Giacometti, an incomparable visionary

Midway through the exhibition in Tate Modern (from 10 May to 10 September), emotion hits you like a blast of heat from a furnace. The chill of irony thaws. The intellectual and erotic games are over. There is only one thing worth making art about, Alberto Giacometti has decided, and […]

Della Robbia, simply Renaissance

In Renaissance Italy, art was a form of advertising, pushing hopes and emotions as much as things. Allegorical images — Temperance, Justice, Charity — on urban facades promoted civic pride and obedience. In churches, sculptural angels offered getaway deals to heaven. Home icons of the Virgin and Child taught that […]

Sculptors… and printmakers!

In the twentieth century, many of the most significant sculptors were also printmakers, several of them committed and prolific. While the comparatively flat surfaces of printmaking might not initially seem to offer much incentive to artists whose vision most naturally asserts itself in three dimensions, an examination of the range […]