the autumn of 2010 opened a new space in Old Bond Street, London. The first exhibition, Egon Schiele. Women, opened in May 2011 to universal acclaim.
a Year. In the past has this included The Silverman Collection – a single-owner group of outstanding Austrian and German Expressionist works – and George Grosz, Berlin. Prostitutes, Politicians and Profiteers.
Much of the 4,000 works Schiele produced during his short lifetime can only be seen in Vienna – at the Belvedere, the Albertina and the Leopold Museum – or in New York, primarily at the Neue Galerie. While Schiele is recognised as one of the greatest draughtsmen of the 20th century, with watercolours making more than $11 million at auction, his work is absent from museum collections in the United Kingdom, and has been given little public attention in the past 20 years.
The Silverman Collection is one of the most important private collections of 20th-century German and Austrian art in the world. It comprises masterpieces from the Vienna Secession by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, as well as astonishing Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) furniture by Koloman Moser and Carl Otto Czeschka. It also features an exceptional group of drawings by Alfred Kubin and major works by the German Expressionists George Grosz, Otto Dix, Ludwig Meidner, Oskar Schlemmer and Max Beckmann.
Some 50 works by the titan of German satirical art were assembled from leading private and public collections around the world.The works in the exhibition included savage caricatures and nightmarish visions that articulate Grosz’s sharp contempt for all aspects of bourgeois life in Germany.His childhood distrust of authority figures found its outlet after the catastrophic events of the First World War. Later in life he would describe his experiences in the trenches as ‘wholly negative’, and his caricatures of military generals in works such as Vor der Kaserne (In Front of the Barracks), 1918, exude his hatred for the empty bluster of German militarism.In the years following its humiliating defeat, Germany was cast into political disarray. Grosz established a reputation as a formidable satirist, producing bloodcurdling images such as Nieder mit Liebknecht (Down with Liebknecht), 1918, and encapsulating the cynical humour of Berlin’s Dada movement with his wry illustrations for Die Pleite (Bankrupt). Grosz became particularly fascinated by the decadent side of cosmopolitan Berlin in the 1920s. In his art he fought against the base preoccupations of bourgeois society by uncovering a shadowy world of crime, murder and erotic licence. Lustmord (Sex Murder) is a prominent motif in his work, in which the combination of sexuality and violence is presented as a ritualization of the human quest for power, exemplified by political practice.A highlight of the exhibition was an important work recently discovered in a private collection and never shown outside of Germany. The work is an earlier watercolour version of what Grosz claimed to be his greatest oil painting, Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen (Germany, a Winter’s Tale), 1918, which was likely destroyed in the early 1930s. The title harks back to a classic of German literature, a satirical poem by Heinrich Heine, but the object of Grosz’s contempt is decidedly contemporary. In the centre of the image, a well-fed bourgeois nationalist (Biedermann) sits at a dinner table with an upright knife and fork as though ready to start carving. In the chaos around him the viewer can distinguish brothels, factories and tenement buildings, while figures symbolizing the pillars of society – the Church, the Military and Education – turn a blind eye and loom in the foreground.Several striking watercolours from Grosz’s famous series Ecce Homo, 1923, were also on display. Dämmerung (The Gloaming), 1922, shows the day ending and nightlife awakening in the twilight of the big metropolis. A pimp with a cigar in his mouth watches over his harlots roaming the streets, while a neatly dressed businessman can be seen next to a prostitute who is wearing a striking red hat. A blind man at a house corner is selling matches. In the far distance one can detect a suspicious man walking towards the onlooker. A policeman, the so-called Schupo (Schutzpolizei, or Protection Police), watches the scene from the corner of his eye, ready to intervene at his discretion.At the root of Grosz’s political message is a moral imperative. As he wrote in 1921, ‘You can’t be indifferent about your position in this activity, about your attitude towards the problem of the masses…Are you on the side of the exploiters or on the side of the masses?’ For this reason, Richard Nagy was pleased to announce that the show served to benefit Global Witness, a not-for-profit dedicated to protecting communities and their environments from the abuses that result from natural resource-related conflict and corruption. Patrick Alley, Director of Global Witness, commented: ‘We are delighted that Global Witness will share a platform with this fascinating and timely George Grosz exhibition. Being so savagely critical of corruption and injustice, his work resonates strongly with our campaigns to tackle the international systems, and political, financial and economic norms which exacerbate these problems.’
There are defining exhibitions at Neue Galerie New York, Kunsthalle Zurich and the Courtauld Gallery London simultaneously. Despite the pressure of loan requests we are happy to be able to exhibit 30 exemplary works by the artist, including works never seen in the UK before, and in some cases being exhibited for the first time. The subject matter, unlike our previous exhibition of 2011, is showing the breadth of the artist’s interest – portraits, landscapes and the erotic hang side by side.
They are on loan from leading museums including the Albertina (Vienna), the Leopold Museum (Vienna) and the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum (Linz); as well as private collections from United States, Europe and Australia.Born in Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Alfred Kubin (1877– 1959) is considered one of the greatest artists of early 20th century and a key figure associated with the Symbolist, Expressionist and proto-Surrealist movements.Focusing exclusively on a concise period of Alfred Kubin’s work between 1898 and 1906, the exhibition sheds new light on the artist’s most original and subversive body of work created in his early twenties in Munich, where he went to study art following a traumatic adolescence.Alfred Kubin’s life was scarred by a series of tragedies: his mother, a gifted pianist, died when Kubin was only ten years old; his father married the mother’s sister immediately after, who then died in her first childbirth the same year. A pregnant woman, much his senior, seduced him soon after. At the age of 19, he attempted suicide on his mother’s grave and had a nervous breakdown following the death of his commander in the army in 1897. He was again brought to the brink of suicide in 1903 by his fiancée’s sudden death, hence his pervasive obsession with death and loss intertwined with love and sex.Kubin is the artist who best illustrates the tormented fin-de-siècle, with his uncanny drawings depicting the spectral world of primal drives and fears. From 1899 onwards, he frequented Munich’s avant-garde artistic scene and familiarised himself with the art of Francisco Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, Edvard Munch and Félicien Rops whose influence proved to be more decisive than his art studies. Discovering Max Klinger’s symbolist etchings was the true turning point of his early Munich years, triggering his ability to translate his own pathological memories and unbridled fantasies into visual form. Kubin further explored the depths of the unconscious under the influence of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, becoming the ultimate draftsman of dreams and nightmares. Beyond Kubin’s personal traumas, his work is a clear depiction of the degenerate state of pre-war Europe and the birth pains of the modern century; a mirror of the universal and timeless agony of the human condition, informed by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer.His distinct style defies neat categorisation and was executed in an original technique that combines pen and ink line drawing with washes and sprayed areas of ink occasionally with muted colour. His unusual use of a screened spray technique was an attempt to achieve the chiaroscuro effect of Goya and Klinger’s aquatint etchings. Most Kubin drawings were rendered on the back of Katasterpapier, or land register paper, which was used for geographic mapping – an easy choice given that his father was a land surveyor for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The perfect canvas to map the darkest corners of the unconscious, this rare paper provided by his father allowed the ink to fuse with the surface, unlike smooth, thin paper.Highlights from the masterpieces on display include Syphilis (1901), Starvation (c. 1901), The Best Physician (c. 1901), Siberian Myth (c. 1901) and Dwarf with Candle (1901-02) amongst others. Their unsettling imagery embody Kubin’s recurring themes such as death,sexuality, fertility, battle of the sexes, fear, violence, poverty, and myths; and confront their viewers with their own anxieties and urges.While Kubin is recognised as one of the greatest artists of early 20th century in Austria and Germany, his work is absent from museum collections in the United Kingdom and has been given little public attention. This exhibition hopes to rectify this oversight by introducing the pinnacle of his early work to the London audience.A major catalogue will be published on the occasion of the exhibition. Dr Jill Lloyd, who specialises in twentieth-century German and Austrian art, will write ground- breaking new essays for the book.
Modernism in Photography since World War I, an exhibition of 50 rare photographs captured between the 1920s and 1960s by the greatest talents of their day
This is the first UK exhibition of its kind outside of a museum and the finest gallery exhibition of vintage photography ever seen in London.With over forty years’ experience in the world of photography, American specialist Michael Shapiro brings with him an academic approach and a wealth of knowledge that has made him an internationally recognised authority on the subject. This will be his first venture in the UK and an unmissable opportunity to discover exceptional prints by masters of 20th century photography. Richard Nagy has been collecting vintage modernist photographs for many years, an interest which has been developed and encouraged by his long-standing friendship with Shapiro.Breaking Away provides a rare insight into the process behind the vintage prints featured in the exhibition, which were created at the time of the negative’s exposure. The photographs reveal how the artists first conceived the printing of a particular image and carry the hallmarks of their early production; the high silver content in many cases giving them an astonishing warmth, a feature lost in later photography as the price of silver rose.The show spans key themes of modernist photography, as artists began to embrace the medium as a means for radical experimentation, examination of the human form, and social documentary.At the heart of the display are daring new depictions of the human body including an exceptionally rare portrait of Lee Miller by Man Ray entitled Neck (1929), which employs soft-focus and cropping to reduce her bust to an ecstatically erotic abstraction. A newly-discovered and most extraordinary print, Nude (Miriam Lerner, torso, hand on hip) (1925) by Edward Weston, frames the angles and folds of Lerner’s body, creating a soft, sensuous composition. Similarly, in an early, oversized printing of Bill Brandt’s Nude, Belgravia, London (1951), the camera focuses on a faceless nude, with the wide-angle lens distorting the curves of the limbs; the result is simultaneously sensual and depersonalised. Moving beyond the nude, a unique print of Gerald Warburg, Cellist (1929) by Imogen Cunningham cuts out all extraneous detail to emphasise the poised, expressive hand of the musician, reducing him to one emphatic symbol of his craft.Social documentary photography is exemplified by Workers, Grand Coulee Dam, Columbia Basin Project, Washington State (1937) by Margaret Bourke-White which depicts a cheerful crowd of workers gathered in front of a jarringly cautionary Depression-era billboard. Consuelo Kanaga’s Frances with Flower (1930-1932) epitomises her humane and sympathetic portraiture of her African American sitters, a radical act in segregationist America. A standout in the exhibition is The Labyrinth Deciphered, Veracruz, Mexico (1932) by Manuel Álvarez Bravo capturing a young Mexican girl hanging tobacco, his most experimental image and only known use of double-exposure.Rare images of London by the late great master of American photography Robert Frank promise to be a must-see highlight. Frank, who passed away last year, travelled to the UK in the 1950s and made studies of the different regions with his Leica camera. An oversized vintage print entitled City of London (Negative: 1951: Print: 1957 – c.1960) is believed to be the only known example of Frank printing on this unusual paper stock, which may have been used to amplify the dark chill of the London winter. Frank’s enigmatic Hearse (Negative: 1951, Print: 1970s) is another iconic example of the photographer’s exquisitely composed street scenes.
More infoOur Basel fair brings the international artworld together. It features over 200 leading galleries and more than 4,000 artists from five continents. Many high-quality exhibitions take place concurrently in and around Basel, creating a region-wide art week.
Michael Shapiro and Richard Nagy present Breaking Away: Modernism in Photography since World War I, an exhibition of 50 rare photographs captured between the 1920s and 1960s by the greatest talents of their day.
Galleries from France and beyond will showcase their artists in the Grand Palais Éphémère and its extension on the Champ de Mars in October 2023.
Galeries is the main exhibition sector of Paris+ par Art Basel. It features galleries specializing in Modern and contemporary art, displaying work of exceptional quality including paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, photography, video, and digital art.
More infoTuesday to Saturday 11am - 6pm