The Mesdag Collection in The Hague presents The Dutch in Barbizon: Maris, Mauve, Weissenbruch, an exhibition about nineteenth-century Dutch painters who were drawn to the French village of Barbizon and the nearby Forest of Fontainebleau. French artists went to that area – just a stone’s throw from Paris – to work in the open air, capturing their personal, often rough or sketchy impressions of the unspoilt nature around them. This exhibition features Dutch painters who followed the example of their French peers, visiting the same spots in and around the Forest of Fontainebleau to depict magnificent trees, unusual rock formations and village life. The art works of these French and Dutch artists hang side by side in this exhibition, in the museum that holds one of the finest collections of Barbizon paintings outside France, once assembled by Hendrik Willem Mesdag himself. The Dutch in Barbizon consists of 42 works, gr

Social tensions, political struggles, social upheavals, as well as artistic revolutions and innovations characterize the Weimar Republic. Beginning October 27, 2017, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting German art from 1918 to 1933 in a major thematic exhibition. Direct, ironic, angry, accusatory, and often even prophetic works demonstrate the struggle for democracy and paint a picture of a society in the midst of crisis and transition. Many artists were moved by the problems of the age to mirror reality and everyday life in their search for a new realism or “naturalism.” They captured the stories of their contemporaries with an individual signature: the processing of the First World War with depictions of maimed soldiers and “war profiteers,” public figures, the big city with its entertainment industry and increasing prostitution, political unrest and economic chasms, as well as the role model of the New Woman, the debates ab

Three self-portraits by Paul Cézanne, painted in 1885 and 1886, including a complementary pair showing Cézanne in a bowler hat, have gone on public display for the first time in the United Kingdom in a major new exhibition, Cézanne Portraits, on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London. The exhibition brings together for the first time over fifty of Cézanne’s portraits from collections across the world. The first of the three self-portraits, painted around 1885, was, together with Cézanne’s earliest self-portrait, the only painted self-portrait to be based upon a photograph. The two portraits with a bowler hat show the artist in a familiar pose, looking back over his shoulder, his right eye engaging with the viewer. The shape of the hat reflects Cézanne’s pleasure in modelling simple, solid geometric forms. The works are the only painted self-portraits to show Cézanne wearing a bowler hat, although it would become

The smell of gunpowder still lingered in Madrid’s Prado museum Tuesday, just hours after China’s Cai Guo-Qiang, famed for his explosive art, put the finishing touch to an exhibition inspired by Spain’s greats. Better used to the work of long-dead painters, this is the first time that the museum has welcomed an artist-in-residence, whose internationally-acclaimed contemporary work stands in stark contrast to the centuries-old masterpieces normally on show. In his exhibition, some of which was produced on-site using his trademark gunpowder, Cai sought inspiration from famous artists such as El Greco, Spain’s Francisco Goya and Diego Velazquez, as well as other painters in the collection like Peter Paul Rubens. The result? A literal explosion of colour and darkness that reveals silhouettes, faces and landscapes, at times obvious and imposing, other times small and discreet. It’s a “dialogue between today’s art and the art of the past,” the 59-year-old told reporters.