Enfilade

Carlo Labruzzi, The Colosseum seen from the Palatine Hill, Rome, graphite, pen and brown and grey ink, watercolour

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Now on view at The Courtauld:

Artists at Work
The Courtauld Gallery, London, 3 May — 15 July 2018

Curated by Deanna Petherbridge with Anita Viola Sganzerla

With drawings ranging from Tiepolo and Ingres to Schiele and Lovis Corinth, this exhibition explores the rich subject of the artist at work, illustrating the variety of ways in which artists have represented themselves and others making art through a selection of drawings from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, drawn primarily from the Katrin Bellinger Collection. Whether in their studios or art academies, out and about sketching a landscape or recording their own likeness in a mirror, artists have long taken pleasure in representing themselves at work. When immersed in the act of drawing or painting, artists are often shown with their backs turned to the spectator. We, therefore, are invited to look over their shoulders and share in the moment of creation.

Depictions of the artist in the studio are expressions of creative concentration and introspection and, like self-portraits, offer a chance to reflect on artistic practice and identity. The care consistently taken in recording the studio apparatus of easels and palettes, or assistants grinding pigments, indicates their significance for practitioners. Yet, the studio, as well as being the everyday workshop of dirty brushes and sculptural debris, is also the realm of allegory and myth where artists create or dream.

Deanna Petherbridge and Anita Viola Sganzerla, edited by Ketty Gottardo and Rachel Sloan, Artists at Work (London: Paul Holberton, 2018), 64 pages, ISBN: 978-1911300441, £17.

Additional information is available from Anita Sganzerla’s blog posting for the Tavolozza Foundation.