The Fabric of Things: The Life and Art of Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay (Ukraine, 1885-1979) formally trained in Russia and Germany before moving to France and expanding her practice to include textile, fashion, and set design. She co-founded the Orphism Art Movement, noted for its use of strong colors and geometric shapes. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964, and in 1975 she was named an officer of the French Legion of Honor.
It's In His Hands: The Drawings and Ceramics of Pablo Picasso
In the last 1940s Picasso began creating ceramics with the intention that the pieces be accessible and affordable and to that end made them available for purchase directly from the workshop. Created in the sunny and warm atmosphere of South France, Picasso’s ceramics show a different side of the artist that many are unfamiliar with, one that expresses a sense of playfulness and joy.
Drawing was not just a quick preparatory pursuit for Picasso; it was an end in itself, and at the very core of his art, a discipline that came before all else. And he was supremely good at it. After 30+ years of research by Picasso scholars what is realized is that the pictorial output of Picasso basically consists of drawings rendered in paint. His entire oeuvre is conceived, anticipated and elaborated through drawing first and foremost.
Invocations And Excavations: The Life and Art of Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is a contemporary artist of history and its consequences. A painter/sculptor whose work reflects on the differences between peaceful ideals and violent history. With Kiefer’s works, architecture is omnipresent as a locus of ruin and destruction, in a kind of meditation on human fate and history. The works become a metaphor for the cycle of life evoking memory and oblivion, heaven and earth, order and chaos, sensuality and spirituality.