From 15th February 2012 to 15th July 2012, the Tate Britain will be hosting an exhibition entitled “Picasso and Modern British Art”.  The Tate has managed to organise the showing of more than 60 pieces of Picasso’s work which will be displayed alongside those of the British artists he influenced such as David Hockney, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson and Francis Bacon.  In total more than 150 superb pieces of work will be available.

Picasso 'Weeping Woman' 1937

Pablo Picasso first came to Britain in the early 20th century and his work was first viewed by the British public in 1910 but for the next few decades his exposure to the general public was through small exhibitions by dealers unafraid of how fascist Spain and the Spanish were viewed during this period.  There were two bigger exhibitions (Burlington Galleries in 1930 and the Whitechapel Gallery in 1939) which did host bigger exhibitions although the political fallout from these events continued for some time.

Picasso 'Guernica' 1937

Post Second World War, the Victoria and Albert Museum hosted a joint Picasso/Matisse exhibition which was visited by an estimated 160,000 people.  By this point Picasso had reached his pinnacle and completed his best work – Guernica is recognised as his peak – but it did serve to popularise the artist and influence a whole new generation of British artists.

So you’ve got six months in which to visit what maybe a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the Tate – don’t miss out.

12/1/12 – 14/4/12

The full title of this exhibition is Turner and His Contemporaries: The Hickman-Bacon Watercolour Collection and it’s draw is almost as much about the collecting abilities of Sir Hickman-Bacon as it is about the work being exhibited.  Well that’s not really true but Sir Hickman-Bacon (1855 – 1945) amassed a truly extraordinary collection of British watercolours in the early part of the 20th century.  It remains the largest collection still held in private hands and the most the wealthy landowner ever paid for a watercolour was £315 for a Turner.  In fact most of his acquisitions were had for much less; while completed Turners were selling for £1000+, Hickman-Bacon often paid around £10 for sketches and the like.

Boat and Red Buoy in Rough Seas

The largest room will in fact be devoted to J. M. W. Turner, demonstrating Hickman-Bacon’s attraction to Turner’s work at the time and also perhaps the ease with which it was possible to buy cheap Turner work before the First World War.

It’s not just about Turner though and the entire exhibition is a demonstration of the best of British watercolour from that period.  John Sell Cotman, John Robert Cozens and Peter DeWint are among those whose work will be shown and perhaps above all others Tom Girtin.  Girtin died when he was only 27 but was regarded by his contemporaries as the most talented of them all.  Turner said of him: “Had Tom Girtin lived, I should have starved.”

Thomas Girtin - View on the Wharfe

Hickman-Bacon was an interesting collector in that he rarely displayed his acquisitions, even privately.  Most of the time the work was kept stored away in dark places, meaning it dodged the exposure to daylight which can mar many of the great art works.  It’s a fantastically preserved collection for that reason and if Kendal seems like a long way to go, it will be worth it when you get there.

Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1937 and, after attending the Bradford College of Art, enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London in 1959.  It was here that he was taught by the notable American Pop Artist Ronald Brooks Kitaj who almost certainly influenced him along that path.  From this point on it was clear Hockney was an artist with no little talent, especially in the field of Pop Art, but his first pieces of work such as We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961) owed more to expressionism than to any other school.

We Two Boys Together Clinging, (1961)

David Hockney’s Pop Art career was kickstarted after he visited the United States in 1963, hooking up with Andy Warhol and presumably the other creative types who associated with Warhol during that period.  Not long after this visit he relocated to California where he began to create the series of paintings featuring swimming pools which could be argued define Hockney’s Pop Art work during this period.  The lively colours and realistic tone of the paintings marked Hockney out as an innovative Pop Art talent.

Picture of a Hollywood swimming pool (1964)

David Hockney’s career has been one of innovation, new mediums and a desire to understand new technologies and how they integrate with art.  He became a talented photographer during the late 1960s and even gave up canvas for photography for a period before returning to painting. He has designed magazine covers and stage sets for ballets and operas.

A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998)

Still working today, Hockney is still innovating, notably using iPhone and iPad applications to create portraits.  In 1998 he created what is arguably one of his most memorable works of art, 60 separate paintings which fit together to form one giant painting entitled A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998).

David Hockney has been described as one of the 20th century’s most influential British artists and it’s not hard to understand why.

One could argue that John Pike is perhaps one of the United States less well known practitioners of watercolour art; perhaps this was because of his predilection to undertake a huge amount of industry work; advertisements, illustrations and the like.  Nothing wrong with that of course, it pays the bills but in the eyes of some purists it can detract from the art for art’s sake mentality that we project onto some painters.

Red Barn

Even Pike’s date of birth appears to be a little sketchy although it seems to have been around 1910 in the United States.  He was a student of Charles Hawthorne and Richard Miller in the period in which was learning his trade but in 1933 he headed to Jamaica. It was here that he married and had his only son.  He remained in the West Indies for the next five years, working in the advertising industry there, in particular for the rum industry.  He also became involved with interior design of nightclubs, theatres and the like.

Following his return to the United States in 1938, he enrolled in the U.S Air Force, completing his pilot training but becoming head of the Combat Art Section, attached to the Engineering Corps.  The role of this group was initially to record the United States occupation of Korea in 1945 but in subsequent years he also completed assignments in Columbia, France, Greenland, Japan, Formosa, Ecuador and Germany.  It is these paintings which make up the bulk of the collection which can be viewed at the United States Airforce Academy.

Tropical Beach With Palms

Added to this was Pike’s continual work for industry and he undertook contracts for a large number of American institutions such as Equitable Life, Reader’s Digest, Life and Standard Oil.  From 1960 to his death in 1979 he ran the John Pike Watercolor School which catered for a variety of students from those wishing to study watercolour techniques for art’s sake to those sent by industry to pick up some advertising tips.  By the time of his death he had also exhibited at more than sixty one-man shows.

Royal Watercolour Society Mini Picture Show – 25/11/11 to 22/01/12

We’ve written elsewhere on this site about the long and illustrious history of the Royal Watercolour Society; more than 200 years old it’s regarded as the best of contemporary British watercolour talent and it’s regular exhibitions attract large crowds and eager purchasers.  We’ve already visited the Mall Galleries and the Bankside Galleries and more recently the Autumn exhibition was well worth a visit.

Just as one exhibition finishes, another one is hot on it’s heels; the Mini Picture Show begins on 25th November until the 22nd January and is marketed as something of a winter festival and an opportunity to buy a classy Christmas present.  It’s call the Mini Picture Show as all the work is small scale; it will also be available to take away on the day if the mood takes you.  There’s a small selection from the RWS website shown below:

Dartmoor Moods 1 - Afterglow - Peter J Morrell

One Red Flower - Jill Leman

Alan Cristea Gallery – Editions and Acquisitions – 18/11/11 to 23/12/11

Moving away from purely watercolour exhibitions, the Alan Cristea Gallery is one of London’s foremost contemporary galleries, showcasing a wide variety of talented artists in a number of different mediums.  Editions and Acquisitions will be held at 31 and 34 Cork Street, Mayfair and it’s essentially the highlights of the gallery’s 2011 publishing programme.  Apart from paintings in various mediums you can check out woodcuts and and a selection of other contemporary art before the end of the year.

Anthony Reynolds Gallery – Jon Thompson – 28/10/11 to 3/12/11

The Anthony Reynolds Gallery in Soho is currently hosting an exhibition of new work from Jon Thompson, well regarded London artist

Cadence and Discord

and one time tutor of Damien Hirst.  Thompson was one of the driving forces behind the Britart movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s.  The movement. also known as the Young British Artists (YBA), grew around graduates from the BA Fine Arts course at Goldsmiths where Thompson was head of the department of art.

This is an exhibition well worth visiting to see the latest additions to his ongoing Toronto Cycle project; the latest work is called Cadence and Discord and you can see a sample of the offerings on the right.

Annely Juda Fine Art – Kazimir Malevich & Francois Morellet – 28/10/11 to 3/12/11

Back in Mayfair the Annely Fine Art Gallery is currently hosting and exhibition of work by Kazimir Malevich and Francois Morellet.  Morellet have been exhibiting here since the early 1970s.  Malevich was a Polish national residing in Russia and was one of the 20th century’s first abstract artists.  Among other accomplishments, the well regarded Malevich was the originator of the ‘Suprematism’ movement, a school of art based on largely geometric shapes, mostly squares and circles.

This exhibition is a display of recent work by Francois Morellet which is heavily influenced by Malevich’s suprematist movement and the man himself is fresh from a retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Bangkok, Thailand hosts an upcoming watercolour exhibition soon and it’s always refreshing to experience what we think of as European traditional styles in non-European countries.  The focus of this exhibition is Boonkasem Sae-Kwoa, a resident of Krabi in south west Thailand who will be displaying a collection of some 50 or so watercolour paintings.

Boonkasem Sae-Kwoa watercolour

Boonkasem’s work is largely inspired by the Andaman Sea, the body of water which stretches west from the coast of Thailand and is home to some of Asia’s best beaches.  The exhibition is entitled “Home Is Where The Heart Is” and Boonkasem says that:

“Home is where we feel comfortable and safe.  There were times I forgot my Andaman home which has been part of my life.  And “Home Is Where The Heart Is” is the meaning of this exhibition.  It portrays my big world – the Andaman world in which I live with freedom in my mind.”

The exhibition will be held at Jamjuree Art Gallery, owned and run by Chulalongkorn University and situated in the commercial area of Bangkok, just one block down from the MBK shopping centre for those who know Bangkok.  Jamjuree Art Gallery is more accustomed to displaying Thai historical works related to the University’s history departments but occasionally dips it’s toe into other mediums.

Boonkasem Sae-Kwoa watercolour

Money raised from this event will go towards humanitarian activities  at a charity called the Nat Association in Krabi and the exhibition itself will also be displayed there after passing through Phuket also.

Viktor Mitic at Gallery Moos, Toronto

Viktor Mitic is an interesting character;  regarded as taking much of his influence from gestural art.  The 1950s played host to a

Viktor Mitic

whole host of experimental abstract expressionists, some of course better than others and in the 1960s artists such as Yves Klein worked with innovative styles which almost certainly influenced Viktor Mitic’s most famous works – his ‘bullet paintings’ – which are made by shooting a revolver through the canvas.

This exhibition is something a little different and perhaps a little more accessible for fans of traditional watercolour.  Described as ‘rain paintings’, Mitic combines watercolour styles with the haphazard nature of rainfall.  The origin of Mitic’s ‘rain paintings’ is one of chance.  He prefers to paint outside and on one occasion left the canvas for a break, returning to find it had begun to rain and that “the rain had produced some interesting effects on the canvas.”

This discovery led to Viktor Mitic actually painting in the rain, mixing the minute planning of a watercolour with the random splashes of a rain shower.  Mitic also stresses that the liquid must be rain; other water does not have the correct mixture of minerals and chemicals as the artist has discovered through trail and error.

The Serbian born Mitic has a history of simultaneously releasing films and books alongside his exhibitions and this is no exception.  A book and a short film will accompany the Gallery Moos show.

Viktor Mitic - Galaxy

Kuch Khaas logo

simple news here is that Kuch Khaas, a type of creative arts centre in the capital Islamabad is holding a month long watercolour techniques workshop for beginners.

More on that later but let’s first have a look at Kuch Khaas and what sort of organisation it is.  Shayan Afzal Khan is the brains behind the project and is only a handful of years old.  The centre themselves describe themselves as a  “…centre for arts, culture and dialogue, a not-for-profit social enterprise [and] is a community space for interaction, public discourse, cultural and intellectual pursuits, and civic engagement.” It has also been described it as a “…community space for meaningful dialogue and creative expression,” among other things.

Much of its focus has been on extra education for children and to enable them to explore their own creativity outside what Khan feels is the stifling atmosphere of standard education.  Apart from painting, Kuch Khaas offers many vocational courses for the practical side of things as well as a media centre, a library, performance arts facilities and of course a cafe.  There’s a nominal fee for those who can afford it and it’s free for those who can’t, meaning people from different walks of life can mix together in this productive environment.

The watercolour techniques course is being run by Mahjabeen Atif, a graduate of the National College of Arts who believes that the gateway to one’s creativity is to master the elementary techniques of that medium.  Reinforcing this point she said that “…when you don’t have to agonize over the “how” you are free to paint your dreams.”

Ultimately everyone involved at Kuch Khaas would like the centre to a driver for social and cultural change within the country and for us, it’s always gratifying to report on a good news story from a country with the problems that Pakistan has.

“…..I do not know in all my own country, still less in France or Italy, a place more naturally divine, or a more priceless possession of true ‘Holy Land’.”

William Wordsworth is also known to have regarded the view highly and there is an interesting story behind the work;  Turner was asked to produce 85 watercolours for a book featuring views of Northern England.  Turner apparently demanded a small fortune to complete the work – 3000 guineas, which equates to around £200,000 of today’s money.  Not surprisingly the publishers lost money on the book.

Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard

So where has the painting been for the last 125 years?  It’s last purchase was in 1884, when it was sold to a seemingly unknown buyer for 820 guineas – no small sum – but by the it was already  70 years old and Turner himself had been dead for 30 years. The shipping magnate Sir Donald Currie owned it for some time although he too had died by 1909.  At one point Currie’s collection contained 57 Turner watercolours and 14 oil paintings.

‘Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard’ has not been viewed in public since the Great Watercolours show at the Royal Academy in 2000 and it will be interesting to see how much interest there is in the painting when it comes up for auction at Bonham’s in London on 25th January 2012.  The guide price is between £200,000 and £300,000.  Charles O’Brien, of Bonhams, described the painting as ”…..a very pretty, quintessentially English scene with an outstanding provenance.”

Hilder was born on 28 June 1905 in Greatneck, New York, where as a child he caught his first glimpse of pictures hanging on walls when his father took him to the mansions of the resident millionaires.  When the First World War broke out in 1914, the family decided to sail back to England.  A perceptive schoolmaster recognised that Hilder had a natural talent for drawing and set him on the road to Goldsmith’s College School of Art in London where he studied in the 1920s.

He decided early on that watercolour painting was what appealed to him most, however he could find no one to teach him so he taught himself, by studying the classic English masters.  Hilder went on to become a distinguished painter of oils and watercolours, as well as illustrator for numerous books including Moby Dick, Treasure Island and Mary Webb’s Precious Bane.

However his favourite painting country was the rolling northern downland in Kent, from Shoreham eastwards towards Maidstone. He was also a great sailor and kept a coastguard’s cottage at Shell Ness, at the mouth of the river Swale, as his base for marine painting.

Hilder was the first to see the drama and picturesque beauty of the oast-houses in Kent with their white caps and surrounding orchards and he shares with John Constable the distinction of having seen an entire region of England identified with his name and art. The description ‘Rowland Hilder country’ attached primarily to the weald of Kent evokes a landscape as distinctive as ‘Constable’s country’ along the Suffolk Stour.

He died on 21 April 1993 in Greenwich, London and following his death the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, for whom he had served as President from 1964 to 1974, honoured him by instituting an annual Rowland Hilder award in his memory.

Auctioneer Alastair McPhie-Meiklejon said: “This is one of the first times a painting such as this has come under the hammer in an auction.  Art is a great investment – what you are doing here is buying a painting not only by an artist and musician, but by an icon.  We are expecting a lot of interest in the picture, not only on the day, but also online with international bidders.  It is a well-painted image and the Dylan exhibitions have always attracted critical acclaim. We are very privileged to have a piece like this come to our auction house.  It is more than just a picture, it is an appreciating asset.  There is already a sizeable growing interest in the painting.”

The auction will be taking place at the Old Woolmart in Kidgate, Louth on October 11th, and the painting is likely to come up for sale sometime in the afternoon.  If you are unable to get there in person on the day, the auction house will be taking phone bids.

Bob Dylan’s reputation as a watercolour artist has been growing over the years.  The first public exhibition of his work, ‘The Drawn Blank Series’ opened in October 2007 in Chemnitz, Germany and showcased more than 200 watercolours.  From September 2010 until April 2011, the Statens Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, entitled ‘The Brazil Series’.

'South Dakota Landscape' which is expected to fetch at least £30,000

In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan announced their representation of Dylan’s paintings and the exhibit, titled ‘The Asia Series’  opened at the Gagosian last week.  This is the  first exhibition of Dylan’s paintings in New York City, and features works the rock icon created while in Japan, China, Vietnam and South Korea, presumably while he toured those nations earlier this year.  According to the Gagosian Gallery, many of Dylan’s works in ‘The Asia Series’ are “firsthand depictions of people, street scenes, architecture and landscape,” while others are “cryptic paintings often of personalities and situations.”