Reviews

The painter who took a quixotic view of Spain

Ignacio Zuloaga was once as celebrated as Sorolla, but the artist’s searching paintings soon fell out of favour after his death

26 Jan 2024

At the Fondazione Prada, folding screens divide and totally rule

From pieces of furniture to works of conceptual art, an exhibition in Milan reveals that folding screens are functional, adaptable and always divisive

26 Jan 2024

Shore thing – the artists who flourished on the New York waterfront

What did Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly and Lenore Tawney have in common? They all lived cheek by jowl in a wharfside district of Manhattan

22 Jan 2024

Weird Barbies and other unheavenly bodies – Anu Poder at the Muzeum Susch, reviewed

The Estonian artist stretched materials to their limit to create wonderfully distressed and disturbing sculptures

19 Jan 2024

How Harriet Backer worked wonders in Norway

The painter is in no need of rediscovery at home, but her painstaking depictions of everyday life deserve to be better known abroad

16 Jan 2024

Whose imperial majesty? – ‘South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain’ at the MK Gallery, reviewed

When it comes to miniatures, size doesn’t matter, but a show of historic and contemporary works should spark a bigger colonial conversation

12 Jan 2024

What do English country houses tell us about the state of the nation?

Stephanie Barczewski’s book considers how stately homes have evolved according to the needs of their owners and wider changes in society

11 Jan 2024

Rocks of all ages: a guide to collecting marble, reviewed

Jan Christian Sepp’s guide to the visual and geological properties of marble will whet the appetite of the modern readers too

9 Jan 2024

How the Bauhaus exiles shaped a new urban landscape

The westward spread of modernist design between the wars was shaped by the migrant experience

3 Jan 2024

The fearless gaze of Agnès Varda

An exhibition at the Cinémathèque française doesn’t shy away from the film-maker’s political side

2 Jan 2024

Breath of fresh air – Gerhard Richter in the Alps

Three exhibitions in the Engadin Valley explore how the Swiss mountains have inspired some of the painter’s most playful work

21 Dec 2023

The changing face of beauty through the ages

The Wellcome Collection’s sprawling show has a lot in common with a busy department store and proves that the beauty industry can be an exhausting business

15 Dec 2023

The repeat performances of Robert Ryman

The artist painted countless variations of a white square, but repetitive strain was never really an issue

8 Dec 2023

The sacred heart of Notre-Dame

The cathedral’s glittering 19th-century reliquaries are among the treasures that have taken up temporary residence at the Louvre

The Mexican manuscript that reveals the wonders of the Aztec world

Created by a Spanish missionary and Indigenous authors and artists in the 16th century, the Florentine Codex is an intellectual feat – and now available to all

1 Dec 2023

French silver shines at the Getty

An open access publication celebrates glittering works from the 17th and 18th centuries

28 Nov 2023

The Venetian painters who opened up a world of new possibilities

The lessons learned by the city’s painters in the 1500s brought about radical new forms of expression

28 Nov 2023

Stage presence – the theatrical paintings of John Lavery

The artist could be a touch wooden at times, but a survey in Dublin shows that his best work is full of theatrical flair

28 Nov 2023

A continental breakfast worth tucking into twice

Jean-Étienne Liotard depicted the same scene first in pastel, then 23 years later in oils – and both versions can be savoured for a time at the National Gallery in London

24 Nov 2023

Nicolas de Staël’s art was unpredictable to the end

This long overdue retrospective shows that there was very little Nicolas de Staël coudn’t do as a painter

23 Nov 2023

The fragile idylls of Frank Walter

The Antiguan-born painter spent his final years living off the land, but his scenes of paradise are more complicated than they seem

22 Nov 2023

The sculptor who saw infinite possibilities in a line

After fleeing Nazi Germany for Venezuela, Gego made intricately-woven works from industrial materials

21 Nov 2023

How to do things with words – and make art at the same time

At the Henry Moore Institute, artists and poets are hanging on to language for all they’ve got, finding meaning in the spaces between writing and objects

17 Nov 2023

The cosmic fantasies of Remedios Varo

The Spanish-born Surrealist had a strong sense of order and a desire to remake the universe

15 Nov 2023