Miró
The triumph of surrealism
When Max Ernst was asked by an American artist to define surrealism at a New York gathering of exiles in…
Alexander Calder was a volcano of invention
In the Moderna Museet in Stockholm there is a sculpture by Katharina Fritsch, which references Chekhov’s famous story ‘Lady with…
Lemons and pebbles are as important to Kettle’s Yard as the art
When I first visited Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, I was shown around by Jim Ede, its founder and creator. This wasn’t…
The man who made abstract art fly
One day, in October 1930, Alexander Calder visited the great abstract painter Piet Mondrian in his apartment in Paris. The…
Tribes of one
The British painter Nina Hamnett recalled that Modigliani had a very large, very untidy studio. Dangling from the end of…
Scratching the surface
It is often said of John Craxton (1922–2009) that he knew how to live well and considered this more important…
