Dürer’s Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist, National Gallery, 6th March—13th June 2021
In 1520 the renowned German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer visited the great city of Aachen for the coronation of the new Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. This was just one of a series of documented expeditions the Nuremberg-born artist made. He also went to the Alps and Italy in the mid-1490s; to Venice in 1505–7; and to the Low Countries in 1520–1. These journeys introduced him to artists of the Italian and Netherlandish renaissance and inspired dramatic evolutions in his own style as painter and print maker. The Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen has teamed up with The National Gallery to honour these travels with a full-scale exhibition, the largest in the UK for 20 years.
David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, Royal Academy, 27th March—22nd August 2021
Here we have an exhibition created in last year’s spring lockdown for us to savour. For David Hockney, these hundred or so vividly observed, brightly coloured iPad drawings created as the season burst around his home in Normandy “are testament to the cycle of life which begins here with the birth of spring.” Printed on a large scale and hung close together, like frames in a narrative, they will offer an immersive, joyful experience.
Hardeep Sahota: Bhangra Lexicon, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Online
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park, with its outdoor sculptures, is open, but all the galleries are shut. However, the current exhibition of work by Huddersfield-based dancer Hardeep Sahota has gone online. Sahota has collaborated with photographer Tim Smith to create a vividly coloured visual lexicon of dance. Sahota, World Bhangra Day founder, began with Bhangra, the traditional Punjabi form, inviting dancers to hold coloured lights against a dark background to inscribe their movements like letters in the air. The effect is magical.
