Upcoming Gallery and Museum Shows, continuing thread

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Where the language of realism dominated early state-sponsored art, it soon was inadequate to describe the new world of revulsion and terror, so a heightened expressivity based in distortion took over. It initially is found in such works as Conrad Felixmuller's 1918 "Soldier in the Insane Asylum," where jagged lines and fractured forms directly mirror the subject's interior. But after the war, it also continues in the grotesque caricatures of Grosz's urban scenes and the pileup of grisly details in Dix's "The War" portfolio.

Along the way, there are searing works by masters such as Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Kathe Kollwitz and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, as well as lesser-knowns including Albert Birkle, Arminius Hasemann, Karl Holtz and Otto Wirsching. The opportunity of seeing about half of Dix's 70 prints in "The War" portfolio plus all 10 in Wirsching's "Dance of Death" should not be missed.

The exhibition concludes with a decade of paintings (and one photograph) of working-class subjects. These are often in the crisper, cooler style known as "New Objectivity." A concurrent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presents some of the most caustic portraits of the 1920s, whereas those here are said to begin "to reassert the dignity of the individual" in a still-troubled, uneasy coda.

Tintoretto's first show for 70 years

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Monday January 29, 2007

The Guardian

Tintoretto, the 16th-century Italian painter whose huge masterpieces adorn many of Venice's churches and palaces, is having his first major solo exhibition for 70 years.
The exhibition at Madrid's El Prado museum comes after curators pledged money to help conserve many of the paintings when they returned to their damp and draughty homes in Venice.

"Damp has affected some of these paintings in the past," said Gabriele Finaldi, the Prado's deputy director for conservation and research. "We don't want that to happen again."

One church lending paintings to the show is Venice's San Marcuola, where Tintorettos cover two walls. The Prado will help pay for the church's upkeep.
The last major Tintoretto exhibition was at Venice's Ca' Pesaro gallery in 1937. Curators have built an exhibition of 65 paintings, drawings and sculptures around the Prado's own collection.

They have also discovered documents showing that the Renaissance painter's real name was Jacopo Comin and that he may have had 21 siblings.

The name Tintoretto means "little dyer", reflecting his father's job as a cloth-dyer. He was also known as Il Furioso, because of the energy he poured into his paintings.

One story told about Tintoretto is that Titian, another Venetian master, threw him out of his studio after just 10 days as an apprentice because he was too good. Tintoretto, however, considered Titian and Michaelangelo to be his greatest inspirations.

The exhibition brings together works that were split up centuries ago. Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet, for example, can be seen alongside The Last Supper as they once hung in Venice's Curia Patriarcale church.

Although Renaissance painters had teams of assistants who helped them, curators say they have chosen those Tintorettos which show the artists' own brushwork at its best or where his artistic personality is most strongly reflected.

"That has meant excluding some from El Prado's own collection, which were not of a high enough quality," the museum says.

The exhibition opens to the public tomorrow.

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