Oct 26th, 2020 - There are persistent rumors about a ghostly presence at Casa Azul, Kahlo's former home. Close to 70 years after her death in 1954 at just 47, Frida Kahlo remains one of the world’s most famous and beloved artists. But is it possible her spirit still walks the earth? That’s the rumor at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, which is based in Casa Azul, the blue-walled home that Kahlo shared with her husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera . "A docent told me [a  Frida  Kahlo ghost] is rumored to wander the rooms of the Museo Frida Khalo in Mexico City," author Arianna Davis writes in ...

Oct 23rd, 2020 - This year’s Bethesda Painting Awards appear to split equally between abstraction and representation, a divide that was once more of an ideological rift than it is today. But only two of the eight finalists, all from the Washington-Baltimore area and now exhibiting their entries at Gallery B, deal in pure abstraction. And neither of them have styles that are painterly in the abstract-expressionist mode. Lawrence Cromwell, who took the top prize, hews closest to that style. His allover oils are vibrant and freewheeling, yet carefully worked. They’re collagelike, and seem to arise from ...

Oct 22nd, 2020 - In a moving letter, Van Gogh complains about quarantine after his forced removal from the Yellow House New exhibition at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum is a unique opportunity to see Vincent’s correspondence, normally locked away in a vault When Van Gogh was sent to hospital again in March 1889, a few weeks after mutilating his ear, he ran out of writing paper. The solution was to use the envelope from a letter he had just received, addressed to him in Arles by his brother Theo. Having reached the bottom of the envelope Vincent squeezed in his last words, ending with an enigmatic query: ...

Oct 21st, 2020 - An oil painting by British street artist Banksy parodying a Claude Monet masterpiece sold in London on Wednesday for £7.6 million, the second highest price at auction for the mysterious artist. The oil on canvas work, "Show Me the Monet", a modern take on Monet’s impressionist classic "The Water-Lily Pond", sold for £7,551,600 ($9.8 mn, 8.4 mn euros) at Sotheby’s following a bidding battle. "The hammer came down after five determined collectors battled for nearly nine minutes to drive the final price beyond its estimate of £3,000,000-5,000,000 to become the second highest price for the ...

Oct 21st, 2020 - One of Jacob Lawrence’s Missing Paintings Has Been Discovered on the Upper West Side When it comes to famous art, there are many instances wherein missing polyptychs , incomplete exhibitions and vanished canvases have haunted curators for years. On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City got to celebrate one of the rare instances where artistic gaps like this are miraculously filled. The museum is currently presenting the exhibition " Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, " which looks at the iconic modernist painter known for a style he called "dynamic cubism." However, ...

Oct 21st, 2020 - Portr-8 , the inaugural exhibition of the contemporary African photography gallery Doyle Wham , showcases innovative and experimental portraits by eight new African artists at ECAD in south London. The artists, from Gabon, Nigeria, Namibia, Kenya and Mozambique, are united by a desire to challenge traditional ideas and narrow interpretations of Africa, African art, and African society “MILK is not about race, but about perception, and what we subjectively perceive as beautiful. It forms part of a broader project, Shades of Industry, that hopes to redefine beauty standards through art. Dark ...

Oct 21st, 2020 - As part of an ongoing, yearslong effort to recover ownership rights of several paintings created by Dutch modernist Piet Mondrian in his signature style in the 1920s, the late artist’s heirs filed a lawsuit against a German museum in U.S. District Court, District of Columbia. The suit states that the works in question are estimated to be valued in excess of $200 million and are calling for a jury trial after their attempts for the works to be returned were declined by the museum. The suit has been filed against the Kunstmuseen Krefeld , which is located in a western German city near ...

Oct 21st, 2020 - Last sold at auction for $4.9m, offers on the work will be reviewed ahead of the auction house's contemporary and Impressionist and Modern art evening sales on 28 October in New York Sotheby’s is offering Alberto Giacometti’s iconic Grande Femme I in a rare sealed bid private sale beginning this afternoon; the minimum bid on the monumental sculpture is a cool $90m and offers must be submitted in multiples of $1m. All offers received by noon on 27 October will be unsealed and reviewed by the auction house’s general counsel and an outside auditor ahead of its marquee evening sales of ...

Oct 21st, 2020 - We caught up with the president and CEO of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. Jennifer Rominiecki, a veteran curator and the president and CEO of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida, has learned a thing or two about plants since she joined the institution in 2015. She’s also brought some artistic flair to the organization, which is best known for its marvelous collection of floral specimens. As the force behind a new initiative, Rominiecki oversees programming that includes art exhibitions tied to the botanical garden’s holdings, which has been a hit among audiences ...

Oct 21st, 2020 - Discovered by the gardener at the Ricci Oddi gallery last year, Portrait of a Lady will be the star of a series of exhibitions on the much-loved artist A Gustav Klimt masterpiece stolen 23 years ago from an Italian gallery will go back on display next month. Portrait of a Lady (1916-17) was taken on 22 February 1997 from the Ricci Oddi gallery in the northern city of Piacenza. A gardener found the painting last December, after removing a metal plate on an exterior wall; the work was concealed in a bag buried within a cavity. The painting will go on show in the gallery’s main exhibition ...

Oct 20th, 2020 - Last December, a Gustav Klimt painting called  Portrait of a Lady  that had been missing since 1997 miraculously turned up in the very same gallery from which it had been presumably stolen 22 years previously. The painting was found when a gardener disposing of ivy covering the Ricci-Oddi Modern Art Gallery in Piacenza, Italy discovered a metal panel in the wall, behind which the canvas had been stowed. Now, as a conclusion to the saga, Portrait of a Lady is scheduled to be exhibited (under high security measures) at the Ricci-Oddi gallery beginning on November 28, 2020, as part of a ...

Oct 20th, 2020 - Recovered Klimt Painting to Go On View in Italy 20 Years After Storied Heist report (1916–17), is set to be exhibited starting November 28 in a protective case. to having carried out the heist in 1997. Before the work was stolen, research and X-ray analysis revealed that it contained two portraits, one of which Klimt had painted over. The perpetrators of the theft made their confession in a letter to local reporter Ermanno Mariani. In the missive, they described their return of the painting as "a gift to the city," writing that they put the work in the gallery’s wall four years after ...

Oct 16th, 2020 - Twenty Perrotin Gallery artists have each hidden an artwork in the famed Paris landmark. Happy hunting! Picture this: it’s a crisp weekend morning in October, and you’re at the Grand Palais, the ornate Beaux-Arts exhibition hall in the heart of Paris, for a scavenger hunt. Beneath the vaunted glass and iron nave, you are let loose with one goal: find—and keep—whatever artworks you can spot. "Wanted!" a collaborative project between Perrotin Gallery and the Grand Palais, will take place between October 24 and 25. The rules are simple: 20 artworks by 20 artists on Perrotin’s ...

Oct 16th, 2020 - A small clay pot in Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas could hold the key to unlocking the mysterious 17th-Century painting, argues Kelly Grovier. Sometimes a vase is just a vase. Sometimes it’s a portal to another plane of perception. In Diego Velázquez’s 17th-Century masterpiece Las Meninas, a ricochet of shadows and mirrors that never ceases to intrigue, a small and underappreciated clay jug at the centre of the canvas transforms the work from a disorderly snapshot of courtly life into an arresting treatise on the illusory and ultimately transcendable nature of existence. Erase that ...

Oct 15th, 2020 - A group of museum supporters are calling on the Maryland attorney general and secretary of state to put a stop to the sell-off. Earlier this month, the Baltimore Museum of Art  made headlines when it announced its intention to sell a trio of works worth around $65 million to raise funds for a new equity initiative. Now, a group of 23 museum supporters is calling on the government to investigate and put a stop to the planned deaccessioning. In a strongly worded six-page letter to Maryland attorney general Brian Frosh and secretary of state John C. Wobensmith, signatories including former ...

Oct 15th, 2020 - The late artist's debut at Frieze Masters, plus stellar sales at auction, signal a turning point for the pioneering Modernist's visibility. Ben Enwonwu has long been a household name in Nigeria and in African art circles. Yet it was only three years ago that the late pioneer of African art—often called “the father of African Modernism” and arguably one of the most influential African artists of the 20th century—was rediscovered outside the continent. At this year’s digital edition of Frieze Masters, the late artist is being shown by the  , which was founded this year by ...