Landscapes
by Marcus Hodge
Born in 1966, Marcus Hodge moved to Spain in 1989 to undertake a rigorous five year training in classical oil painting at the Escuela Libre Del Mediterraneo in Palma, Majorca. Returning to England, he initially concentrated on portrait painting and has received numerous prestigious commissions including the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery; the President of the Union Club in New York; The Scots Guards at Balmoral; and the Jockey Club, Newmarket.
Now Hodge is about to hold a solo show of his latest landscapes. There will be 35 oil paintings in the exhibition with prices ranging from £900 to £6,000. The works exude the freshness of his subject matter that extend from the rocky stillness of Scotland, to the warmer hues of Provence and the colourful heat of Majorca. The studio landscapes are often huge and these paintings evoke the style of John Singer Sargent in their use of his brushwork and manner of painting.
From October 3rd – 21st, 2015 at The Jerram Gallery, Sherborne, Dorset, UK
www.jerramgallery.com
The EY Exhibition
The World Goes Pop
This is a groundbreaking exhibition revealing how artists around the world engaged with the spirit of Pop, from Latin America to Asia, and from Europe to the Middle East. It will explode the traditional story of Pop art and show how different cultures contributed, re-thought and responded to the movement. Around 160 works from the 1960s and 1970s will be brought together, including many which have never been exhibited in the UK before.
Pop art is generally considered an Anglo-American phenomenon, a knowing but unconflicted reflection on modern commercial culture, associated with such artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. This exhibition will reveal the alternative stories of Pop, highlighting key figures of the era who have often been left out of mainstream art history. It will also reveal how Pop was never just a celebration of Western consumerism, but was often a subversive international language or criticism and public protest across the globe.
From September 17th, 2015 – 24th January, 2016
at Tate Modern, London, UK
www.tate.org.uk
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Now’s the Time
This represents one of the most important exhibitions ever devoted to this American artist and the first thematic examination of his intense career, cut short by an untimely death at age 27. It includes roughly 100 large-scale paintings and drawings from public and private collections across the United States and Europe, organized around the themes that inspired Basquiat (1960 – 1988). Though only active for a brief period during the 1980s, Basquiat took the New York art world by storm and produced one of the most remarkable bodies of work of the 20th century. Regularly referencing street art and reflecting the artist’s beginnings in conceptual graffiti, Basquiat combined high and low culture to present a revealing vision of the world that he described as ‘a springboard to deeper truths about the individual’.
Until November 1st, 2015 at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
www.guggenheim.org
2015 LAPADA
Art & Antiques Fair
A newly discovered collection of botanical watercolours by renowned German portrait painter Henry Ulke and his father, typesetter and publisher Carl Ulke, are being offered for sale. The watercolours, which were found by family members stored in an old trunk, show a new side to politically connected Henry. A famed portrait painter, more than 400 of his paintings are in American government and private collections today, including a portrait of President Grant that hangs in the White House. Equally, this find sheds new light on Carl, until now unknown as an artist. Both sets reveal the remarkable draughtsmanship of these observant men, and indebtedness to the tradition of German botanical painting. The collection, 10 of which are by Henry and five by Carl, reveals the duo’s personal interest in the natural world. Carl was a prominent naturalist, as was his son who also became a scientist, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a founding member of the Megatherium club, a precursor to the Smithsonian Institution.
From September 22nd – 27th, 2015 at the LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair,
Berkeley Square, London, UK
www.lapadalondon.com
Irish Art Sales
Sotheby’s is to re-launch Irish Art sales in London this October. Highlighting the forthcoming auction is ‘Nude Girl Reading’, one of Sir William Orpen’s most sensational nudes. Estimated at £300,000-£500,000, the work was last seen on the market 30 years ago.
William Orpen was an artist who enjoyed success and notoriety in equal measure, and the sitter for this work, painted circa 1921 in Paris, was his lover, Yvonne Aubicq, daughter of the Mayor of Lille. As an Official War Artist, Orpen passed off his two earliest pictures of Yvonne as portraits of the fictitious Frieda Neiter, a German spy, in order to justify the paintings to the War Office.
The story cast Yvonne as a beautiful Hungarian who was caught and sentenced to be shot. On the morning of her execution in the courtyard of a French chateau, Frieda was granted a final request. She chose to pick out her own costume and returned wearing a blue velvet coat. As the officer in charge of the execution counted down, she dropped the coat and stood naked before the firing squad. The dramatic account of her death was in England and America, and even after the truth emerged that Frieda/Yvonne was alive and well, and in fact Orpen’s mistress, for the British public Frieda became a legendary figure, and by extension, Yvonne’s fame was secured.
Highlights exhibited at the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) in Dublin from
October 8th – 10th ahead of the auction in London on October 21st, 2015
www.sothebys.com
Marine Paintings
by Susanne Fournais Grube
There will be about 40 paintings in the exhibition, depicting boats she has loved, by Danish artist Susanne Fournais Grube. On her many travels around the world, she almost prefers the voyage and the vessel that brought her safely ashore to the destination itself. Geoffrey Hughes, director of the Osborne Studio Gallery, was attracted by a quality in her art which he describes as ‘charming naivety’. Each boat is painted as an individual portrait of a vessel, either for beautiful lines or as a piece of ‘glorious history.’ Susanne’s skilful draughtsmanship and sensitive understanding of the boats of her choice, or commissions, were recognised by the title ‘Official Belgian Marine Painter’ in 2004. There are 20 in Belgium, about 40 in France, allowed to sign their work with an anchor. Once a year they exhibit their work at the superb Musee de la Marine in Paris.
From October 5th – 13th, 2015 at the Osborne Studio Gallery, London, UK
www.osg.uk.com
