Art collector buys £8,000 painting – and X-ray shows a £50,000 picture underneath

Torquay, United Kingdom.- A collector who bought a portrait by a celebrated British artist has uncovered a £50,000 masterpiece – after an X-ray revealed another picture hidden underneath. The art lover bought the original piece – a self-portrait by Robert Lenkiewicz depicting the artist in a nude pose with a female model – at auction for £8,500. But after advice from an expert the unnamed owner took the oil painting to Torbay Hospital in Torquay, Devon to have it X-rayed. [...]

14 Amazing Sculptures made from Used Tires

See what happens when old used car and motorcycle tires are turned into beautiful works of art, the results are truly remarkable… According to Korean artist Ji Yong Ho, recycled tires help capture the spirit of the animals because “rubber is very flexible, like skin, like muscles.” [image credit: Yong Ho Ji, Gana Art Gallery] [image credit: sweet-station] [image credit: thememagazine] [image credit: Yong Ho Ji, Gana Art Gallery] [image credit: jalopnik] [image credit: sweet-station] [image credit: hautenature] [image credit: [...]

Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna

Chichester, United Kingdom.- Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna – an English painter, a Spanish painter and a Hungarian photographer – met in Mexico City in 1943. All three had recently fled war-torn Europe and together they shared memories of Paris, Surrealism, the Spanish Civil War, and the outbreak of World War II. Surreal Friends, this summer’s season of international exhibitions, celebrates the friendship of these three women. It represents the first substantial display of Carringon’s work in Britain for 19 years, and [...]

Currents, at Nassau County Museum of Art’s (NCMA)

Roslyn, New York.- Currents, at Nassau County Museum of Art’s (NCMA) Contemporary Gallery through September 12, 2010, features the work of three artists: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Benjamin Edwards and Tom Sanford. The exhibition is organized by Elaine Berger for NCMA’s Contemporary Collectors Circle. Jessica Jackson Hutchins is a sculptor whose work is included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial. She has shown in many group and solo exhibitions in this country and the UK. Her work explores the relationships between people [...]

Art 41 Basel: More than 62,500 Visitors, Extraordinary Quality, Strong Results

BASEL.- The 41st edition of Art Basel closed on Sunday, June 20, 2010. This year, the annual reunion of the international artworld attracted more than 62,500 artists, collectors, curators, and art lovers from around the globe, a new record for attendance at the show. The participating galleries, art lovers, and media were unanimous in pronouncing this a superb year for the show in terms of quality. Collectors rewarded the excellent material and booth presentations with strong sales throughout the week. [...]

Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art Arrive in Taipei for the First Time

TAIPEI.- “Manet to Picasso: Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art”is Taiwan’s first time to work with an American museum on an international art exhibition. The artworks are from 33 masters, including 53 oil paintings and 5 bronze sculptures. This exhibition provides an overview of the development and styles of Western art from Impressionism to contemporary Avant-garde art. Chen Wen-ling, Acting Director, Taipei Fine Arts Museum said, “Our cooperation with the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a special presentation on [...]

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Presents Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro

HOUSTON, TX.-Photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro (b. 1921) is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential figures in the development of postwar Japanese photography. Among his most celebrated bodies of work are the photographs he took during 1953-54 of the legendary 17th-century Imperial villa of Katsura, in Kyoto, which infuse the images of the iconic structure with a modernist Bauhaus esthetic. Beginning June 20, 2010, the MFAH will exhibit 70 of these photographs—presenting the images, for the first time, un-cropped and [...]

Bellevue Arts Museum Showcases Major Northwest Artists in an Interactive Setting

BELLEVUE, WA.- There is an art in discovering art. Line, color, shape, luminosity are just some of the foundation bricks on which a work of art is built, some of the ways in which we engage with it. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the Junior League of Seattle’s Northwest Art Collection has focused since its inception on teaching these concepts to King County school-age children. For many years, Bellevue Arts Museum has partnered with the Junior League on bringing [...]

100 Acres: Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park at Indianapolis Museum of Art

INDIANAPOLIS, IN.- The Indianapolis Museum of Art opened 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park on June 20, 2010, with a public grand opening celebration including tours, live music, art-making workshops and a Summer Solstice program. Located on 100 acres of land that includes untamed woodlands, wetlands, a lake and meadows adjacent to the Museum, it is one of the largest museum art parks in the country and the only one to feature the ongoing commission of [...]

An Anthology of Rankin Portraiture Opens at Annroy Gallery

LONDON.- From politicians to actors, monarchs to musicians, Rankin’s latest book and exhibition brings together some of the most famous faces of the last 20 years. Portraits unites some of Rankin’s most recognisable portraiture with a collection of previously unseen works. This coffee-table book and accompanying exhibition at Annroy Gallery will fascinate anyone with an interest in celebrity and pop culture. Rankin’s photo album of our generation, Portraits features people as diverse as the Queen, supermodels Kate Moss and Cindy [...]

The Mourners, Bill Viola Exhibitions Opening at Saint Louis Art Museum

SAINT LOUIS, MO.- The Saint Louis Art Museum opens The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy and Bill Viola: Visitation, two exhibitions presented in tandem this summer that reveal how different artists working more than 500 years apart have chosen to express the most fundamental human emotions. The Mourners, 40 extraordinary alabaster sculptures forming a funeral procession that adorned the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, depict personal responses to the Duke’s death. The exhibition brings [...]

The Tree Museum: About Space, Time, Nature and Genius Loci

RAPPERSWIL-JONA.- On June 14, 2010, the Tree Museum situated on 75,000 square meters of land near Upper Lake Zurich, officially opened its gates. Conceived as an oval-shaped, open-air museum which is divided into a series of ‘rooms’, each with their own atmosphere and character, the Tree Museum exhibits individual trees from the collection of Enzo Enea, the Swiss landscape architect and a prominent tree collector. The Museum’s first mission is to emphasize the exceptional presence, beauty and rarity of the [...]

Exhibition at Musée d’Elysée Showcases Prix Pictet Winners

LAUSANNE.- The Prix Pictet is the world’s first prize dedicated to photography and sustainability. It has a unique mandate – to use the power of photography to communicate vital messages to a global audience. The goal is to uncover art of the highest order, applied to confront the pressing social and environmental challenges of the new millennium. As Kofi Annan, the Prix Pictet’s Honorary President says in his recent forward to Earth – the book of the 2009 Prix Pictet, [...]

Alfred Stieglitz: the Lake George Years on View at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

SYDNEY.- The photographs Alfred Stieglitz [1864–1946] took around his summer house at Lake George, New York state, USA after 1915 are considered a major departure and dramatically influenced the course of photography. The desire to build a specifically ‘American’ art led Stieglitz to explore the essential nature of photography, released from contrivances and from intervention in print and negative. ‘Stieglitz’s mature photographs from the 1910s onwards are free from any sense that photography must refer to something outside of itself [...]

Major Exhibition at Brooklyn Museum to Redefine the Role of Female Pop Artists

BROOKLYN, NY.- The first major exhibition to explore in depth the contributions of female Pop artists, Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968, seeks to expand the definition of classic Pop art and re-evaluate the role of the women who worked alongside the movement’s more famous male practitioners. It features more than fifty works by Pop art’s most significant female artists and includes many pieces that have not been shown in nearly forty years. The exhibition will be on view in [...]