Christie’s preliminary estimate of $ 40 million, although, with allowance for fees, the final price was 34.3 million.

 Balthus “Teresa on the bench” (1939)

The Balthus masterpiece “Teresa on the bench”, dated 1939, became a record for the works of the painter. The last picture from the cult series of images of a minor artist’s music, Therese Blanchard, preliminarily estimated at 12-18 million dollars, eventually went for 19 million.

 Pierre Bonnard “The Terrace in Grasse” (1912)

The other record holder on May 13 was the Terraces in Grasse landscape, which became the most expensive piece in the legacy of Pierre Bonnard. The landscape has been pre-assessed at $ 5-8 million. However, the struggle of collectors wishing to own it has brought this figure to 19.5 million.

17.05.2019

The stainless steel sculpture “Rabbit” was sold at Christie’s for $ 91 million, making Jeff Koons the status of the most expensive living artist

 Jeff Koons. “Rabbit”. Stainless steel. Sculpture sold for $ 91 million. Photo: Christie’s

The evening auctions of Christie’s post-war and contemporary art in New York on May 15 brought the auction house $ 538.9 million, and Jeff Koons received the status of the most expensive living artist. His “Rabbit” in 1986 for $ 91 million acquired for his client art dealer Bob Mnuchin, the father of US Treasury Steven Mnuchin. The sparkling silver rabbit, made of stainless steel, was undoubtedly the main trophy of the evening. This work, as well as a dozen more pieces put up for auction and successfully sold, came from the collection of the late Cy Newhouse, the media mogul and the owner of the publishing house Condé Nast. It is known that Koons made four versions of such a sculpture, and this one was the last to remain in a private collection.

“No one understands the psychology of wealth better than Koons,” said Evan Bird, executive director of art for the US Trust bank. “Rabbit is at the same time flattering and challenging the collector, and can even raise the status of the owner much better than any PR agency.”

Another success of the evening auction at Christie’s was $ 88 million, earned by Robert Rauschenberg’s 1964 Buffalo II painting from the collection of Robert and Beatrice Mayer. Much of the work in silk screening was created shortly after the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which is depicted on it. Art consultant Grace Lee argues that the cost of works of Rauschenberg has not yet reached its maximum and its correction is inevitable. “The fact that prices for Rauschenberg are much lower than for Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly is contrary to common sense, because Rauschenberg’s influence on contemporary world art, especially in China or Latin America, was much greater,” she notes.

Traditionally, Andy Warhol’s work was in demand: The Twin Elvis (1963) was sold for $ 53 million, and Elizabeth Taylor’s blue portrait for $ 19.3 million. Another work from Cy Newhouse’s collection, Little Electric Chair, 2 million dealer Brett Gorvi from the Levy Gorvy gallery.

Bronze “Spider” (1997) Louise Bourgeois went under the hammer for $ 32 million – now it is her most expensive work sold at public auction, as well as the most expensive work of a sculptor-woman.

The final chord of the evening auction was a lively struggle that unfolded for the last lot – “The Garden” of Jonas Wood, the proceeds from the sale of which should go to the World Wildlife Conservation Organization (Global Wildlife Conservation, GWC). As a result, the final result repeatedly exceeded the estimate of $ 700 thousand and the work was sold for $ 4.9 million.

14.05.2019

 Kazimir Malevich, “Suprematist Composition 1”, 1916

On May 18th, on the International Day of Museums, in the Small Gallery of the Art Arsenal, the famous picture of Kazimir Malevich entitled “Suprematist Composition 1” will be shown.

This is the second painting by the artist, which is stored in the Ukrainian collection. The first work – “Suprematism 65” – is stored in the Parkhimovsky Art Museum in the Kharkiv region.

In the collection, which is formed by the Art Arsenal, already there are more than 3000 art objects. It includes: archaeological excavations, works by K. Malevich, O. Bogomazov, V. Palmov, V. Yermilov, as well as works by contemporary artists.

You can see the work from 11:00 to 18:00 in the Small Gallery. Free entrance.

Source: https://artslooker.com/u-misteckomu-arsenali-pokazhut-kart/

03.05.2019

 Leonardo da Vinci “Beautiful Ferroniere.”

The exhibition of works by Leonardo da Vinci promises to be one of the largest cultural events of 2019, not only in France but throughout the world.

The management of the Louvre hopes that it will successfully be able to negotiate with other museums, as well as with private collectors, to provide da Vinci paintings and drawings.

What kind of paintings brought to Paris is still unknown. One can only guess. Of course, the exhibition will surely appear all five masterpieces of Leonardo from his own collection of the Louvre. Moreover, “John the Baptist” can be seen for the first time after a long restoration, and “Beautiful Ferroniere” will return to Paris after a lengthy tour in the United Arab Emirates. At the same time, it has already been announced that “Mona Lisa” at the time of the exhibition will remain at its usual place in the permanent exhibition of the Louvre.

Almost certainly at the Paris exhibition will show the “Savior of the World”, which last year was sold to a Saudi prince for a record 400 million dollars and became the most expensive work of art in history. There are quite a few chances that the Hermitage Madonna Litta, the Milan Portrait of a Musician and Saint Jerome from the Vatican Pinakothek will arrive in Paris. These paintings travel quite often, all of them were shown at the Leonardo exhibition in London.

It is possible that the famous Lady with an Ermine will arrive in Paris. The picture was also presented at the London exhibition. Since then, she managed to change the owner and moved from the private meeting of the Princes of Czartoryski to the ownership of the Polish state. Now the picture is temporarily on display at the National Museum in Krakow. This exhibition ends just in the fall of 2019.

At the London exhibition, the Louvre sent two Leonardo masterpieces from his collection at once – “The Beautiful Ferroneire” and “Madonna in the Rocks”. It is very likely that now the London version of “Madonnas in the Rocks” will return with a return visit to Paris, and both versions of the painting can again be seen together.

It is not yet clear whether The Buccleuch Madonna will arrive in Paris. The picture from Duke  Buccleuch’s private collection was present at the London exhibition, but she has never traveled abroad in the United Kingdom. In addition, there are doubts that this picture was written by Leonardo.

There is a great chance to see the so-called Vitruvian man at the Paris exhibition. The most famous drawing by Leonardo is kept in the collection of the Venetian Gallery of the Academy and is exhibited there every five years, every three months (more often and longer graphics can not be exhibited). However, the last time it was shown in 2013, and this year there was no regular exhibition in Venice. Perhaps precisely in order to show the drawing in Paris.

The Madonna with a Carnation in Munich, the earliest of the Madonnas of Leonardo, in recent years has never left the halls of the Old Pinakothek. However, now there is a large exhibition of Florentine painting of the Renaissance, which is richly represented paintings from the collection of the Louvre. It is possible that in gratitude, “Madonna with a Carnation” will leave for Paris next fall.

But the chances of seeing in Paris a portrait of Ginevra de Benci from the collection of the Washington National Gallery are almost none. The only work of Leonardo in American collections never came to Europe since it was sold overseas in 1967 from the private collection of the princes of Liechtenstein. If the Louvre manages to organize the first European tour of Ginevra de Benci, it will be a real sensation.

The Hermitage Benois Madonna will almost certainly not appear at the Paris exhibition. Over the past decade, the picture never left St. Petersburg. Perhaps the state of the masterpiece simply excludes its transportation.

The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition in the Louvre will open on October 24, 2019, and will last until February 24, 2020. The second such exhibition in the coming decades just will not happen.

Definitely, need to go watch!

01.05.2019

The French authorities refused to issue an export license for the painting and gave the museum 30 months to find funds for its purchase.

 Rembrandt “Standard Bearer”. 1636. Photo: Christie’s

The Louvre plans to buy Rembrandt’s “Standard-Bearer” painting (1636), an elegant portrait of a life-size man who has been owned by the French branch of the Rothschilds for more than 180 years. Earlier, French Minister of Culture Frank Riester declared that the work was recognized as “national treasure”, and on April 19, the Journal official publication, which printed the main decrees and decrees of the French government, issued a decree refusing to issue an export license for the canvas rights to buy it.

Now the Louvre has 30 months to find the necessary funds to prevent the export of paintings outside of France. At the same time, the value of the work was not disclosed.

In 1840, James Jacob de Rothschild acquired the painting for £ 840 at Christie’s in London. It was probably the first Rembrandt piece bought by a member of the Rothschild family. Later the painting was inherited by his son Edmond de Rothschild, in 1935 he donated to the Louvre a collection of 40 thousand engravings and 3 thousand drawings, including a selection of etchings and Rembrandt drawings. Now the picture, previously in the collection of King George IV of England, belongs to the children of Elie de Rothschild, who died in 2007.

Three years earlier, the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum jointly bought portraits of Martin Solman’s and Opien Coppit (both 1634) by Rembrandt for € 160 million from Eric de Rothschild. The controversy was preceded by a sharp controversy due to the fact that the Louvre had originally recommended selling the works abroad due to the fact that he could not collect the necessary amount for the purchase. In the end, the funds provided by the Central Bank of France.

According to the book “The Corpus of Painting by Rembrandt” (1982–2014), “Standard-bearer” is “in very good preservation”. The painting is described as “written quickly, for the most part in broad strokes,” of shades of brown, gold and white. It was created in the same year as Danae, which is now located in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The basis of the costume of the soldier depicted on the “Standard-bearer” was partly the clothes of mercenaries of the early 16th century, who were called landsknechts. Perhaps Rembrandt was inspired by the engravings of artists such as Hendrik Goltzius who glorified the fighters for independence from Spain.

24.04.2019

 Nazar Bilyk, “Rain”

Familiar to all the sculpture “The Rain” by Nazar Bilyk can now be admired not only on the Landscape Alley of Kiev but also in the historic city of Etretat in Normandy. The work was erected in the Les Jardins d’Étretat Landscape Park within the framework of the international exhibition of contemporary sculptural art. The official opening of the project will take place on May 17, writes Afishar.

Since the creation of the sculpture “Rain” is one of the significant works in the work of Nazar Bilyk. And its installation in the capital’s Landscape Alley was almost the first successful demonstration of modern sculpture in Kyiv’s public space.

Les Jardins d’Étretat Park was founded in 1905 on the request of the French actress Madame Tebo. Already in those days, the town of Etret was very popular due to the amazing rocky scenery. Writers and impressionist artists came here, including Claude Monet, who often worked here. For a long time, the gardens were privately owned. In 2016, after creating a new landscape design, the park opened to visitors and since then has become one of the most visited places in the region. Les Jardins d’Étretat affects not only the diversity of plants and futuristic style but also the works of contemporary art, skillfully integrated into the natural environment.

Source: https://artslooker.com/vidoma-skulptura-nazara-bilika-prikrasila-odne-z-naymaliovnichishikh-mist-francii/

22.04.2019

The National Gallery in London shows one of the fastest and brightest artists in the world.

 Joaquin Sorolla. “Young fishermen” Valencia. 1904. Private collection. Photo: Laura Cohen

In the spring of 1908, one London gallery made an incredibly audacious statement about its new exhibition. Henri Matisse then finished writing “The Red Room”, Claude Monet immortalized water lilies in a pond in Giverny, and Pablo Picasso, at the peak of his African period, recently presented the Avignon Girls to the public. This did not embarrass Grafton Gallery, which stated that it was opening an exhibition of the “greatest living painter” – the Spaniard Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923). It was the first and until recently the last exhibition of Sorolla in Britain. In March of this year, a retrospective “Sorolla. Spanish Master of Light ”, which then travels to Dublin, to the National Gallery of Ireland.

Joaquin Sorolla was so famous in his homeland in Valencia, where he was born in 1863 in a family of fabric merchants, that during his lifetime the city authorities named one of the streets in his honor. The talent of Sorolla first manifested itself when he was a teenager working as a retoucher for a photographer whose daughter named Clotilde later became the artist’s wife. He entered art college and soon began to win major awards and scholarships to study in Italy. In 1900, his paintings had already bought the Prado Museum, and at the World Exhibition in Paris, Sorolla was awarded a gold medal. It was then that the artist, having seen his dark canvases in the dim light of the exhibition hall, decided to paint paintings illuminated by the Spanish sun.

 Joaquin Sorolla. “Return from fishing” 1894. Photo: Musee d’Orsay, RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

The magnificent mansion of Sorolla in Madrid, with marble floors and antiques, after the death of the artist from a stroke in 1920 became a museum, where his three children were transferred to more than a hundred of his father’s works. A third of this collection came to the current exhibition in the National Gallery: portraits of the family, huge beach scenes painted in the open air with grains of sand frozen in brushstrokes of paint. Other works provided the Prado and the New York Metropolitan Museum. And only one picture in the exhibition, a portrait of Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, is from the London National Portrait Gallery, the only work by Sorolla in Britain.

The great-granddaughter of the artist Blanca Pons-Sorolla, who is now working on his first complete catalog-reason, having already included more than 4 thousand works, consulted the exhibition in London. Indeed, Sorolla was an unsurpassed master of quick writing, beating in this and his main rival, the Italian Giovanni Boldini.

National Gallery
Sorolla. Spanish master of light
Till July 7

17.04.2019

The new owner of the painting, which has been owned by British collectors for almost 70 years, managed to get an export license for the work and remove it from the UK, despite the opposition of one of the members of the export commission

 Claude Monet. Charing Cross Bridge. 1901-1904. Photo: Private collection

Claude Monet’s canvas, depicting London’s Charing Cross Bridge, was sold in a private transaction for $ 63 million. The new owner received an export license for the painting and brought it abroad.

Monet began to paint the landscape in London in 1901, continued to make changes to Giverny and finished the work three years later. In 1932, at Christie’s auction, the work was acquired for £ 210 by the 9th Duke of Marlborough, who lived in Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. Although Monet wrote almost 100 species of London, only a few of them are in the collections of British collectors. The Duke of Marlborough sold the Charing Cross Bridge in 1934, just eight days before his death, and in 1950 Alexander Margulis, the owner of a London-based watch and jewelry company, bought the piece. After the death of Margulis in 1992, Charing Cross Bridge remained in the ownership of the descendants of a businessman and was presented at the Impressionists exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London last year.

An anonymous foreign buyer has applied for an export license to export the product outside the country. Because of the importance of the painting, one of the members of the export commission recommended to postpone the issuance of the license in order to allow UK buyers to buy it at the appropriate price. However, the commission rejected the recommendation and issued an export permit. The fact that the price of the work is indicated in dollars, suggests that the landscape did not go to Europe, but to a buyer from America or Asia.

15.04.2019

One of the most talented artists of all time, Leonardo da Vinci, whose creativity and figure was shrouded in secrets, was an ambidexter. This means that his right hand was as tricky as the left.

This was found by the experts of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, analyzing the picture of the master “Landscape Arno,” writes Phys.org.

Leonardo da Vinci “Landscape of Arno” // Artarhiv

The artist wrote it when he was 21 years old – in 1473. On it Da Vinci portrayed the valley of the Arno River, flowing through Florence, with the castle of Montelupo.

On the back of the canvas, the master made an inscription and reflected it on the side of the landscape. Scientists have established that one note da Vinci made with his left hand, the other – right.

Earlier it was known that the master was a jerk and used a mirrored letter – his texts should be read from right to left. But now researchers have found out that the artist still under his age had learned to give advice both hands.

“According to the observations of his handwriting, including the inscriptions on this picture, it becomes clear that his letter with his right hand was well-formed,” – noted art critic Cecilia Frosinini.

Source: https://ukraineartnews.com/news/news/vcheni-zjasuvali-tsikavij-fakt-pro-leonardo-da-vinchi