Galleries magazine - page 16

16
GALLERIES MARCH 2014
PREVIEWS
can
also
be seen
in London this
month with a show of his
lithographs at the
Leyden
Gallery
close to Spitalfields).
David Carpanini’s show at
Leamington Spa meanwhile is, in
effect, a 50 year retrospective of
a career that ranges back to
1964 when, leaving the South
Wales Valleys of his boyhood, he
went on, via Cheltenham Art
School, the Royal College of Art
and Reading University, to
pursue a hugely successful
teaching and painting career. In
his art he never left the Valleys –
“a man will always love that place
on earth which nourished his
boyhood” he once observed –
and despite having lived for the
last 25 years in Leamington Spa
(hence the show) he is generally
regarded as one of Wales’s best
known and most respected
artists. Etchings and drawings as
well as paintings hold equal
weight here – he calls himself a
painter-printmaker – in works
which provide powerful witness
to a way of life and a landscape
that is fast disappearing. It does
so in a way entirely devoid of
sentimentality and nostalgia –
some achievement.
NU
Art Central
Two excellent shows, strikingly
different in character but
geographically in close proximity,
make the South Midlands well
worth an expedition this month,
or next in fact – ‘Moore Rodin’ at
Compton Verney
and David
Carpanini at
Leamington Spa
Art Gallery & Museum
. The
former includes substantial
pieces by both artists displayed
in the house’s exquisite
‘Capability’ Brown gardens as
well as a further indoor display of
drawings, maquettes and smaller
pieces. Organised in a
collaboration between the Henry
Moore Foundation and the
Musée Rodin in Paris, it explores
an aspect of Moore’s work I have
to say I had not really been that
aware of before, namely the
growing admiration he formed for
Rodin as his career developed.
A rarely seen archival document
and photographs taken by
Moore, included in the special
indoor display curated by
Moore’s daughter Mary, confirm
this to intriguing effect.
Meanwhile in the gardens
there is the chance to see,
among other things, Rodin’s
Burghers of Calais in a new
context away from the Houses of
Parliament and ten other major
pieces, Moore’s
Three Piece
Sculpture: Vertebrae
among
them. (Moore’s works on paper
Green Fuse
Ceri Richards (1903–1971) is
one of Wales’ most important
20th Century artists, his
rounded forms and fluid black
lines echoing the works of his
peers Henry Moore and Ben
Nicholson. There’s a beautiful
harmony too in this case in that,
to celebrate the centenary of
Dylan Thomas’s death, all the
Richards’ works currently being
exhibited at the
Martin Tinney
Gallery
in Cardiff were inspired
by Dylan Thomas’ poetry.
Richards’ foraging birds and
organic shapes demonstrate
the same concern for the natural
environment that is implicit in
Thomas’s poetry.
Meanwhile, annotating his
surreal and musical landscapes
are blocks of colour that appear
to float across the page, as
epitomized in the oil painting
The
Force That Through The Green
Fuse Drives The Flower
(1965).
Standing apart from this is
And
Death Shall Have No Dominion
(c.1965), a dark and poignant
gouache and ink piece
illustrating Thomas’s namesake
poem with a memento mori of a
skull presided over by a
sorrowful owl (see image on
page 20).
Also exhibited is the complete
‘Dylan Thomas Suite’ of
lithographs and the full set of
Under Milk Wood
lithographs,
along with other related original
paintings and drawings.
Nicola McCartney
from left: J
ack Knox
‘Fish & Curtain’ at Compass Gallery (see p15). Henry Moore ‘Three Piece Sculpture:
Vertebrae’ (1968 -69), at Compton Verney. David Carpanini ‘On Strike’ 1985, acrylic, at Leamington Spa
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