Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive

2 July – 2 October 2016 at Pallant House Gallery

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A major exhibition on the life and art of British artist Christopher Wood (1901-1930). An important and influential figure in the British art world during the 1920s, Wood developed a ‘faux-naïve’ style as he navigated a path between the representational painting of the Edwardian era and the new style of abstraction of the 1930s. A celebration of the magnitude of the artist’s achievement in the ten years before his premature death, aged just 29, this comprehensive review explores the enduring paradox between the primitive and the sophisticated in Wood’s oeuvre.

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

30 January — 20 April 2016 at The Royal Academy 

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Using the work of Monet as a starting point, this landmark exhibition examines the role gardens played in the evolution of art from the early 1860s through to the 1920s.

Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen at The Serpentine

3 March – 15 May 2016

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Serpentine Galleries presents an exhibition of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), who is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art. While her paintings were not seen publicly until 1986, her work from the early 20th century pre-dates the first purely abstract paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich.

This Serpentine exhibition focuses primarily on af Klint’s body of work,The Paintings for the Temple, which dates from 1906–15. The sequential nature of her work is highlighted by the inclusion in the exhibition of numerous paintings from key series, some never-before exhibited in the UK.

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Betty Woodman: Theatre of the Domestic at the ICA

3 Feb 2016 – 10 Apr 2016

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The first UK solo presentation of works by Betty Woodman (born 1930), one of the most important contemporary artists working with ceramics today. The exhibition focuses on work Woodman has created in the last ten years, including a number of major new mixed media pieces.

Betty Woodman began making work in 1950 with clay as her chosen medium, and throughout her practice has constantly explored new directions and introduced new techniques and media. Woodman’s conceptual boldness and her ambitious experimentation—in which she combines such unlikely materials as lacquer paint on earthenware and terra sigillata, a slip glaze often used on ancient ceramics, on paper—have generated a unique series of innovations. Significantly, the ways in which she combines ceramics and painting in her three-dimensional works resonates with younger generations of artists.

All her work relates to her ceramics, their decorative design, imagery and unusual use of various media, and can be seen as a way of exploring her painterly sensibility. For many years she has focused on the vase, which over time has become her most salient subject. For Woodman, the vase can be a vessel, a human body, and animal figure, a metaphor, or an art-historical reference. Painting, particularly in recent years, plays a key role in the work of Betty Woodman. Her later works are large, colourful drawings and paintings on handmade paper or canvas that combine graphite, ink and lacquer with terra sigillata and wax. Her work alludes to and blends numerous sources, including Minoan and Egyptian art, Greek and Etruscan sculpture, Tang Dynasty works, majolica and SĂšvres porcelain, Italian Baroque architecture, and the paintings of Bonnard, Picasso and Matisse.

https://www.ica.org.uk