Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu
WIFREDO LAM Tate Modern to 8th January 2017
Although he retained his Cuban passport, Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) was most at home in Europe, and especially Paris, where his friends and supporters included Picasso, Breton, Asger Jorn, the dealers Pierre Matisse and Pierre Loeb and the surrealist writer and ethnographer Michel Leiris. It is sometimes said that he was a follower of Picasso, but this is unfair; he followed his own path and was treated as an equal. As Pierre Mabille wrote,when Lam arrived in Paris in 1938: ‘He surprised us with the depth of his culture ... He showed us drawings of extraordinary elegance and confusing freedom.’
He was a witness to 20th-century political upheaval throughout a career that included the Spanish Civil War and the flight of artists and intellectuals from France with the onset of the Second World War. Although it might be said that his life was more exciting than much of his work, Lam did develop a new and personal way of painting for a post-colonial world. Even when he returned to Cuba during the war, he refused to produce ‘the equivalent of pseudo-cuban music for nightclubs. I refused to paint cha-cha-cha.’
There are only one painting and one drawing in British public collections – both at the Tate – and this exhibition reintroduces him to a public that has largely forgotten him, with more than 200 works running through his career, and it does confirm his claim to a place at the centre of global modernism. The exhibition is organised by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with Tate Modern, London, and the Reina Sofia, Madrid.
RODIN AND DANCE: THE ESSENCE OF MOVEMENT Courtauld Gallery 20th October to 22nd January 2017
By 1900, Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) was considered France’s greatest living artist, and he managed a large studio producing bronzes and marbles for commissions around the world. However, his practice also had a more private and intimate side as he developed a long-term passion for capturing expressive movement in drawings and small-scale sculptures.
This is the first major exhibition to explore Rodin’s fascination with dance and bodies in extreme acrobatic poses. It is based on a series of experimental sculptures known as the Dance Movements made in 1911, and offers a valuable glimpse into his working practices.
These stretching, leaping and twisting figures in terracotta and plaster are presented alongside a series of remarkable drawings in which he considered movement and new forms of dance. They include the aerobatic models who posed for him in the studio as well as performers from the Royal Cambodian dance troupe that took Paris by storm. While many of the drawings of dancers were exhibited within Rodin’s lifetime, the sculptures were seen only by his very closest circle of friends and supporters. They may be considered his last major project, indicating that the final years of his life were a period of playful experimentation. This show is organised in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris.