Tags Exhibition

Organised to mark the centenary of Emilio Greco’s birth, this exhibition was the first show at the Estorick Collection to be devoted to sculpture.

For over thirty years, Giorgio Casali (1913-1995) photographed the work of the greatest post-war Italian architects and designers for Gio Ponti’s famous magazine, the style bible Domus.

The Estorick Collection inaugurated its fifteenth-anniversary year with an exhibition of some 80 etchings and watercolours by the master of poetic understatement, Giorgio Morandi.

Bruno Munari was one of the most complex, creative and multi-faceted figures of twentieth-century Italian art. This exhibition traced his career from its early years up to the post-war period, when he became a point of reference for a new generation of artists and designers.

In Astratto explored fifty years of innovation in Italian abstraction, and presented a comprehensive survey of the myriad approaches to the subject that emerged during the key period from 1930 to 1980.

One of the key figures of twentieth-century Italian photography, Giuseppe Cavalli (1904-1961) is surprisingly little known outside his native country. Reacting against the rhetorical and overblown imagery of the Fascist era, Cavalli’s work is imbued with the intimate poetry of daily life. Best known for his subtle studies of reclining nudes and everyday objects such as bottles, glasses and candlesticks, Cavalli in fact steadfastly subscribed to the principle that ‘the subject has no importance at all’ in the work of art – and indeed such elements were simply vehicles for his true subject: light. This exhibition of delicate and timeless images from the Prelz Oltramonti Collection spanned the artist’s brief career, which ended prematurely with his death at the age of only fifty-seven.

Alberto Burri (1915-1995) revolutionised the artistic vocabulary of the post-war art world. During the 1950s his celebration of humble materials such as sacking and tar created a new aesthetic, rich in expressive power, that was later to prove decisive for artists associated with the Arte Povera movement. Despite his importance, this exhibition was the first major retrospective of the artist’s work to be held in the United Kingdom. It offered a comprehensive overview of Burri's achievement through works spanning four decades: from rare, figurative pieces of the late 1940s to the ground-breaking abstract works for which he is best known.

Edward McKnight Kauffer produced some of the most iconic and influential commercial imagery of the early twentieth century. A remarkably versatile artist, his work drew inspiration from a wide variety of styles ranging from Japanese art to Fauvism, Vorticism and Constructivism, and encompassed painting, applied art, interior design and scenography. Yet it remains his celebrated posters created for clients such as London Underground and Shell during the inter-war years for which he remains most famous. Kauffer's pioneering work in the field of graphic design ranks alongside the achievements of fellow avant-garde figures such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, all of whom – like Kauffer – had roots in the United States yet established their careers in London.

United Artists of Italy showed twentieth-century Italian art in a new light, presenting the artists through the eyes of some of Italy's most celebrated photographers. The exhibition revealed a visual profile of contemporary art and artists not through their artworks but through faces, poses and expressions. Some 85 photographs were carefully selected from a collection of 250 portraits put together over a period of many years by Brescia-based contemporary art dealer Massimo Minini.

Double Portrait told the unusual love story of a beautiful Venetian painter and a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. The Estorick Collection exhibition about husband and wife artists Zoran Music and Ida Barbarigo had a particular resonance because of their relationship with Eric and Salome Estorick.