This exhibition features more than a hundred drawings by Rosario Weiss (Madrid, 1814‒1843) as well as a few prints and paintings. It sets out to show the work of an outstanding draughtswoman who is better known for her relationship with Francisco de Goya (1746‒1828) than for her artistic career.

Weiss was one of the few women to join the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts—as an academician of merit for History Painting—and she achieved her highest distinction in 1842 when she was appointed as drawing instructor to Isabella II and her sister, the Infanta Luisa Fernanda. She held this post for a very short time, as she died of cholera the following year.

Curated by Carlos Sánchez Díez, the display brings together works from the Biblioteca Nacional, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, the Bibliothèque municipale de Bordeaux, the Museo del Prado, the Museo del Romanticismo and private collections, as well as pieces from other museums and Spanish public institutions.

This exhibition has been organised by the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Museo Lázaro Galdiano and Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica.

Hung Liu In Print invites viewers to explore the relationship between the artist’s multi-layered paintings and the palpable, physical qualities of her works on paper. To make her prints, Liu (b. 1948) uses an array of printing and collage techniques, developing highly textured surfaces, veils of color, and screens of drip marks that transform the figures in each composition. Describing printmaking as “poetry,” she emphasizes the spontaneity of the layering process, which allows each image to build organically with each successive layer.

Before immigrating to California in 1984, Liu grew up during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China, where she worked alongside fieldworkers and trained as a painter. Adapting figures from historical Chinese photographs, Liu reimagines antique depictions of laborers, refugees, and prostitutes. Her multifaceted oeuvre probes the human condition and confronts issues of culture, identity, and personal and national history.

Best known as a painter, Liu ably translates the “weeping realism” that characterizes her canvases into the medium of prints. This focus exhibition highlights selected prints from the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts as well as the artist’s related tapestry designs.

Hung Liu In Print, presented in the Teresa Lozano Long Gallery of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, is organized by the museum and generously supported by its members.

In 2015, Chicago collectors Helen and Russell Novak made the single largest and most important gift of art to the KMA’s contemporary print collection in the museum’s history. Press Ahead: Contemporary Prints Gifted by Helen and Russell Novak represents the official unveiling of this remarkable gift. The exhibition features 38 works by leading contemporary artists from around the world including Roger Brown, John Buck, Christo, Lesley Dill, Jim Dine, Helen Frankenthaler, Red Grooms, Sol LeWitt, and Barbara Takenaga William T. Wiley, and by younger artists such as Brad Brown, Enrique Chagoya, Tom Huck, Jiha Moon, and Hans Schabus. Some artists are leading printmakers while others work primarily in other media, but became interested in collaborating with master printers in order to realize their ideas in print-based formats. The KMA’s selection includes great examples of each artist’s work, prints produced in small editions, and those representing a broad range of printmaking techniques and formats (including sculptural and book format prints).

The Novak’s collection includes thousands of contemporary prints acquired over a period of more than 30 years. The collection is noteworthy for its size and breadth, and because of Russell Novak’s close ties to such prominent master printers Jack Lemon and Bud Shark, who run two of the country’s premier print studios—Landfall Press and Shark’s Ink, respectively. Each year, Lemon and Shark would send the Novaks limited edition print portfolios, out of which the couple selected certain prints to be matted and framed for display. The collection has grown to a point at which framed works fill the walls of their home and of Russell’s corporate office space housing the accounting firm of Novak/Costello.

The Novaks chose to donate works to the KMA rather than area Chicago museums for several reasons. First, they became interested in the KMA thanks to Helen’s childhood friend, Knoxville educator Marilyn Liberman, who introduced Helen to the KMA. Marilyn also alerted the KMA about the Novaks and their collection, especially after learning that Helen had expressed interest in placing portions of the collection with suitable museums. The Novaks soon realized their gift to the KMA could eventually become a centerpiece for the museum’s works on paper collection. Their interest in placing the works at the KMA was heightened by the museum’s long association with contemporary printmaking (Dulin Gallery’s print competition ran from the early 1960s until the late 1980s), and the presence in Knoxville of the UTK School of Art’s Printmaking Program (ranked #2 in the country in 2017 by U.S. News & World Report). In this way, Press Ahead celebrates the Novak’s generosity, and underscores the important role of their gift in enabling KMA visitors to explore contemporary printmaking and the exciting range of expressive possibilities and technical approaches it encompasses.

In honour of Georg Baselitz’s 80th birthday, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München is presenting major works from his graphic œuvre. Singular masterpieces from the Graphische Sammlung’s internationally unique collection of more than 1,100 drawings and prints by the artist will be on display, ranging from radically expressive woodcuts from the late 1950s and early 1960s through to trial proofs of his large-scale format, lyrically sensitive colour etchings from recent years.

At the same time, this small show once more pays tribute to our long-time supporter Franz, Duke of Bavaria. He is one of the earliest collectors of Georg Baselitz and remains close to the artist. It is only thanks to the generous gifts from Franz, Duke of Bavaria that the Graphische Sammlung’s selection of graphic works by Georg Baselitz is so rich. It is thanks to his on-going enthusiasm for the constantly evolving work of this artist and his generous patronage, that the ensemble of works in our collection continues to be supplemented and expanded.

German artist Max Klinger (1857-1920) has long been celebrated for his imaginative print cycles that blend innovative compositions with often fantastical subjects. A recent acquisition by the Davis Museum, the playful plates of Klinger’s Intermezzi cycle on view this semester present the artist’s unique blend of romanticism and symbolism. A master of aquatint and etching, the cycle attests to the artist’s extraordinary facility with intaglio printing. Curated by Claire Whitner, Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs/Senior Curator of Collections.

One of the most intriguing series in Rembrandt's oeuvre comprises his drawings made in the style of artists serving the Mughal court in India. Juxtaposing Rembrandt's depictions of Mughal rulers and courtiers with Indian paintings and drawings of similar compositions, this exhibition reveals how contact with Mughal art inspired Rembrandt to draw in an entirely different, refined style prompted by his curiosity for a foreign culture.

This exhibition showcases the heterogeneity of French “from the motif” or “from nature” drawing in the first half of the 19th century, with a particular focus on leading figures of French art (Delacroix, Corot, Chassériau, Valenciennes and Daubigny), as well as lesser-known individuals such as the engraver Bléry.

Organized with special support from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the cooperation of the Musée d’Orsay, the exhibition puts on display over 100 drawings and etchings, and some thirty sketchbooks—the “plein-air’ painter’s quintessential tool.

The practice of drawing “en plein air” or “in the open air”, “from the motif”, first recorded in 17th-century France (and Europe), became common in the 18th century, and was considered an integral part of every young artist’s training in the 19th. The constantly evolving art movement eventually came to be seen as exceptionally important in the history of drawing. The meaning of expressions such as “from nature”, “after nature” and “from the motif” was fluid, vague: just as easily referring to observational and scientific drawings, as to studies, students’ practice drawings, architectural surveys, military sketches, drawings from memory, travel notes or the faint outlines of a fleeting impression.

Drawings from nature gradually came to be viewed as artworks in their own right; finished pieces with their own justification and purpose. This change in perception led to the 1861 publication of Charles Daubigny’s Voyage en bateau, a collection of rapid sketches depicting his outings on the rivers Seine and Oise aboard his studio-boat the Botin, which provided an ideal setting for drawing from nature.

The line between the studio and the outdoors was not always clear, with artists often swinging back and forth between the two. A prime example of this vague state: the work of landscape painter Corot. While his subject matter was significantly different to that of “plein-air” artists, he shared their preoccupation with color, which could either be applied directly “from the motif”, or reworked at the studio with the help of notes taken on site.

In the early 1970s the New York–based group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) put together a collection of some of the most important American art of the 1960s, including Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual practices, with the aim of donating it to a public museum. They chose thirty works by thirty artists in a variety of mediums and selected the Moderna Museet in Stockholm as the recipient due to its strong history of support for American contemporary art. To help raise the funds necessary to build the collection, E.A.T. asked each of the selected artists to create a print as part of a portfolio of lithographs and silkscreens—The New York Collection for Stockholm—which was sold in an edition of 300. This exhibition presents the complete portfolio, which includes works by Lee Bontecou, Dan Flavin, Hans Haacke, Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and Cy Twombly, among others. The portfolio is significant for the cultural, political, and social history that surrounds it and for the generosity and cooperation that it represents among a distinguished cross section of avant-garde artists.

This Teaching Gallery exhibition is curated by Lisa Bulawsky, professor of art and director of Island Press, and Tom Reed, senior lecturer and master printer of Island Press, both in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, in conjunction with the course taught by Reed titled “The Printed Image,” offered in spring 2018.

Also on view at the Museum:
** "Postwar Prints and Multiples: Investigating the Collection" (on view February 2, 2018 - April 16, 2018)
** "Island Press: Three Decades of Printmaking" (on view February 2, 2018 - April 16, 2018)

"Alphonse Mucha: Master of Art Nouveau" examines how Mucha exploited the advertising poster to create a new movement in art. His work helped shape the aesthetics of French art at the turn of the twentieth century and formed the cornerstone of the international Art Nouveau movement.

The exhibition examines how Mucha’s work helped shape the aesthetics of French Art Nouveau at the turn of the century. Art Nouveau, or New Art, describes a style in architecture, and visual and decorative arts that flourished from the 1890s through 1910. It emphasized the beauty of natural forms in everyday life. Art Nouveau featured a sinuous or “whiplash” line, flattened space, and botanical shapes and patterns.

“Mucha’s early work is centered on the epitome of beauty,” said Jonathan Canning, director of Curatorial Affairs and Programming at The Hyde Collection. “With use of subtle color schemes, lavish scrolling text, and exquisite women, he defined the Art Nouveau movement."

Many of the works in the exhibition feature beautiful women, dramatic curving lines, flowers, and plants. Mucha worked across many media and those are revealed in the exhibition, which includes lithographs, drawings, paintings, books, and advertisements. Highlights include four versions of a poster Mucha created for actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1894 — an assignment largely believed to have launched Mucha's prolific career — and two posters advertising Job cigarette papers from 1896 and 1898.

Mucha (July 24, 1860-July 14, 1939), the most successful decorative graphic artist of his day, considered his life’s masterpiece to be Slav Epic, twenty large-scale paintings depicting the history of the Czech lands and people. The latter part of Mucha's career is also included in the exhibition, with samples of his work after returning to his homeland in the early part of the twentieth century, including bank notes and one of the Slav Epic panels.

This exhibition is a selection from the Dhawan Collection and was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

WIELS presents the first exhibition ever dedicated to the Belgian artist Sophie Podolski. Her work is emblematic of a time marked by sexual liberation, antipsychiatry and youth disenchantment. In the brief period between 1968 and 1974 – when she took her own life at the age of 21 – she produced a remarkable body of graphic works, and one book titled Le pays où tout est permis [The Country Where Everything Is Permitted], 1972. An autodidact savant, she wrote in an uninhibited, provocative and expressive style about life, popular culture and conformist society.

While writing and drawing were inextricably intertwined for Podolski, during her lifetime she was mostly seen as a poet. The exhibition at WIELS places an emphasis on her visual practice and highly personal iconography, bringing this compelling work out of obscurity. The exhibition consists of over 100 works on paper, including those made with ink, pastels or coloured pencil, as well as the etchings that are among her earliest works and the original manuscript of her singular book.

Sophie Podolski was born in Brussels in 1953, where she died in 1974. On the occasion of this exhibition, a book is published by WIELS featuring contributions by Lars Bang Larsen, Jean-Philippe Convert, Caroline Dumalin, Chris Kraus and Erik Thys. Design by Salome Schmuki.