Seven for seven Archives - Jordi de Nadal

Seven for seven: From Paris to Cluny.

Posted on 16 November, 2017

1. The always surprising Louvre.

If you travel to Paris, don’t miss François Ier et l’Art des Pays-Bas at the Louvre. Conservator Cécile Scailliérez has put together this surprisingly generous, rich exhibition of Flemish and Dutch artists in Renaissance France, whose achievments had been overshadowed by those of their Italian counterparts for too long. The catalogue is a reference work in the field.

2. Picasso, day-to-day.

Picasso 1937. L’anée érotique at the Musée Picasso in Paris gives you more than what its catchy title promises. You can trace Picasso’s amazing work capacity, and his ability to jump from one style to another, in a matter of days, all as part of coherent, brilliant journey on the many languages at his disposal.

3. The quality is old, the money is new.

You will find a good account of the extraordinary sale of the Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi in artnet, plus a video recording the bidding at Christie’s. The auction house’s strategy of offering the Old Master’s masterpiece in a Contemporary Art sale has proved brilliant, since the last two bidders were represented by Francois de Poortere, International Director and Head of the Old Master’s Department, making small advances, and Alex Rotter, Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art for the Americas, who placed great increments, until his winning bid at $450.3 million (including fees).

4. Buy cheap, give generously.

In ARCA’s blog, you will find an interesting article explaining a “clever” fiscal optimization scheme: buy some important ancient artwork at a good price; have it appreciated for much, much more than your purchase price by some “expert” appraiser (duly provided by the seller); make a gift of the artwork to a museum; collect the tax-benefits attached to the donation – worth up to three times than your purchase price.

5. Promising.

*Anonymous (Antwerp), Carved retable of the Passion of Christ, c. 1510. Burgos, San Photo: Lesmes, Capilla de Salamanca* (Hans Nieuwdorp Archive, Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art | KU Leuven).

Brepols will publish in January next year “Netherlandish Art and Luxury Goods in Renaissance Spain”, (edited by D. van Heesch, R. Janssen, J. Van der Stock), which will “explore the diverse ways in which Netherlandish art and luxury goods permeated the artistic landscape of Renaissance Spain”, and therefore “providing a fascinating and multifaceted view of the reciprocal relationships between the Low Countries and Spain in the fifteenth, sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries”. It will follow a symposium of the same title hold at the University of Leuven, in February 2016.

6. The Tàpies case: a German contribution.

Regarding artist Antoni Tàpies private collection’s sale, I took the side in favor of it, since I had read no article or study relating it to the late artist’s oeuvre. Well, it could be very well I was wrong: Barbara Catoir at the FAZ make a good case presenting it as a “typische Künstlersammlung”, short of any really important work, but with many ties to Tàpies’ creative process.

7. The monk’s treasure.

The heroes of the Révolution missed it, and it remained unearthed until last September: at the CNRS online blog, you can read the report of the fascinating finding of a treasure trove (“2,200 silver coins, 21 gold dinars, a gold signet ring with a Roman intaglio, a folded piece of gold leaf, and a small gold object”) found in the Abbey of Cluny, by a MA student working on the site.

Seven for seven: From New York to Madrid.

Posted on 10 November, 2017

1. A lesson in connaisseurship – and research.

Met Curator Carmen C. Bambach explains to The New York Times how she attributed a new drawing (Sleeping Reclining Male Nude With Boy-Genius) to Michelangelo. She is is presenting it in the forthcoming retrospective at the Met (from November 13th to February 12th, 2018).

2. New issue.

The Autumn 2017 issue of the online journal Nineteenth Century Art Worlwide is out there, and you all can enjoy it for free. Not a single article related to Catalonia or Spain this time, but still full of good contributions, like this rich review of Medardo Rosso’s retrospective in Saint Louis by Susan Waller, Professor at University of Missouri.

3. A Goya for almost 98 Fortuny.

The Garantía del Estado program (equivalent to UK’s Government Indemnity Scheme) insured the early “The Victorious Hannibal” by Goya (oil on cavas, 87 x 131,5 cm), for his recently extended exhibition term at the Museo del Prado, with 18 million euros. At the same time and under the same program, 98 works by Marià Fortuny, which are coming to the Prado for the upcoming retrospective, are covered with 18,804,239.60 €.

4. And a hundred Picasso’s for 1,200,000 €.

No doubt one of the season’s most desired lots for engravings’ lovers is n. 317 of the sale at Ader Paris on November 25th: a Suite Vollard from the collection of Henri M. Petiet (estimate: 1.2 million euros). The lot’s notice summarizes the Suite’s troubled history.

5. Abolish the “scholarship tax”.

A group of leading British art historians have written an open letter against what they call the “scholarship tax”, e. g., the fee for reproducing photos from works in museums in their papers and books – a full report on the subject in the blog of the anti-tax activist Bendor Grosvenor’s.

6. Gurlitt, the aftermath.

According to Marcel Brülhart, Vicepresident of the Dachstiftung des Kunstmuseums Bern, there was not many Nazi-tainted works in the Gurlitt collection they are now exhibiting (Gurlitt: Status Report.“Degenerate Art” – confiscated and sold, until March 4, 2018, with a parallel exhibition in Bonn), but its coming to the Kunstmuseum Bern has prompted research in many other Swiss museum to fill provenance gaps of other works in their collections – interview in F.A.Z.

7. The best must be inside.

*Photo: Museo de las Colecciones Reales*

The new Museo de las Colecciones Reales has announced its opening for January 2020. The building is already competed (and duly awarded, as reported). It is, as you can see, a dry irony for a museum whose mission is to show the Spanish Royals as tastemakers. The collection inside will we, however, splendid – including the exquisite Armory.

Seven for seven: From Collection Godia to the Return of History

Posted on 27 October, 2017

1. Books 1: Keep the curator.

The Godia Fundation left its site in central Barcelona last year and sold some of its works, but kept its curator, Mercè Obón. And so Obon’s contiuous research on the collection keeps bringing new discoveries: in the catalogue for the exhibition hold in Museo Episcopal de Malaga last July (La esencia de la belleza), you will find who the sitters in this magnificient Ramon Casas are, and other interesting new data.

2. Books 2: a Tefaf’s veteran comes afresh.

As we announced some weeks ago, Eguiguren first showed this grand panel in Tefaf Maastricht 2016 as the work of a Spanish anonymous artist, and will now present it in Tefaf New York as the work of the Maestro de Belmonte. To accompany they are publishing a catalogue by Alberto Velasco (Virgin and Child with Musicina Angels. The Master of Belmonte and Late Medieval Aragonese Painting, Eguiguren 2017) which is in fact a complete study of the 16^th century school of Calatayud, completed with other new attributions and a generous supply of technical data.

3. Books 3: Michelangelo

You can already book the catalogue for the upcoming exhibition at the Metropolitan (opens on November 13^th), edited by Carmen C. Bambach, at yale.com for $65.

4. Women, women, women everywhere.

*Maruja Mallo. Kermés, 1928. Castres-Musée Goya, Musée d’art hispanique © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jacques Faujour © Maruja Mallo, VEGAP, Málaga, 2017*

Before going for Olga Sacharoff (1889-1967) in the Museu d’Art de Girona (from November 25^th), you can travel to the Museo Picasso in Malaga to see their selection of 18 Surrealist ladies, under the title Somos plenamente libres. Las mujeres artistas y el Surrealismo (until January 28^th, comment in El Mundo). Meanwhile, Guillermo de Osma shows in Madrid a retrospective of Maruja Mallo (1902-1995), until November 10^th(catalogue here). The exhibition coincides with the launching of Mallo’s oil paintings catalogue raisonné initiative, lead by Mr Osma, Juan Pérez de Ayala and Antonio Gómez Conde. You can send your photos of Mallo’s works to catalogorazonado@marujamallo.com (website: www.marujamallo.com)

5. A family tradition.

The daughter of the late sculptor Pau Gargallo follows her family’s generous tradition with a new donation, this time of five important bronzes to the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid (note from Efe). It is thanks to Mme. Gargallo’s mother that the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya holds an excellent selection of her father’s works.

6. Weimar in Frankfurt.

The Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt opens an exhibition about art in the Weimar Republic, with a fine digitorial – Splendor and Misery in the Weimar Republic, until February 25th, 2018.

7. The return of Seven for Seven’s Challenge: again, find the 7 differences.

Again, too hard. History does repeat itself.

Seven for seven: From Sitges to the Professor Castiñeiras.

Posted on 21 September, 201721 September, 2017

1. Sitges as usual.

The day of conferences (October 20^th) hosted by the Museums of Sitges, near Barcelona, and devoted to collectionism, museums and the art market, will as usual mark the rentrée in this corner of the Mediterranean. In a fitting coincidence, one of the speakers, Glòria Domènech, will elaborate on the late Antoni Tàpies as collector, just two weeks after some of the works he treasured will have gone to auction at Christie’s – at the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction (6 October, London) and the Up Close Sale, (3 October, London), with further works at the Impressionist and Modern sales in February 2018.

2. An Austrian abroad: Max Hollein.

*Photo: Fine Arts Museums San Francisco*

The FAZ has the ability of making good interviews to German-speaking directors abroad. Max Hollein, the former star of the European museum sector as director of the Frankfurt’s museums, and since last year, director of the Legion of Honor and the M.H.de Young Museum in San Francisco, says:

“European museums are heavily influenced by public cultural policies. There is not state-lead cultural policy in America. The museums are far more influenced by what the Board of Trustees says, not only from the economic point of view”.

3. A German abroad: Eike Schmidt.

All the same for Eike Schmidt, the current director of the Ufizzi: “The Italian bureaucracy is a giant hurdle. I have overcome it successfully many times”, states he in this interview for the FAZ. As it is known, he will leave the Florentine museum for the KHM Vienna in the second half of 2019.

4. Our common friend Leviathan.

The poor owner of Pleurant n. 17 from the tomb of Philippe the Bold (which has been reconstructed in the Musée de Beaux Arts de Dijon), can trace his ownership back to 1813, and has lent the piece to all the relevant exhibitions. Moreover, when he decided to sell it, he approached the tax authorities for a in lieu scheme, and also the museum of Dijon for a fundraising campaign, unsuccessfully. But when he eventually put it to auction, the heroes of Leviathan finally awoke, and he now risks expropriation by the French state on the grounds of a rule of 1804 (the tomb was however dismantled in 1793, articles at La Connaissance des Arts and Bilan).

5. A family matter.

ARCA’s blog explains us the family connections behind the robbery of a Big Leaf in the Bode Museum, Berlin. Otherwise, you can find in Die Zeit a video showing three of the detainees, in their way home after the job, taking a walk together into an empty, CCTV surveilled S-Bahn.

6. Böhler? Ask the ZI.

The ZI in Munich has secured funds for research on the Julius Böhler archives (1903-1949), which they acquired in 2015. They are however looking for more suport for the digitization of all the material. Böhler was one of the most important German Old Masters dealers of the first half of the 20th century, closely related with the Royal museus an collections in Berlin and Munich. He was also active with American Museums – the MFA Boston bought him this fine Saint Francis by Francisco de Zurbarán.

7. A man with a mission.

Professor Manuel A. Castiñeiras carries on in his effort to put the Hispanic Romanesque art in its right international context. In his new book you will find articles by the many specialists form home and abroad attracted by him in his seminars and courses, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and elsewhere (Manuel A. Castiñeiras, ed.: Entre la letra y el pincel: El artista medieval. Leyenda, identidad y estatus, Círculo Rojo, 2017, 420 p.; ISBN: 978-8491603368).

Seven for seven: From Monaco to Iraq.

Posted on 14 September, 201714 September, 2017

1. Morgan the judge.

In the case brought in Monaco against him by his former client Dimitry Rybolovlev, over commissions as his advisor, Swiss “King of the Freeports” Yves Bouvier has been feeling the benefits of a having judge, Morgan Raymond, asking the Russian magnate the right questions (article at Bilan, via artnet). Morgan came in some months ago, after the previously assigned judge asked for a low-key transfer to the Réunion Island (see Le Temps).

2. Fred the art historian.

We read at CODART’s news service Dr. Fred G. Meijer, an specialist in Dutch Golden Age painting, has left the RKD, where he was the point of reference in his role as Senior Curator, and has set up shop by himself (at www.fredgmeijer.com). He offers attribution services, excluding any valuation, on a set hourly fee, plus lectures, essays and collection cataloguing.

3. Manuel the director.

The opening of the magical “Louvre of the Sands” in Abu Dabhi is scheduled for November 11^th. Il Giornale dell’Arte offers you an exclusive interview with his director, Manuel Rabaté.

4. See you in Berlin…

…to see Jean Fouquet’s Von Melun’s Diptych surviving panels reunited, along others works of the master and his contemporaries, at the exhibition in the Gemäldegalerie, until January, 7^th, 2018.

5. And in Florence afterwards…

… at the 30^th Biennale de l’Antiquariato (from September 29^th to October 7^th), the first one after the changes in Italian rules for the export of cultural goods. This changes were partly based on the conclusions of a symposium hold by the Biennale’s organization in March this year.

6. Or even in New York …

*Photo: Cover of the Lindau Gospels, The Morgan Library.*

… to see Magnificient Gems: Medieval Treasure Bindings at The Morgan Library, a small exhibition of their extraordinary holdings on jeweled Medieval bindings (plus their Beatus from San Salvador de Tábara, Castille). But if you cannot visit it, you don’t need to worry, because the Morgan has a put online generous selection of its collection, with thousands of images and fine commentaries.

7. ARCA’s blog.

For me, one of the best blogs in heritage and heritage protection is the one published by ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes Against Art). Their last post is about an Iraqi Jewish Archive to be returned by the US authorities to the Iraqi ones next year. It teaches you about what to do when papers and books have been hit by water: freeze them.

Seven for seven: From Los Angeles to Vic

Posted on 17 August, 201714 September, 2017

1. Getty’s grand catch.

The Getty has announced its biggest acquistion of drawings ever, a group of 16 works by Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, Parmigianino, Beccafumi, Rubens, Barocci, G. D. Tiepolo, Degas and others. They include Goya’s The Eagle Hunter, sold at Sotheby’s in 2010 for GBP 881,250. All of them come from the same Britisch colletion, from which the Getty can still make further pruchases. Articles in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times; a press release with the complete list of the works at Getty’s website; and images and name-gessing in The Art Newspaper.

2. The Delgado Collection.

Las Provincias first and Ars Magazine after, report on the 5 years loan of 32 works from the Delgado Collection to the Museu de Belles Arts, Valencia. The artists represetned include Velázquez, Cajés, Meléndez, Murillo, but also Ramsay. They are showing them until October 29th, with a catalogue by the art historian José Gómez Frechina, who was key in managing the loan, and David Gimillo Sanz, a curator in the museum.

3. Restoring the Valencian Van Dyck.

At the web of the same Museu de Belles Arts de València you will find the videos documenting, step by step, the ongoing restoration of their Van Dyck’s Portrait of Francesc de Montcada.

4. Face to face at the National Portrait Gallery.

The NPG London ins hosting an attractive exhibition of Renaissance and Baroque portrait drawings from British collections, with fine sheets by Holbein, Rembrandt, Leonardo, and others. Reviews are enthusiastic, like this one by Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. The Encounter, NPG London, until October 22nd.

5. And in 2020, Morosov.

If, despite some faults in its installation, you enjoyed the grand exhibition of the Collection Schukin in the Fondation Louis Vuitton, here is your next appointment. They announced that in autumn 2020 they will show the Collection Morosov, two brothers from his same circle. This entertaining biography of Shukin gives some insights on their social and professional relationships: Natalia Semenova and André Delocque: Chtchoukine. Le patron de l’art modern, ed. La Collection Chtchoukine, Paris, 2016; 400 p. The Art Newspaper remembers us of Pierre Konowaloff, an active descendant of the Morosovs.

6. Béton box.

This is how the entry to the Musée de Cluny, Paris, will look like, once the building work is finished – by the end of this year, if it goes as planned. For the full renovation project, named Cluny 4, see the feature at museum’s website.

7. See you in 125 years from now?

The blog Mev125 (in Catalan) is closing. It has been open for a year at the excellent website of the Museu Episcopal de Vic, to celebrate its 125th anniversary. Its 40 posts have set an example on how to give relevant information in a clear, reliable, enjoyable way. We have learnt about the museum’s history, the works it houses, and the people behind it – among them, Dr. Eudald Junyent (1901-1978), who gave up a promising career in Rome for it. They will keep all the content uploaded.

Seven for seven: From Sijena to Washington.

Posted on 27 July, 201714 September, 2017

1. Italy, capital Sijena.

Among this season’s sleepers, this powerful Adoration of the Magi (155,5 x 130,5 cm) stands out. It came as “Italian School, 16th century” at Stuker Bern last June, 20th. It rocketed from a modest CHF 5,000 estimate to a CHF 130,000 result and can safely be assigned to the Aragonese Master of Sijena, probably for the main retable in the monastery of the same town – his Nativity from the same retable now at the Prado measures 171,5 x 130,5 cm, a difference of 16 cm that may be explained by some trimming on the bottom of the piece.

2. Sunnier days for Venusti?

At Christie’s last Old Masters Day Sale (July 7th), this fine Deposition attributed to Marcello Venusti (?1512/1515 – 1579) rose from an estimate of GBP 20,000 to a final price of GBP 115,000 (including buyer’s premium). It is a record for an artist who, as the title of the forthcoming catalogue by Dr Francesca Parrilla points out, has yet to come out from his friend Michelangelo’s long shadow (Marcello Venusti, un pittore all’ombra di Michelangelo, ed. Campisano, Rome). For a good report on the best results of the rest of the Old Masters sales, see this article at The Telegraph.

3. Already here.

Quite ahead from the opening day, the catalog for the upcoming exhibition “Murillo. The Self-portraits” in the Frick Collection, NY (30.10.2017-10.02.2018) and then in the National Gallery, London (28.02.2018 – 21.05.2018) is already on sale – edited by Xavier F. Salomon, Chief Curator at the Frick, and Letizia Treves, curator of later Italian, Spanish, and French 17th-century paintings at the National Gallery.

4. Rigaud reopens.

After a 9M€ refurbishment, the Musée Rigaud reopened last May. Didier Rikner dislikes the result. Anyway, you will still find there the great Retable of the Trinity, by the anonymous Master of the Llotja de Mar de Perpinyà, and also some new loans of works by Aristides Maillol from the Foundation Dina Vierny.

5. Challenging Nonell.

In this interesting article in Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, Illinois University PhD student Maria A. Dorofeeva explores the reasons behind the negative contemporary reaction to Isidre Nonell’s exhibition in 1903, at the all-conservative Sala Pares, Barcelona: the gipsy, destitute women portrayed in his paintings challenged stablished and reassuring conventions about them.

6. It’s a hospital… are the new NATO’s headquarters …. no, it’s a museum!

The new but not opened Museo de Colecciones Reales (Madrid) has been bestowed with the FAD Architecture Award 2017. Not my taste.

7. Alternatives.

Artsy has a nice piece about fine new buildings for art – among them, David Adjaye’s strong and elegant National Museum of African American Art, Wahington.

20.06.2015. From Barcelona to Basel

Posted on 21 June, 2015

1. The road to heaven.

This Spanish School – Circle of José de Ribera rocketed from an estimate of €4,000 to a hammer price of €350,000. It might be by the master himself, although I won’t rule out the name of Juan Do (Saint Jerome, oil on canvas, 135 x 102 cm, La Suite Subastas, Barcelona June 18^th, 2015, lot 32).

2. The naturalized Pietà.

What came to auction in Germany as the work of an Italinienischer Meister, turned out to be a fine panel by the Spanish Maestro de la Piedad, who was working around 1400 in the Toledo area under a strong Neapolitan or Southern Italian influence. It now belongs to a private collector.

3. A journey with Mr Wiseman.

Wiseman’s extraordinary National Gallery is a filmed play that opens with a rather topical argument about museums and its public (which Director Neil McGregor wins over, thanks to the old lawyer’s trick of asking the other part to produce the actual proof of her quite foggy claim), and takes you all the way up to two professional dances performing before Titian’s Diana and Acteon and its sequel Death of Acteon, as a way to celebrate its reunion. From talking about art to just contemplating it, as Richard Brody puts in The New Yorker, Wiseman’s way is a fascinating journey.

4. The Greek route.

While the magnificient Defining Beauty in the British Museum shows the multiple ways the Greeks explored the human figure; the tiny, carefully selected Maillol and Greece in the Museu Marés, Barcelona, explains which lessons took and retook the creator of the Mediterranée (1905) from the kouros and other archaic examples, during his trip in mainland Greece between April and May 1908. Curator Alex Susanna claims this was a key moment for modern sculpture, since Maillol’s quiet, self-contained forms opened the door to cold, modern, abstract works.

5.And then, Picasso.

No survey would be complete without the Master, so MOMA’s Picasso Sculpture (opening on September, 14th) comes particularly at hand for exploring further the birth of contemporary sculpture. According to David Ebony in Art in America, it will include the 1909 Head of Fernande – and perhaps the 1912 Cardboard Guitar?

6. A word from the lawyer.

Rebecca Foden, the lawyer from Boodle Hatfield LLP that represented Mr Thwaytes in his lost case against Sotheby’s, gives here some valuable pieces of advice about consigning works to auction.

7. The return of the prodigal son.

The most commented piece news from the ground floor of this year’s Art Basel was the return of Helly Nahmad with a spectacular stand (see reports at Artnet and Artnews). But it was not all about big works by big names. I was attracted by the reunion of these little Miró: no less than three, all of the same year (1944), all from the same series. I didn’t dare ask their price.