Category: Art

Paris’ Museum of Modern Art revisits French artist Jean Fautrier (1898-1964) with a major retrospective of his paintings, drawings and sculptures (to May 20, 2018). He is not well known outside France. But in Europe he is considered one of the most important precursors of “art informel,”  a style which developed parallel to American abstract expressionism. In his famous series – Hostages (1943-1945), Objets (1955), Nus (1956), Partisans (1957) – the painting material itself becomes a major subject of the work. Continue reading “Jean Fautrier, Matter and Light”

Vincent Van Gogh in a letter from Paris to his friend Horace Mann Livens in 1886 said: “Paris is Paris, there is but one Paris and however hard living may be here… the French air clears up the brain and does one good.” Similar words have been spoken many times by countless artists past and present. “The Dutch in Paris, 1789-1914” —an exhibition at the Petit Palais—revisits the Paris sejours of nine Dutch artists attracted to Paris tracing their interactions with “La Ville-Lumière” (to May 13, 2018). Continue reading “Dutch Artists in Paris…”

The Grand Palais revisits the work of Czech painter and graphic artist František Kupka (1871–1957) one of the pioneers of abstract painting and Orphic Cubism. Kupka’s abstract works arose from a base of realism, but later evolved into pure abstraction. The retrospective traces Kupka’s career from his early Paris press illustrations of the 1890’s to his symbolist experiments to his final abstract paintings during the 1950’s (until July 30, 2018) The exhibition will be presented at the National Gallery in Prague next fall and then at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki in 2019. Continue reading “Kupka …Pioneer of Abstraction”

Paris’ Centre Pompidou hosts a sampling of work by American artist Jim Dine (until April 23). The title of the exhibition —translated as Paris recognition or gratitude— reflects the artist’s love for the city he has been visiting since the sixties. He maintains an art studio in Montrouge. The exhibition consists of 28 works that make up a recent donation by the artist to Paris Musée National d’Art Moderne. A gift he says to repay his “personal and cultural debt” to France.  Over the past years Dine has also donated selections of his art to museums across Europe and the US, including the British Museum, the Albertina in Vienna, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Continue reading “Jim Dine Paris Reconnaissance”

Paris’ Museum of Modern Art exhibits “Parsen un Module” by Swiss painter Pia Fries (to May 20, 2018). The work consists of 30 identically sized paintings (created in 1999) which have word play titles beginning with “par” forming words such as “parsmal,” “paramodi,” “partiner” and “parfanz,” The paintings with gluttonous clusters of scraped, sculpted and moulded paint juxtapositions are emblematic of her “image-object” style, which has been described as being on the cusp of painting and sculpture. Continue reading “Pia Fries at Paris Modern”

The Musée du Luxembourg marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Venetian painter Jacopo Robusti —better known as Titntoretto—with an exhibition (Tintoret, Naissance d’un Génie) focusing on the first fifteen years of his career. The artist was born into a family of craftsmen. His father was a dyer (or tintore), hence the son got the nickname of Tintoretto, little dyer or dyer’s boy (to July 1st, 2018) Continue reading “Tintoretto… a Star is Born”

The Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum specializes in indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. It opened in 2006 and is the newest of Paris’ major museums. A temporary exhibition at the museum “Peintures des Lointains” —looks at painters’ fascination with exotic people and places. It is the first time the museum has featured paintings from its vast collection of 450.000 objects . The painting exhibition includes mostly 19th century work from Ange Tissier’s “Odalisque” to daily life in Cairo by Emile Bernard to George Caitlin depictions of native Americans in the old west to Gauguin’s Tahiti. Continue reading “Painting Distant Lands”

In the early part of the 19th century —before photography was invented— artists took their easels and sketchbooks outdoors to more faithfully represent nature. “Designer en plein air,” a temporary exhibition at the Louvre revisits drawings, etchings and some thirty sketchbooks of several open air artists such as Delacroix, Corot, Chassériau, Valenciennes and Daubigny (to January 29. 2018).
Continue reading “Dessiner en Plein Air”

The Louvre revisits the French Renaissance with a temporary exhibition “Francois 1er et l’Art des Pays-Bas “ devoted to Dutch artists patronized by Francois Ier (1494-1547) who ruled France from 1515 until his death. Francois, an enthusiastic patron of the arts, initiated the French Renaissance by attracting to France many Italian artists including Leonardo da Vinci, who brought the Mona Lisa with him. Continue reading “Francois 1er and Dutch Art”

The Maison de l’Amérique Latine hosts a remarkable exhibition of work by Columbian artist Johanna Calle (to December 20, 2017). Although titled “Drawings” it is much more than that. Her drawings explore the idea of line in all its forms while using text, lattice screens, metal and cloth.  Wire is an integral material for many of her projects. Calle often uses it alongside drawing. She says “It is a more dimensional form of line and can communicate certain things that simply drawing cannot… My artworks are the result of research processes that discuss the investigation of materials.” Underlying the visual dimension of her work are such dialectics as abstract vs figurative and what is legible and illegible… the details we see up close and how things look further away. Continue reading “Johanna Calle’s “Drawings””