Simonetta Fraquelli – författare

An in-depth exploration of how the iconic artist created his works over the course of his full careerAmong the most celebrated figures of modern art, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) has been the subject of many exhibitions and publications, but none until now has examined in depth how the artist created his paintings and sculptures. Drawing on research using the latest scientific techniques, the authors explore the artist’s reuse of materials in his early years; his pivot from artistic trends such as Cubism to engage with a stylized form of figuration; the timeline of his evocative sculptures; and the evolution of his approach from heavily worked canvases to more ethereal paintings. The richly illustrated book also looks at the role of Albert C. Barnes, an early collector of Modigliani’s work, in shaping the Italian artist’s critical reception in the United States. The Barnes Foundation today owns one of the most important groups of Modigliani works in the world. These, together with some forty other paintings and sculptures from public and private collections worldwide, are interpreted through the lens of new studies carried out by leading international museums.Distributed for the Barnes FoundationExhibition Schedule:The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia(October 16, 2022–January 29, 2023)

Surveying three decades of the British painter Cecily Brown’s career, with its vibrant mixture of gestural expression, canonical and pop references, and subversive themes  This stunning volume surveys the pioneering career of Cecily Brown (b. 1969), one of the most celebrated artists working in painting today. In particular, it explores her process through paintings and drawings that demonstrate both her radical contemporaneity and her keen reassessment of historical precedents such as old master paintings and abstract expressionism, which have been consistent hallmarks of her art. The book’s probing essays look at her practice, investigate the main themes that recur in Brown’s work, and consider her art from a feminist perspective. Brown reclaimed the heroic gestural expression often affiliated with the male artists of the abstract expressionist generation—largely out of favor with her peers—and in this mode she creates lush, dynamic paintings that often contain erotic content appropriated from art historical or pop culture sources. Moving between figuration and abstraction, Brown subverts gendered tropes in work that often deals with the power imbalances inherent in voyeurism and sexual violence.  Distributed for the Barnes Foundation  Exhibition Schedule:  Dallas Museum of Art(September 29, 2024–February 9, 2025)  Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia(March 9–May 25, 2025)

“I’ve always been crazy about Soutine – all of his paintings,” said the Dutch-American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) in 1977. How much de Kooning’s approach was due to the influence of Lithuanian artist Chaim Soutine(1893–1943) is examined in this exhibition catalogue, in which the two artists are dramatically juxtaposed.This book accompanies an exhibition organized by the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, and The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, dedicated to the affinities between the work of Chaim Soutine and Willem de Kooning. It was Dr Alfred Barnes who had made Soutine’s career by buying the bulk of the unknown artist’s available work in Paris in 1923. The exhibition and accompanying publication will show how the work of Soutine had a decisive influence on the development of de Kooning’s art, especially following Soutine’s posthumous retrospective held at The Museum of Modern Art in 1950.The expressive force of Soutine’s painting, coupled with his image as an ‘accursed’ (maudit) artist struggling with the vicissitudes and excesses of bohemian life in Paris during the interwar years, exerted a particular influence on a new generation of post-war painters in the United States. In 1977 de Kooning emphatically declared: “I think I would choose Soutine [as my favourite artist] ... I’ve always been crazy about Soutine – all of his paintings”. Of all the Abstract Expressionists, de Kooning was the only one who continued to praise Soutine throughout his career and to credit him with an influence on his work. De Kooning very likely first discovered Soutine’s work before the Second World War in the New York galleries. Indeed, his figure paintings of the 1940s with their distortion and sense of compression already shared characteristics with Soutine’s figures painted of two decades earlier. A significant turning point in de Kooning’s work, evident in his celebrated series of Women paintings of the early 1950s, coincides with his in-depth study of the artistic world of Soutine at both The Modern’s retrospective and his visit to the Barnes Foundation with his wife Elaine de Kooning in June 1952. It was during these years that the Dutch-American artist matured his own personal form of expressionism, which, with its visceral brushstrokes and heavy impasto, lies somewhere between figuration and abstraction.