Emily Kam Kngwarray @ Tate Modern, London

Emily Kam Kngwarray 

Tate Modern, London

10 July 2025 – 11 January 2026

Emily Kam Kngwarray 

near Mparntwe  / Alice Springs in 1980

Photograph © Toly Sawenko

Tate Modern presents Europe’s first major solo exhibition dedicated to one of the most extraordinary figures in international contemporary art, Emily Kam Kngwarray (c.1914-1996). A senior Anmatyerr woman from the Sandover region in the Northern Territory of Australia, Kngwarray translated her ceremonial and spiritual engagement with her ancestral Country, Alhalker, into vivid batik textiles and monumental acrylic paintings on canvas. Taking up painting in her 70s and devoting her final years to creating a large body of art, Emily Kam Kngwarray forged a path for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, women artists and Australian artists, and continues to entice audiences around the world three decades after her passing. Organised in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, this extensive survey brings together over 80 works from across her extraordinary career. Showing many pieces outside Australia for the first time, the exhibition offers European audiences a once in a lifetime chance to experience Kngwarray’s powerful batiks, paintings and vibrant legacy.

Emily Kam Kngwarray began experimenting with new art media at Utopia Station in the 1970s. After learning the technique of making batik, in the late 1980s she transitioned to painting in acrylic on canvas. Her practice was shaped by her intimate knowledge of her Country and by her role in women’s ceremonial traditions of ‘awely’, which encompass song, dance and the painting on bodies with ground ochres. She sat on the ground when she painted, much in the same way she would sit to prepare food, dig yams from the earth, tell stories by drawing on the sand or ‘paint up’ for awely ceremonies. Her deeply personal approach to painting was developed in isolation from the European and North American artistic practices of her time. This exhibition presents Kngwarray’s work through the lens of her own world, showcasing her as a matriarch of her community, storyteller, singer, visual artist, and custodian of Country.

Encapsulating the ecology of her homeland, Kngwarray’s work features motifs derived from native plants, animals and natural forms. She regularly depicted the pencil yam (anwerlarr) and its edible underground tuber and seedpods (kam), after which she is named, as well as the emu (ankerr), reflecting the animal’s significance to Aboriginal Peoples. The exhibition opens with three acrylic paintings acquired for Tate’s collection in 2019 - Untitled (Alhalker) 1989, Ntang 1990, and Untitled 1990 - featuring densely layered fields of dots representing native seeds. These are accompanied by Awely 1989, inspired by designs women paint on each other’s bodies before performing awely. Two of Kngwarray’s early batiks join Emu Woman 1988, her first ever work on canvas that attracted widespread national attention. These introductory rooms trace the evolution of the artist’s visual language, grounded in her detailed knowledge of the desert ecosystems of Alhalker.

Works from the early phase of Kngwarray’s painting career are shown alongside a striking display of batiks on silk and cotton that hang from floor to ceiling and immerse visitors in the artist’s vivid evocations of her Country. These works are often rooted in the Dreaming (Altyerr), the eternal life force that created the land and its myriad living forms and defined the social and cultural practices of people. Ntang Dreaming 1989 depicts the edible seeds of the woollybutt grass (alyatywereng), while Ankerr (emu) 1989 maps a path of emu footprints travelling between water sources. Larger canvases, including the three-metre Kam 1991, demonstrate how Emily Kam Kngwarray began working on monumental paintings and employing a brighter colour palette.

At the heart of the exhibition is The Alhalker Suite 1993, one of Kngwarray’s most ambitious works on loan from the National Gallery of Australia. Produced at the height of her painting career, it offers a vibrant portrait of Alhalker Country across 22 canvases. Revealing Kngwarray’s broadened colour spectrum and techniques, bright pastel pinks and blues evoke the wildflowers which carpet the landscape after rainfall, and collections of merging dots represent the rockfaces and grasslands of Alhalker. The artist did not impose any limitations for the configuration of the panels, so a new way of seeing her land is possible each time the work is displayed- an ongoing reminder that the stories and places she painted are very much alive.

In her final years, Emily Kam Kngwarray made an abrupt stylistic change, creating a suite of works comprising bold parallel monochrome lines in her familiar palette of reds and yellows, painted on white paper or canvas. Tate Modern presents Untitled (Awely) 1994, a six-panel work originally shown as the centerpiece of the Australian Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennale. The evident tactile quality with which Emily Kam Kngwarray applied the paint evokes the gesture and intimacy of painting on the body for awely ceremonies. Moving away from lines and dots during this late period, Kngwarray developed gestural paintings with fluid brushstrokes that burst with energy. Closing the exhibition, Yam Awely 1995 with its intricately painted twists of white, yellow and red intertwined with linear markings of grasses, yams, roots and tracks signifies the timeless connection between Emily Kam Kngwarray and her Country.

Exhibition organised by Tate Modern and the National Gallery of Australia based on an exhibition curated by Kelli Cole, Warumungu and Luritja peoples and Hetti Perkins, Arrernte and Kalkadoon peoples.

Curated by Kelli Cole, Director of Curatorial & Engagement, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Gallery of Australia project, with Kimberley Moulton, Adjunct Curator, Indigenous Art, Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational; Charmaine Toh, Senior Curator, International Art, Tate Modern; Genevieve Barton, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern and Hannah Gorlizki, Exhibitions Assistant, Tate Modern.

Following its presentation at Tate Modern, the exhibition will tour to Fondation Opale, Switzerland in a new iteration developed in collaboration with curator Kelli Cole.

TATE MODERN

Bankside, London SE1 9TG

www.tate.org.uk

Nigerian Modernism @ Tate Modern, London - This Major Exhibition traces the development of modern art in Nigeria with 50 artists and 250 artworks across 50 years

Nigerian Modernism 

Tate Modern, London

9 October 2025 - 11 May 2026

Uzo Egonu 

Stateless People an artist with beret, 1981

© The estate of Uzo Egonu. Private Collection

Ben Enwonwu

The Durbar of Eid-ul-Fitr, Kano, Nigeria, 1955

© Ben Enwonwu Foundation. Private Collection

Bruce Onobrakpeya,

The Last Supper, 1981

© Reserved. Tate Collection

Tate Modern presents the first UK exhibition to trace the development of modern art in Nigeria. Spanning a period from indirect colonial rule to national independence and beyond, Nigerian Modernism will celebrate an international network of artists who combined African and European traditions, creating a vibrant artistic legacy. The exhibition presents the work of over 50 artists across 50 years, from Ben Enwonwu to El Anatsui. They each responded to Nigeria’s evolving political and social landscape by challenging assumptions and imagining new futures, reclaiming Indigenous traditions to create a new African vision of Modernism. Featuring more than 250 works, including painting, sculpture, textile, ceramics and works on paper from institutions and private collections across Africa, Europe and the US, it offers a rare opportunity to encounter the creative forces who revolutionised modern art in Nigeria.

Nigerian Modernism - List of artists: Jonathan Adagogo Green, Tayo Adenaike, Jacob Afolabi, Adebisi Akanji, Justus D. Akeredolu, Jimo Akolo, El Anatsui, Chike C. Aniakor, Abayomi Barber, Georgina Beier, Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian, Jimoh Buraimoh, Avinash Chandra, Nike Davies-Okundaye, Ndidi Dike, Uzo Egonu, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Afi Ekong, Erhabor Emokpae, Ben Enwonwu, Sir Jacob Epstein, Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu, Okpu Eze, Adebisi Fabunmi, Agboola Folarin, Buraimoh Gbadamosi, Sàngódáre Gbádégesin Àjàlá, Yusuf Grillo, Felix Idubor, Solomon Irein Wangboje, Ladi Kwali, Akinola Lasekan, Jacob Lawrence, Valente Malangatana, Naoko Matsubara, Demas Nwoko, Olu Oguibe, Rufus Ogundele, J.D Ojeikere, Emmanuel Okechukwu Odita, Simon Okeke, Uche Okeke, Olowe of Ise, Asiru Olatunde, Lamidi Olonade Fakeye, Oseloka Okwudili Osadebe, Aina Onabolu, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Ben Osawe, Muraina Oyelami, Ru van Rossem, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Gerard Sekoto, Twins Seven Seven, Ahmad Shibrain, F.N. Souza, Ada Udechukwu, Obiora Udechukwu, Etso Clara Ugbodaga-Ngu, Susanne Wenger.

Ben Enwonwu 

The Dancer (Agbogho Mmuo - Maiden Spirit Mask) 1962 

© Ben Enwonwu Foundation, 

courtesy Ben Uri Gallery & Museum

The exhibition begins in the 1940s amid calls for decolonisation across Africa and its diaspora. With the Nigerian education system under British governance, many artists trained in Britain, adopting European artistic techniques and witnessing Western modernism’s fixation on African art. The balance between Nigeria’s Indigenous traditions, colonial realities and calls for independence was evident in the practices of artists, many of whom became involved in arts education and reform. Aina Onabolu pioneered new figurative portraits of Lagos society figures, whilst Akinola Lasekan depicted scenes from Yoruba legends and history. Globally celebrated artists of the period, Ben Enwonwu and Ladi Kwali, combined their Western training with Nigerian visual art traditions. Drawing upon his knowledge of Igbo sculpture, Ben Enwonwu adapted his Slade School education to celebrate the beauty of Black and African culture. Meanwhile, Ladi Kwali who trained under British potter Michael Cardew at Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, developed a new style of ceramic art that synthesised traditional Gwarri techniques and European studio pottery.

Jimo Akolo 

Fulani Horsemen, 1962

© Reserved. Courtesy Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu

Elemu Yoruba Palm Wine Seller, 1963

© Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu. Hampton University Museum

National independence on 1 October 1960 inspired a sense of optimism throughout the country, with artistic groups creating art for a new nation. The exhibition will look at the legacy of The Zaria Arts Society whose members included Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya and Jimo Akolo. Encouraged by teachers like Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu, they developed independent creative styles centred around a concept of ‘Natural Synthesis’, merging Indigenous forms with modern expression. In the 1960s amid an economic boom, Lagos became a dynamic cultural hub, inspiring tropical modernist architecture, public art commissions and nightclubs filled with Highlife music. Meanwhile in Ibadan, The Mbari Artists’ and Writers’ Club founded by German publisher Ulli Beier, offered a discursive space run by an international group of artists, writers and dramatists including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Malangatana Ngwenya. The Mbari Club was closely associated with the influential Pan-African modernist journal Black Orpheus, which will be displayed at Tate Modern.

During this period, many artists reflected on Nigeria’s rich cultural and religious heritage as home to more than 250 ethnic groups. The late 1950s saw the emergence of the New Sacred Art Movement, founded by Austrian born artist Susanne Wenger who drew on Yoruba deities and beliefs to explore the ritual power of art. The group led the restoration of the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove where ancient shrines were adorned with cement sculptures and carvings. In parallel, The Oshogbo Art School emerged out of series of influential workshops at Duro Ladipo’s Popular Bar providing a space for experimentation among untrained artists and performers including Nike Davies-Okundaye, Jacob Afolabi and Twins Seven Seven who explored Yoruba cultural identity and personal mythologies in their work.

Obiora Udechukwu 

Our Journey, 1993 

© Obiora Udechukwu. Hood Museum of Art

The outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967 caused a cultural and political crisis for many artists. The post-independence feeling of optimism and unity were replaced with division, and later a desire to reconnect across Nigeria’s diverse ethnic groups. The exhibition looks to the revival of ‘uli’ - linear Igbo designs which can be decorative or represent natural elements and everyday objects. Historically passed down between women, artists like Uche Okeke who had inherited this knowledge from his mother, and those from the Nsukka Art School including Obiora Udechukwu, Tayo Adenaike and Ndidi Dike, adapted this visual language as a modernist art form, reclaiming an element of ancestral culture and reflecting on the struggles of conflict during the war.

Uzo Egonu

Northern Nigerian Landscape, 1964

© The estate of Uzo Egonu. Tate

Uzo Egonu 

Women in Grief, 1968 

© The estate of Uzo Egonu. Tate

The exhibition ends with a spotlight on Uzo Egonu, exploring how artists towards the end of the 20th century began to respond to global Nigerian identities. Living in Britain since the 1940s, Uzo Egonu’s work was informed by his perspective as an expatriate, creating works imbued by his childhood memories and feelings of nostalgia, as well as his response to current events, observed from overseas. The exhibition brings together Uzo Egonu’s Stateless People paintings, the first time these works have been reunited in 40 years. Begun in 1980, the series reflects on questions of nationhood and cultural identity. Depicting a single figure in each painting - a musician, artist and writer - Uzo Egonu represents the growing visibility of Nigeria’s diaspora around the world. The series sums up the tension between national identity and artistic independence which shaped Nigeria’s story of modern art.

Nigerian Modernism is curated by Osei Bonsu, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern and Bilal Akkouche, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern.

TATE MODERN

Bankside, London SE1 9TG

www.tate.org.uk

Yoko Ono Exhibition @ Tate Modern, London - "YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND" + @ K20, Dusseldorf

YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND

Tate Modern, London 

February 15 – September 1, 2024 

K20, Dusseldorf 

September 28, 2024 – March 16, 2025

YOKO ONO

Yoko Ono with Glass Hammer 1967 

from HALF-A-WIND SHOW, Lisson Gallery, London, 1967 

Photo © Clay Perry

© Yoko Ono

YOKO ONO

Installation view of Apple 1966 from 

Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971, MoMA, NYC, 2015 

Photo © Thomas Griesel

© Yoko Ono

YOKO ONO

Yoko Ono, Helmets (Pieces of Sky), 2001, 

from ‘Between The Sky and My Head’ 

at Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art, Gateshead, 2008. 

Photo © Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

© Yoko Ono

YOKO ONO

Installation view of PEACE is POWER, first realised 2017, 

in ‘Yoko Ono: The Learning Garden of Freedom’ 

at Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, 2020 

Photo © Filipe Braga

© Yoko Ono

YOKO ONO

Sky TV, 1966/2014 

© Yoko Ono

Courtesy the artist 

Photo Cathy Carver

Installation view courtesy of 

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden 

Photo © Cathy Carver

Tate Modern presents the UK’s largest exhibition celebrating the ground-breaking and influential work of artist and activist YOKO ONO (b.1933, Tokyo). Ono is a trailblazer of early conceptual and participatory art, film and performance, a celebrated musician, and a formidable campaigner for world peace. Spanning seven decades of the artist’s powerful, multidisciplinary practice from the 1950s to now, YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND traces the development of her innovative work and its enduring impact on contemporary culture. Conceived in close collaboration with Ono’s studio, the exhibition brings together over 200 works including instruction pieces and scores, installations, films, music and photography, revealing a radical approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.

Ideas are central to Yoko Ono’s art, often expressed in poetic, humorous and profound ways. The exhibition starts by exploring her pivotal role in experimental avant-garde circles in New York and Tokyo, including the development of her ‘instruction pieces’ – written instructions that ask readers to imagine, experience, make or complete the work. Some exist as a single verb such as FLY or TOUCH. Others range from short phrases like ‘Listen to a heartbeat’ and ‘Step in all the puddles in the city’ to tasks for the imagination like ‘Painting to be Constructed in your Head’. Each word or phrase aims to stimulate and unlock the mind of the reader. Previously unseen photographs show Yoko Ono’s first ‘instruction paintings’ at her loft studio in New York – where she and composer La Monte Young hosted experimental concerts and events – and in her first solo exhibition at AG Gallery in 1961. The typescript draft of Ono’s ground-breaking self-published anthology Grapefruit, compiling her instructions written between 1953 and 1964, is displayed in the UK for the first time. Visitors are invited to activate Ono’s instructions, concealing themselves in the interactive work Bag Piece 1964 – first performed by Yoko Ono in Kyoto, in the same concert in which she performed her iconic work Cut Piece 1964 – and bringing their shadows together in Shadow Piece 1963.

The heart of the exhibition charts Yoko Ono’s radical works created during her five-year stay in London from 1966. Here she became embedded within a counter-cultural network of artists, musicians and writers, meeting her future husband and longtime collaborator John Lennon. Key installations from Yoko Ono’s influential exhibitions at Indica and Lisson Gallery feature, including Apple 1966 and the poignant installation of halved domestic objects Half-A-Room 1967. Ono’s banned Film No. 4 (Bottoms) 1966-7 which she created as a ‘petition for peace’ is displayed alongside material from her influential talk at the Destruction In Art Symposium, in which she described the fundamental aspects of her participatory art: event-based; engaged with the everyday; personal; partial or presented as unfinished; a catalyst to creative transformation; and existing within the realm of the imagination. Visitors can participate in White Chess Set – a game featuring only white chess pieces and a board of white squares, with the instruction ‘play as long as you can remember where all your pieces are’ – a work first realised in 1966 that demonstrates Yoko Ono’s anti-war stance.

Key themes that recur throughout Yoko Ono’s work are explored across decades and mediums. These include the sky, which appears repeatedly as a metaphor for peace, freedom and limitlessness. As a child fleeing Tokyo during World War II, Yoko Ono found solace and refuge in the constant presence of the sky. It appears in the instruction piece Painting to See the Skies 1961, the 1966 installation SKY TV, broadcasting a live video feed of the sky above Tate Modern, and the moving participatory work Helmets (Pieces of Sky), first realised 2001, inviting visitors to take away their own puzzle-piece of the sky. The artist’s commitment to feminism is shown in films like FLY 1970-1, in which a fly crawls over a naked woman’s body while Yoko Ono's voice chart its journey, and Freedom 1970, in which Ono attempts and fails to break free from her bra. In a section devoted to Yoko Ono’s music, feminist anthems such as Sisters O Sisters 1972, Woman Power 1973 and Rising 1995 embolden women to build a new world, have courage and rage, amplifying Ono’s works that denounce violence against women.

Yoko Ono has increasingly used her art and global media platform to advocate for peace and humanitarian campaigns, initially collaborating with her late husband John Lennon. Acorns for Peace 1969 saw Yoko Ono and John Lennon send acorns to world leaders, while the billboard campaign ‘WAR IS OVER!’ (if you want it) 1969 used the language of advertising to spread a message of peace. The film BED PEACE 1969 documents the second of the couple’s infamous ‘bed-in’ events staged in Amsterdam and Montreal, during which they spoke with the world’s media to promote world peace amid the Vietnam War. Tate Modern has also staged Ono’s recent project Add Colour (Refugee Boat), first activated in 2016, inviting visitors to add paint to white gallery walls and a white boat while reflecting on urgent issues of crisis and displacement.

The exhibition culminates in a new iteration of Yoko Ono’s participatory installation My Mommy Is Beautiful, first realised 2004, featuring a 15-metre-long wall of canvases to which visitors can attach photographs of their mother and share personal messages. Moving beyond the exhibition space, Yoko Ono’s work also extends across Tate Modern’s building and landscape. Gallery windows overlooking the River Thames feature the artist’s powerful intervention, PEACE is POWER, first shown 2017, translated into multiple languages, while the interactive artwork Wish Tree, first realised 1996, greets visitors at the entrance to the exhibition, inviting passers-by to contribute individual wishes for peace.

YOKO ONO

Music of the Mind

Edited by Juliet Bingham, Connor Monahan and Jon Hendricks

Contributions by Yasufumi Nakamori, Andrew Wilson, 

David Toop, Midori Yoshimoto, Helen Molesworth, 

Sanford Biggers, Catherine Lord

Yale University Press - Published in association with Tate

304 Pages, 6.75 x 9.25 in, 60 color + 200 b-w illus.

ISBN: 9780300276343

TATE MODERN, LONDON

www.tate.org.uk

Related Post on Wanafoto:

Yoko Ono : Lumière de l'aube (in French)

Musée d'art contemporain, Lyon 

9 mars - 10 juillet 2016 

Yoko Ono: Grapefruit (in English)

Moderna Museet, Stockholm 

6 June – 16 September 2012

 

Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and My Head (in English)

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 

14 December 2008 – 15 March 2009

Yoko Ono: Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? (in English)

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

November 26, 1999 - May 31 2000

The Making of Rodin @ Tate Modern, London

The EY Exhibition 

The Making of Rodin 

Tate Modern, London 

17 May – 21 November 2021 

Tate Modern presents a major new exhibition of AUGUSTE RODIN (1840-1917). It shows how he broke the rules of classical sculpture to create a dramatically different image of the human body, mirroring the ruptures, complexities and uncertainties of the modern age. Featuring over 200 works, many of which have never been shown outside France, The EY Exhibition: The Making of Rodin offers a unique insight into Rodin’s ways of thinking and making. Thanks to a unique collaboration with the Musée Rodin in Paris, who have offered Tate unprecedented access to their collection, visitors are able to both appreciate the originality of iconic works such as the Thinker 1881 and The Three Shades 1886 as well as make fresh discoveries that reveal how the artist transformed modern sculpture.

Although Rodin is best known for his bronze and marble sculptures, he personally only worked as a modeller, capturing movement, emotion, light and volume in pliable materials such as clay which were then cast in plaster. The EY Exhibition: The Making of Rodin is the first show to focus in-depth on Rodin’s use of plaster, taking inspiration from the artist’s landmark self-organised exhibition at the Pavillon de l’Alma in 1900. It was here that Rodin made the unconventional decision to display his life’s work almost entirely in plaster, emphasising the crucial role the medium played in his career. Many of the star exhibits of 1900 such as the monumental casts of Balzac 1898 or The Inner Voice 1896 are shown at Tate Modern in a rare reunion.

The exhibition also evokes the atmosphere of the Pavillon de l’Alma, which in turn had riffed on an imaginary vision of the artist’s studio. Rather than show a workshop populated by models, carvers, casters, photographers and founders who turned Rodin’s creations and vision into traditional commercial sculptures, it foregrounded modelling and the notion of the ‘artist’s hand’ as the central drivers for Rodin’s work. A stockpile of plaster body parts on loan from the Musée Rodin reveal how he continually experimented with fragmentation, repetition and joining existing parts in unconventional ways. Individually crafted heads, hands, arms, legs and feet allowed him to dismantle and reassemble his works time and again in countless combinations and poses. The exhibition explores how these experiments went on to influence some of the artist’s best-known sculptures, including the newly restored plaster for The Burghers of Calais 1889 displayed as Rodin had originally intended.

The complex dynamics of Rodin’s work with different models are considered from the perspective of some of the extraordinary women with whom he worked, including his onetime studio assistant and collaborator Camille Claudel. Rather than conceive an ideal, Rodin strongly responded to the individual character and physicality of his models. This is especially evident in his numerous portraits of the actress Ohta Hisa (1868-1945), who under her stage name Hanako performed westernised adaptations of Kabuki theatre to French audiences enthralled by all things Japanese. Busts depicting Rodin’s friend and correspondent, the German aristocrat Helene Von Nostitz née Hindenburg (1878–1944), also illustrate how he embraced visible traces of his work’s creation, believing the ‘process’ to be as significant as the finished form.

Archival images, many of which Rodin chose to display alongside his plaster works at the Pavillon de l'Alma, show how he used photography to explore combinations of forms and analyse his sculptures from multiple viewpoints. These are joined by a series of the artist’s delicate watercolour drawings in which he further experimented and re-worked bodily forms.

The EY Exhibition: The Making of Rodin is curated by Nabila Abdel Nabi, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, Chloé Ariot, Curator for Sculpture, Musée Rodin, Paris and Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions and Programmes, Tate Modern, with Helen O’Malley, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern and Musée Rodin, Paris. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

The Making of Rodin exhibition book

By Nabila Abdel Nabi & Achim Borchardt-Hume 

Tate, 2021

TATE MODERN

www.tate.org.uk

Natalia Goncharova @ Tate Modern, London

Natalia Goncharova
Tate Modern, London
6 June – 8 September 2019

Tate Modern presents the UK’s first ever retrospective of the Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova. This exhibition is a sweeping survey of a pioneering and radical figure, celebrated during her lifetime as a leading modernist artist. Throughout her varied career she challenged the limits of artistic, social and gender conventions, from parading through the streets of Moscow displaying futurist body art and scandalising newspapers of the day, to creating internationally acclaimed designs for fashion and the theatre.

Natalia Goncharova’s artistic output traces, influences and transcends the art movements of the 20th century. Born in 1881, she was inspired by the traditional customs and cultures of her native Central Russia – inspirations that pervade her life’s work. By the age of 32, she had already established herself as a leader of the Moscow avant-garde and was the subject of the first monographic exhibition ever staged by a Russian modernist artist. Arriving in Paris in 1914 at the invitation of Sergei Diaghilev, Natalia Goncharova was feted for her vibrant costume and set designs for the Ballets Russes.

The exhibition gathers together over 170 international loans which rarely travel, including from Russia’s State Tretyakov Gallery which houses the largest collection of Natalia Goncharova works in the world. At the heart of the show is a room evoking Natalia Goncharova’s remarkable 1913 retrospective that was held at the Mikhailova Art Salon in Moscow, which originally featured some 800 works.

Highlights include early paintings such as Peasants Gathering Apples 1911, formerly owned by the Morozov family, one of great art collectors of the early 20th century; the monumental seven-part work The Harvest 1911, bringing together paintings from four international collections; and her scandalous paintings of nudes, the first public display of which led to her trial for obscenity. A section devoted to Natalia Goncharova’s religious painting includes the Evangelists 1911, a four-panel work which had delighted London in 1912 but shocked Russia’s capital of St Petersburg in 1914 where the authorities removed it from display. A room is dedicated to her work in fashion design and her collaborations with Nadezhda Lamanova, couturier of the Imperial court, while her forays into interior design are represented by the decorative screen Spring 1928, commissioned by the Arts Club of Chicago and never lent until now, and Bathers 1922, a monumental triptych displayed in the UK for the first time.

In seeking to underline Natalia Goncharova’s ground-breaking experiments with the modernist styles of cubo-futurism, abstraction and rayonism, the exhibition reunites Linen from Tate’s own collection with Loom + Woman (The Weaver) from the National Museum of Wales and The Forest from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, all created in the same studio in 1913 and on display together for the first time since then.

Finally, the exhibition closes with a room dedicated to her collaborations with the Ballets Russes, the work for which she was best known from 1914 to the 1950s. It presents the artist’s most groundbreaking work for the theatre, including costume designs for Le Coq d’or (The Golden Cockerel) and Les Noces (The Wedding), both performed on London stages in the 1920s and 30s, as well as examples of actual costumes used in historic ballet productions.

Natalia Goncharova is curated by Natalia Sidlina, Curator of International Art, and Matthew Gale, Head of Displays, with Katy Wan, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. It is supported by LetterOne, with additional support from Mr Petr Aven, and is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Palazzo Strozzi, Florence where it will open on 28 September 2019 and the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki where it will open on 21 February 2020.

TATE MODERN
Bankside, London SE1 9TG
www.tate.org.uk

Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography And Abstract Art @ Tate Modern, London

Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography And Abstract Art
Tate Modern, London
2 May – 14 October 2018

A major new exhibition at Tate Modern will reveal the intertwined stories of photography and abstract art. Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art will be the first show of this scale to explore photography in relation to the development of abstraction, from the early experiments of the 1910s to the digital innovations of the 21st century. Featuring over 300 works by more than 100 artists, the exhibition will explore the history of abstract photography side-by-side with iconic paintings and sculptures.

Shape of Light will place moments of radical innovation in photography within the wider context of abstract art, such as Alvin Langdon Coburn’s pioneering ‘vortographs’ from 1917. This relationship between media will be explored through the juxtaposition of works by painters and photographers, such as cubist works by George Braque and Pierre Dubreuil or the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Otto Steinert’s ‘luminograms’. Abstractions from the human body associated with surrealism will include André Kertesz’s Distorsions, Imogen Cunningham’s Triangles and Bill Brandt’s Baie des Anges, Frances 1958, exhibited together with a major painting by Joan Miró. Elsewhere the focus will be on artists whose practice spans diverse media, such as László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray.

The exhibition will also acknowledge the impact of MoMA’s landmark photography exhibition of 1960, The Sense of Abstraction. Installation photographs of this pioneering show will be displayed with some of the works originally featured in the exhibition, including important works by Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind and a series by Man Ray that has not been exhibited since the MoMA show, 58 years ago.

The connections between breakthroughs in photography and new techniques in painting will be examined, with rooms devoted to Op Art and Kinetic Art from the 1960s, featuring striking paintings by Bridget Riley and installations of key photographic works from the era by artists including Floris Neussis and Gottfried Jaeger. Rooms will also be dedicated to the minimal and conceptual practices of the 1970s and 80s. The exhibition will culminate in a series of new works by contemporary artists, Tony Cairns, Maya Rochat and Daisuke Yokota, exploring photography and abstraction today.

Shape of Light is curated by Simon Baker, Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) and Shoair Mavlian, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern, with Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, Curator for Photographs, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.

TATE MODERN, LONDON
www.tate.org.uk

Modigliani @ Tate Modern, London

Modigliani
Tate Modern, London
23 November 2017 - 2 April 2018

Tate Modern stages the most comprehensive Modigliani exhibition ever held in the UK, bringing together a dazzling range of his iconic portraits, sculptures and the largest ever group of nudes to be shown in this country. Although he died tragically young, AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884 - 1920) was a ground-breaking artist who pushed the boundaries of the art of his time. Including 100 works – many of them rarely exhibited and nearly 40 of which have never before been shown in the UK – the exhibition re-evaluates this familiar figure, looking afresh at the experimentation that shaped his career and made Modigliani one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

A section devoted to Modigliani’s nudes, perhaps the best-known and most provocative of the artist’s works, are a major highlight. In these striking canvases Modigliani invented shocking new compositions that modernised figurative painting. His explicit depictions also proved controversial and led to the police censoring his only solo exhibition in his lifetime, at Berthe Weill’s gallery in 1917, on grounds of indecency. This group of 12 nudes is the largest group ever seen in the UK, with paintings including Nude 1917 (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) and Reclining Nude c.1919 (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Amedeo Modigliani

Nude

1917

Oil paint on canvas

890 x 1460 mm

Private Collection

Amedeo Modigliani

Seated Nude

1917

Oil paint on canvas

1140 x 740 mm

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Lukasart in Flanders

Photo credit: Hugo Maertens

Amedeo Modigliani

Reclining Nude 

1919

Oil on canvas

724 x 1165 mm

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Born in Livorno, Italy and working in Paris from 1906, Modigliani’s career was one of continual evolution. The exhibition begins with the artist’s arrival in Paris, exploring the creative environments and elements of popular culture that were central to his life and work. Inspired by the art of Paul Cézanne, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso, Modigliani began to experiment and develop his own distinctive visual language, seen in early canvases such as Bust of a Young Woman 1908 (Lille Métropole Musée d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve-d'Ascq) and The Beggar of Livorno 1909 (Private Collection). His circle included poets, dealers, writers and musicians, many of whom posed for his portraits including Diego Rivera 1914 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf), Juan Gris 1915 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Jean Cocteau 1916 (The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, Princeton University Art Museum). The exhibition will also reconsider the role of women in Modigliani’s work, including editor and writer Beatrice Hastings, who was not simply the artist’s lover but an important figure in the cultural landscape of the time.

Amedeo Modigliani

Self-Portrait as Pierrot

1915

Oil paint on cardboard

430 x 270 mm

Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Amedeo Modigliani

The Little Peasant 

c.1918

Medium Oil paint on canvas

1000 x 645 mm

Tate, presented by Miss Jenny Blaker in memory of Hugh Blaker 1941

Amedeo Modigliani

Boy in Short Pants

c.1918

Oil paint on canvas

997 x 648 mm

Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Leland Fikes Foundation, Inc. 1977

Modigliani features exceptional examples of the artist’s lesser-known sculpture, bringing together a substantial group of his Heads made before the First World War. Although his interests would soon move on, he spent a short but intense period focusing on carving, influenced by contemporaries and friends including Constantin Brâncuși and Jacob Epstein. Suffering from poor health, Modigliani left Paris in 1918 for an extended period in the South of France. Here he adopted a more Mediterranean colour palette and, instead of his usual metropolitan sitters, he began painting local people, including shopkeepers and children, such as Young Woman of the People 1918 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Boy with a Blue Jacket 1919 (Indianapolis Museum of Art).

Amedeo Modigliani

Juan Gris

1915

Oil paint on canvas

549 x 381 mm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Amedeo Modigliani
Jeanne Hébuterne

1919 

Medium Oil paint on canvas

914 x 730 mm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The exhibition concludes with some of Modigliani’s best-known depictions of his closest circle. Friends and lovers provided him with much-needed financial and emotional support during his turbulent last years while also serving as models. These included his dealer and close friend Léopold Zborowski and his companion Hanka, as well as Jeanne Hébuterne, the mother of Modigliani’s child and one of the most important women in his life. When Modigliani died in 1920 from tubercular meningitis, Jeanne tragically committed suicide. Tate Modern brings together several searching portraits of her from Modgliani’s final years, on loan from international collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which depict her in a range of guises from young girl to mother.

Modigliani is curated by Nancy Ireson, Curator of International Art, Tate Modern and Simonetta Fraquelli, Independent Curator, with Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator. Visitors can also enjoy a new integrated virtual reality experience in the heart of the exhibition. The Ochre Atelier: Modigliani VR Experience invites visitors to step into the studio where the artist lived and worked in the final months of his life. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing and a series of events in the gallery.

Sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Virtual Reality in Partnership with HTC VIVE

Supported by Maryam and Edward Eisler, with additional support from the Modigliani Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Patrons and Tate Members

TATE MODERN
Bankside, London SE1 9TG
www.tate.org.uk

Robert Rauschenberg at Tate Modern, London

Robert Rauschenberg
Tate Modern, London
1 December 2016 - 2 April 2017

Tate Modern’s major exhibition of the work of ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (1925-2008), organised in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art in New York, will be the first posthumous retrospective and the most comprehensive survey of the artist’s work for 20 years, opening on 1 December 2016.

Controversially winning the prize for painting at the Venice Biennale in 1963, Robert Rauschenberg blazed a new trail for art in the second half of the twentieth century. Moving between painting, sculpture, photography, print-making, technology, stage design and performance, he refused to accept conventional boundaries in art and in life, his quest for innovation fired by his openness to the world, his enthusiasm for collaboration and his passion for travel.

Each chapter of Robert Rauschenberg’s six-decade career will be represented by major international loans that rarely travel. Among these is a selection of his iconic Combines, hybrids between painting and sculpture, which include Monogram 1955-59, travelling to the UK for the first time in over half a century, and Bed 1955. Tate Modern will also show the signature silkscreen paintings which signalled Robert Rauschenberg’s early commitment to political activism, including Retroactive II 1964, which portrays John F. Kennedy, who had recently been assassinated.

The exhibition begins by considering Robert Rauschenberg’s early experiments at Black Mountain College, a hotbed for innovation in the late 1940s and early 1950s where he embarked on his first collaborations with fellow artists and friends John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, David Tudor, Cy Twombly and Susan Weil. This time lead to his seminal Erased de Kooning Drawing in 1953, which paid tribute to the achievements of abstract expressionism as much as it tested the limits of what art could be. The artist’s work with Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T), an organisation of which he was a founder and which developed collaborations between artists and engineers in the 1960s, will be explored, showing how he helped to blur the boundaries between the visual arts, performance and science.

In the early 1970s Robert Rauschenberg moved his studio and primary residence to Captiva, Florida and began to travel extensively across Europe, the Americas and Asia. His Cardboards 1971-2 – a wry comment on the forces of globalisation – and his sumptuous fabric works such as The Jammers 1975-6 – inspired by his visit to the Indian textile centre of Ahmedabad – demonstrate his skilful play with unconventional materials. The epic project Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), a travelling exhibition which took place between 1984 and 1991 taking in Chile, China, Cuba and Tibet, will also feature.

Performance and dance remained key interests for Robert Rauschenberg and will form a central strand of the exhibition, as will his interest in pushing the limits of image-making with new materials such as printing on translucent textiles, polished steel or oxydised copper. A striking group of late inkjet paintings, combining dozens of images taken at home and abroad through the use of digital technology, will reveal how he continued to innovate right into the twenty-first century.

Robert Rauschenberg is organised by Tate Modern and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. It is curated by Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions, Tate Modern; and Leah Dickerman, The Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; with Catherine Wood, Senior Curator, International Art (Performance), Tate Modern; and Fiontán Moran and Juliette Rizzi, Assistant Curators, Tate Modern. 

The exhibition will travel to The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2017.

TATE MODERN
Bankside, London SE1 9TG
www.tate.org.uk

Georgia O’Keeffe @ Tate Modern, London

Georgia O’Keeffe
Tate Modern, London
6 July – 30 October 2016

Tate Modern presents a major retrospective of American modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), the first UK exhibition of her work for over twenty years. Marking a century since O’Keeffe’s debut in New York in 1916, this ambitious and wide-ranging survey will reassess the artist’s place in the canon of twentieth-century art and reveal her profound importance. With no works by O’Keeffe in UK public collections, the exhibition will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for audiences outside of America to view her oeuvre in such depth.

Widely recognised as a founding figure of American modernism, Georgia O’Keeffe gained a central position in leading art circles between the 1910s and the 1970s. She was also claimed as an important pioneer by feminist artists of the 1970s. Spanning the six decades in which Georgia O’Keeffe was at her most productive and featuring over 100 major works, this exhibition will chart the progression of her practice from her early abstract experiments to her late works, aiming to dispel the clichés that persist about the artist and her painting.

Opening with the moment of her first showings at ‘291’ gallery in New York in 1916 and 1917, the exhibition will feature Georgia O’Keeffe’s earliest mature works made while she was working as a teacher in Virginia and Texas. Charcoals such as No. 9 Special 1915 and Early No. 2 1915 will be shown alongside a select group of highly coloured watercolours and oils, such as Sunrise 1916 and Blue and Green Music 1919. These works investigate the relationship of form to landscape, music, colour and composition, and reveal Georgia O’Keeffe’s developing understanding of synaesthesia.

A room in the exhibition will consider Georgia O’Keeffe’s professional and personal relationship with Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946); photographer, modern art promoter and the artist’s husband. While Stieglitz increased O’Keeffe access to the most current developments in avant-garde art, she employed these influences and opportunities to her own objectives. Her keen intellect and resolute character created a fruitful relationship that was, though sometimes conflictive, one of reciprocal influence and exchange. A selection of photography by Stieglitz will be shown, including portraits and nudes of O’Keeffe as well as key figures from the avant-garde circle of the time, such as Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) and John Marin (1870-1953).

Still life formed an important investigation within Georgia O’Keeffe’s work, most notably her representations and abstractions of flowers. The exhibition will explore how these works reflect the influence she took from modernist photography, such as the play with distortion in Calla Lily in Tall Glass – No. 2 1923 and close cropping in Oriental Poppies 1927. A highlight will be Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 1932, one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s most iconic flower paintings.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s most persistent source of inspiration however was nature and the landscape; she painted both figurative works and abstractions drawn from landscape subjects. Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out of Black Marie’s II 1930 and Red and Yellow Cliffs 1940 chart O’Keeffe’s progressive immersion in New Mexico’s distinctive geography, while works such as Taos Pueblo 1929/34 indicate her complex response to the area and its layered cultures. Stylised paintings of the location she called the ‘Black Place’ will be at the heart of the exhibition.

Georgia O’Keeffe is curated by Tanya Barson, Curator, Tate Modern with Hannah Johnston, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. It will be accompanied by a catalogue from Tate Publishing and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.

TATE MODERN
www.tate.org.uk

Kazimir Malevich at Tate Modern, London

Malevich
Tate Modern, London
16 July – 26 October 2014

Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935) was a radical, mysterious and hugely influential figure in modern art, who lived and worked through one of the most turbulent periods in twentieth century history. Tate Modern will present the first major Malevich retrospective for almost twenty-five years. This groundbreaking exhibition will draw on the world’s greatest collections of his work to offer an expansive view of his career in its entirety.

Having come of age in Tsarist Russia, Malevich witnessed the October Revolution first-hand. His early experiments as a painter led him towards the cataclysmic invention of Suprematism, a bold visual language of abstract geometric shapes and stark colours, epitomised by the Black Square. A definitively radical gesture, it was revealed to the world after months of secrecy and was hidden again for almost half a century after its creator’s death. It sits on a par with Duchamp’s ‘readymade’ as a game-changing moment in twentieth century art and continues to inspire and confound viewers to this day.

Starting from his early paintings of Russian landscapes, agricultural workers and religious scenes, visitors will see Malevich’s journey towards abstract painting and his iconic Suprematist compositions, including almost all the surviving paintings from the legendary 0.10 exhibition. The show will explore his collaborative involvement with architecture and theatre, including his designs for the avant-garde opera Victory over the Sun. The exhibition will also follow his temporary abandonment of painting in favour of teaching and writing, and his much-debated return to figurative painting in later life.

Malevich’s work tells a fascinating story about the dream of a new social order, the successes and pitfalls of revolutionary ideals, and the power of art itself. This exhibition will, for the first time, offer visitors a chance to trace his groundbreaking developments not only through well-known masterpieces but also through earlier and later work, sculpture, design objects, and rarely-seen prints and drawings.

Tate Modern’s exhibition is made possible by a unique collaboration between the Stedelijk Museum and Khardzhiev Foundation in Amsterdam and the Costakis Collection in Thessaloniki, enriched with key loans from public and private collections around the world, including the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg; State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; MoMA, New York; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. It will also bring together the largest number of Malevich’s works on paper ever to be displayed. Unprecedented in scope, the exhibition will shed new light on his career, from his participation in the quest for a new society to his confrontation with the Stalinist regime.

Malevich is curated at Tate Modern by Achim Borchardt-Hume, Head of Exhibitions and Iria Candela, Curator, International Art, with Fiontan Moran, Assistant Curator. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing and a programme of talks and events in the gallery. It is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, with each venue presenting different aspects of Malevich’s remarkable career from October 2013 to October 2014.

TATE MODERN
www.tate.org.uk

Tate Guide to Modern Art App for iPad and iPhone: Art themes, artists, movements, media and art practices at your fingertips

Art app for iPad and iPhone from famous UK Tate Modern art museum

Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms, produced by Aimer Media, is an art dictionary for iPad or iPhone. Over 300 terms are defined with clarity, putting themes, movements, media and art practices at your fingertips.

The first modern art app to be released by Tate Publishing , one of the world’s leading art publishers, this guide aims to become a staple for gallery goers the world over.

"How many times have you read the caption next to a work of art or a review of a contemporary art exhibition and found yourself none the wiser? For many of us the language in which modern art is described is as mystifying as the art itself. This comprehensive but concise guide is the answer,” says Roger Thorp, Publishing Director at Tate Publishing. “We are hoping this will become one of the best art apps for people engaging with art terms whether they are avid gallery visitors, art students, or people unacquainted with art.”

Users can search the Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms app by artist, movement, technique or trend; view over 40 art works with pinch-and-zoom technology; share art terms via Twitter and Facebook; and create lists of favourite terms, making this the perfect accompaniment for visits to Tate Modern exhibitions and beyond.

The Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms app is based on a book of the same name published by Tate Publishing (2009), edited by Simon Wilson and Jessica Lack.  Simon Wilson, OBE, MA, formerly Head of Interpretation, at Tate, is the author of Egon Schiele and Surrealist Painting, and Jessica Lack is an arts writer for the Guardian.

Watch the demonstration video online http://vimeo.com/32962506

Tate Publishing Web site: www.tate.org.uk/publishing 

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Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape – A Retrospective of six decades of an extraordinary artistic career at Tate Modern, London

Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape 

Tate Modern, London 14 April - 11 September 2011

Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, October 2011
National Gallery of Art, Washington, May 2012

Tate Modern will present the first major retrospective of JOAN MIRO (1893–1983) to be held in London for almost 50 years. Opening on 14 April 2011, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape will bring together over 150 paintings, works on paper and sculptures by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists. The exhibition will draw on collections from around the world to represent the astonishing breadth of Miró’s output. It will also explore the wider context of his work, bringing to light the artist’s political engagement and examining the influence of his Catalan identity, the Spanish Civil War and the rise and fall of Franco’s regime.

Joan Miró was among the most iconic of modern artists, evolving a Surrealist language of symbols that evokes a sense of freedom and energy in its fantastic imagery and direct colour. Often regarded as a forefather of Abstract Expressionism, his work is celebrated for its serene, colourful allure. However, from his earliest paintings onwards, there is also a more anxious and engaged side to Joan Miró’s practice, reflecting the turbulent political times in which he lived. This exhibition will explore these responsive, passionate characteristics across six decades of his extraordinary career.

Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape will examine the artist’s varying degrees of engagement over his lifetime. These are rooted in the complex identity politics associated with Catalonia, as revealed through Miró’s representation of its landscape and traditions. These depictions range across images of rural life, such as The Farm 1921-2 which Ernest Hemmingway bought from the artist in Paris, to the masterly sequence of the Head of a Catalan Peasant 1924-5. The tensions that erupted with the Spanish Civil War in 1935-9 elicited Miró’s explicit protests in Aidez l’Espagne and Le Faucheur 1937, as well as more private and troubled responses disguised in the renowned Constellation paintings of 1940, made in the Second World War.

Under Franco’s regime, Miró worked in a kind of internal exile in Spain while cultivating a reputation abroad as a hero of post-war abstraction. Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape will showcase masterpieces from this era, including the sublime The Hope of a Condemned Man triptych 1973. The exhibition will also reveal how he captured the atmosphere of protest in the late 1960s. Whether blackening or setting fire to his works, such as May 1968 and Burnt Canvas II 1973, or creating euphoric explosions of paint in Fireworks 1974, Miró continued to reflect the political mood in his radical and pioneering practice.

JOAN MIRO (1893 - 1983) – Short biography

Joan Miró i Ferrà was born in Barcelona on 20 April 1893 and trained as an artist at the Galí Academy from 1912-15. From 1923, he spent part of each year in Paris and became a key figure in the Surrealist movement. With his young family he remained in France during the Spanish Civil War, but returned to Spain when the Germans invaded in 1940. Miró settled in Majorca and remained based there for much of the rest of his life, travelling for major commissions and exhibitions around the world. He died at home on 25 December 1983.

Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape is co-organised by Tate Modern and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, where it will be seen in October 2011, before travelling to the National Gallery of Art, Washington in May 2012. The exhibition is conceived by Tate curators Matthew Gale, Marko Daniel and Kerryn Greenberg in collaboration with Teresa Montaner, curator at Fundació Joan Miró. Rosa Maria Malet, Director, Fundació Joan Miró, and Vicente Todolí, former Director, Tate Modern, are consultants.

http://www.tate.org.uk

Hélio Oiticica, Tate Modern, London - The Body of Colour

Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour

Tate Modern, London

6 June – 23 September 2007

HELIO OITICICA (1937– 1980) was one of the most innovative Brazilian artists of his generation. Colour was central to his practice and this is the first exhibition to focus on this key element in his work. Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour is the first large-scale exhibition of Hélio Oiticica’s work for over 35 years in the UK. The exhibition includes more than 150 works – paintings and works on paper, reliefs and sculptural objects as well as installations and environments.

Hélio Oiticica produced a remarkable body of work throughout his career in which he continually sought to challenge the way in which art could be experienced. From abstract compositions to early environmental installations, the exhibition traces the way in which the artist deconstructed the traditional elements of painting – colour and the two-dimensional plane that supports it – reconfiguring them in new, innovative forms, and eventually liberating colour into space. This exhibition features works from Hélio Oiticica’s early career, such as the paintings and gouaches made with the Rio de Janeiro-based Grupo Frente 1955–56, which show an obvious affinity with masters of modernism such as Paul Klee, Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. This is followed by the extraordinary series of Metaesquemas, monochromatic grids of uneven abstract forms painted on board(1957–58), and a group of white on white paintings, never previously shown together.

The exhibition features Spatial Reliefs 1960, Bilaterals 1959 and Nuclei 1960–66, works which the viewer is invited to move in and around and to discover colour as a physical body or environment. A highlight of the exhibition is the fully restored, complete version of Hélio Oiticica’s incredible Grand Nucleus 1960–68. Comprising over thirty paintings suspended from the ceiling, the work will occupy the large central gallery of the exhibition at Tate Modern.

Hélio Oiticica’s most radical use of colour is found in the Bolides 1963–69, boxes or bottles containing pigment, foam, mirrors, shells, earth, fabric and poetry, and in the Parangolés 1964–79,cloth-objects that he described as habitable paintings. In the Bolides, Hélio Oiticica began the gradual dematerialisation of colour into pure sensory stimuli which would reach a climax with the Parangolés. Hélio Oiticica combined colour with rhythm, music, and performance to stimulate visual and tactile sensations, drawing in and involving his audience. The coloured capes, tents and banners of the Parangolés, were worn by members of the audience who moved to the rhythm of samba, activating and enacting the illusion of colour-in-motion.

Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour was organised by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in collaboration with Tate Modern. The concept of the exhibition has been conceived by Mari Carmen Ramirez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas, MFAH. Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour was presented at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (10 December 2006 – 1 April 2007) and travel to Tate Modern, London (6 June – 23 September 2007).

TATE MODERN, LONDON

www.tate.org.uk

Donald Judd Retrospective at Tate Modern, London

Donald Judd

Tate Modern, London

19 September 2002 – 19 January 2003

Tate Modern and the Stedelijk Museum collaborate on the first major survey of the work of DONALD JUDD (1928-1994) since the artist’s death. The exhibition is the first full retrospective of Donald Judd, one of the most influential American artists of his time.

Donald Judd began his career in the 1950s as a writer on art, and continued throughout his life to produce a distinguished body of writing. After briefly making highly reductive paintings, by 1962 he was making reliefs and fully three-dimensional work. In 1971 he acquired a disused army base in Marfa, Texas, where he was able to show in permanent installations both his own work and that of artists he admired.

Donald Judd’s sculpture is both elegantly austere and surprisingly sensual. The power of his severely rectilinear and often serial works lies in their overwhelming presence. Arranged along the wall, across the floor, or rising in stacks, his work has a powerful, physical and optical presence and often incorporate the space around them. To the surprise of some, from the mid-eighties vibrant colour played an increasing part in his work and he is now seen as an important colourist. At the time of his death in 1994, the New York Times observed ‘By the late 1960s, his sleek cubic and rectilinear works had helped redefine the direction of postwar sculpture’.

The exhibition begins with a remarkable series of handmade works from the early 1960s. These illustrate Donald Judd’s development of a new vocabulary of sculptural form. The exhibition then explores Donald Judd’s floor and wall-based box works of the 1960s and 1970s made from industrial materials such as galvanised iron, steel, plexiglass and plywood, and the wall-mounted stacks and progressions, which often have a subtly decorative finish, using brightly coloured lacquer or polished metals such as copper or stainless steel. The exhibition moves through the 1980s with a series of unusually coloured wall pieces of bolted steel, as well as a series of floor pieces from 1989, in which light, reflections, colour and volume work together to create works of great subtlety and beauty.

The exhibition is curated by Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, and Rudi Fuchs, Director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and benefit from their long standing personal and professional relationship with the artist and his oeuvre. The exhibition is also being organised in close collaboration with the Judd and Chinati Foundations, the institutions founded by the artist in Marfa, Texas and with the Marianne Stockebrand, Curator and Director of Chinati. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, additionally reproducing works related to those in the exhibition as well as views of Donald Judd’s installed works. It includes essays by the two curators and additional essays, selected writings by and interviews with Donald Judd.

TATE MODERN

www.tate.org.uk