Joan Miró, Bird in the Night (1967), via Art Observed

Joan Miró’s impact on the landscape of twentieth century art can hardly be ignored, an artist whose fluid, lithe figurations and adventurous approach to both color and line helped to pave an alternative to the dense cubism of his fellow countryman and friend Pablo Picasso.  Taking a reflective look at the artist’s contributions and continued artistic growth during his late Nahmad Contemporary is currently presenting Oiseaux dans L’Espace, a minimal, yet stunning show that reflects an impressive curatorial vision towards the artist’s later works.   (more…)

Georg Baselitz, Glastrinker Beckmann (1981), All images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

The prolific German artist Georg Baselitz is the subject of Skarstedt’s current show with two series of paintings from the 1980’s.  Entitled Drinkers and Orange Eaters, the exhibition is composed of two series that the adept Neo-Expressionist created as a study on representation and pictorial narrative.  Accentuating the gallery’s minimal but elegant townhouse space, these vibrant paintings, emanating from Baselitz’s gestural brushstrokes fervidly reclaim the legacy of oil on canvas. (more…)

Charline Von Heyl Untitled (1995)

Petzel Gallery is currently inaugurating its new uptown location with early works from contemporary abstract painter Charline Von Heyl. Considered one of the leading female contemporary abstract painters, the New York based artist, known for an eclectic style which admires both the natural and the constructed.  Serving as a window into the painter’s early work and artistic roots, Düsseldorf: Paintings from the early 90’s is a collection of paintings never before shown in the U.S. Shown in Cologne and Munich during 1991 and 1995, these paintings posses a bold approach to abstraction, with their provocative aesthetic strength and impressive historical awareness.  In light of a past show with Petzel in September of 2013, this exhibition provides insight into some of the deeply rooted artistic practices that are still present in Von Heyl’s current works, combining heavy use of illustration and abstraction to powerful effect. (more…)

John Baldessari, Pictures & Scripts: A glass of water sweetheart (2015), all images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery

On view at both Marian Goodman Gallery, London and Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris are two simultaneous exhibitions by John Baldessari: Pictures & Scripts and Early Work. The London gallery’s Pictures & Scripts show focuses on a series of new works, while the Paris gallery will show a selection of the artist’s important early catalog.

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Ed Ruscha, Cold Beer Beautiful Girls (2009), © Ed Ruscha. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Robert McKeever

On view at Gagosian Gallery’s Paris exhibition space are two exhibitions entitled “Prints and Photographs” and “Books & Co.,” organized by Gagosian director Bob Monk to explore the innovation and legacy of Ed Ruscha across a range of printed media.

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Keith Haring, Untitled (May 29, 1984) (1984), via Art Observed

Culling a minimal selection of works from Keith Haring’s immense output over the course of his life, Skarstedt Gallery is currently presenting Heaven and Hell a series of colorfully surreal compositions from 1984 and 1985, several years before the artist passed away in 1990. (more…)

Henry Moore, Wunderkammer – Origin of Forms installation view, Photo: Mike Bruce, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

Gagosian London presents a new look at Henry Moore’s body of work in its current exhibition, a cunningly arranged series of small-scale sculptures.  Though best-known for his large abstractions of the human form, Moore’s inspiration often came from small objects he found in nature—pebbles, shells, animal bones—which have been preserved in his Hertfordshire studio in Perry Green, his former home and now a museum and headquarters of the Henry Moore Foundation.  These pieces are currently on display in this unique show demonstrating Moore’s artistic process. (more…)

Joseph Beuys, Felt Suit (1970), via Art Observed

Beyond his most iconic performance works and sculptural environments, Joseph Beuys’s multiples constitute an entire aspect of the artist’s practice rarely seen as a complete series of works.  While some of his more iconic small-scale works, including Capri Battery or Sled, as well as his prints and drawings have become iconic entries in the artist’s elusive, and often enigmatic creative history, the works have rarely been presented as a complete series. (more…)

Blinky Palermo, Wooster Street (1975), all images via David Zwirner

In collaboration with the Palermo Archive, David Zwirner presents an exhibition of rarely displayed works by Blinky Palermo at its 537 West 20th Street gallery. The works on display in this exhibition were made by the artist from 1973 to 1976, and range from objects to paintings and large-scale drawings. Following two years after David Zwirner’s exhibition of Palermo’s works on paper from 1976–1977, this show further explores the artist’s short but influential career, which is largely associated with abstraction, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, but also extends beyond these realms.  These pieces are being presented together for the first time since their installation in Heiner Friedrich, New York in 1974.

Blinky Palermo, Objekt mit Wasserwage (Object with Spirit Level, 1969–1973) (more…)

Louise Bourgeois, Anatomy (1998), all images courtesy Galerie Lelong

On view at Galerie Lelong is an exhibition featuring graphic works, sketches and drawings made early the career of the late French-American artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), whose work often incorporated autobiographical elements.

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Francesca Woodman, I’m trying my hand at fashion photography (Installation View)

I’m trying my hand at fashion photography is the title of the current Francesca Woodman exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery. Named after one of the many notes the artist inscribed on her photographs, the selection focuses on Woodman’s fashion photographs, a genre the artist worked on during her New York years between 1978 and 1980.  The works are also notable in their oftentimes stark reflection of the final years of the RISD graduate who committed suicide in 1981 following severe depression, possessing elements from her signature photographic style against the backdrop of her own life. (more…)

Barbara Kruger Untitled (Business as usual) (1987), all images courtesy of Skarstedt Gallery

On view in London’s Skarstedt Gallery is an exhibition of early large-scale, black and white photographic works from artist Barbara Kruger, early entries in Kruger’s ongoing project to challenge the visual language and power structures of consumerist culture and print advertising, always under the understanding that her works will themselves enter the marketplace as commodities.

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Polly Apfelbaum, HWP 10-20 (2014), via Art Observed

The White Columns Annual offers a particularly resonant opening note for New York’s art world each year.  Refusing an overly objective approach to the curation of a “year in review” style group show, the event encourages, and even emphasizes subjectivity, turning the keys over to one group or person each year.  This year, the all-female art collective Cleopatra’s has been handed the reigns for the Annual’s 9th Edition, with the end result being a colorful, expansive show that is at turns somber, wry and compelling. (more…)

Henri Matisse, The Snail (1953), via Art Observed

There’s a moment at the end of Henri Matisse’s landmark exhibition of his late “cut-out” works, currently on view at MoMA in New York, when the viewer emerges into the last room to view Matisse’s final canvases, immense explosions of color and form that immediately arrest the viewer with their dynamic, minimal surfaces. (more…)

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus (1839), all images courtesy Tate Britain

On view at the Tate Britain is the first exhibition devoted entirely to the work of Joseph Mallord Wiliam Turner, created between the years of 1835 and his death in 1851. The show brings together major series of works including a group of square pictures highlighting Turner’s tendency towards innovation, even at the end of his life.

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Gagosian Gallery in London will reportedly recreate the studio of sculptor Henry Moore for an exhibition next month.  The exhibition will be curated by Richard Calvocoressi, director of the Henry Moore Foundation. (more…)

Andy Warhol, Shadows (Installation View), Photo by Brian Forrest. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.

In the late 1970’s, Andy Warhol embarked on a new printing project, replicating a single photographic image of the artist’s studio bathed in shadow, a single “cap” of light hovering just to the left of center.  Reproducing the image over one hundred times in a series of color pairings, shades and contrasts, the work created a haunting, surreal environment, currently on view at MOCA in LA for a landmark exhibition of the piece on the West Coast. (more…)

Mario Schifano, Propaganda (1965), *All artwork images Courtesy of Artist Rights Society and Luxembourg & Dayan, installation shots Courtesy of Luxembourg & Dayan

Luxembourg & Dayan is presenting the New York leg of the gallery’s acclaimed London show from this past summer, Mario Schifano: 1960-67, which celebrated the seminal post-war Italian artist’s impressive career. Titled The ‘60s, the selection for thisshow delivers an ambitious look at a crucial period in the late artist’s life and career. Less known compared to his fellow counterparts, such as Pistoletto or Manzoni, Schifano had his breakthrough in the New York art scene with the infamous New Realists show at Sidney Janis Gallery in 1962.  (more…)

Juan Muñoz, Thirteen Laughing at Each Other (2001), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Marian Goodman Gallery is currently presenting a selection of Juan Muñoz’s expansive body of work, with a particular focus on the late artist’s works between 1984 and 2001. Curated by Russell Ferguson, the exhibition encapsulates the influential sculptor’s visceral, vibrant sculptural technique in which a peculiar buoyancy is transferred through narratively mute representations. (more…)

Sigmar Polke, Untitled (circa 2000), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Fergus McCaffrey is currently presenting Sigmar Polke: Photocopierarbeiten, the gallery’s third exhibition focusing on the late artist following 2006’s Sigmar Polke/Andy Warhol: Drawings and 2011’s Sigmar Polke. This year has been an  exceptional one in terms of the presentation of Polke’s legacy in New York, considering his recent exhibition Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010, a major retrospective at the MoMa that later traveled to the UK and Germany, as well as a coinciding exhibition at Michael Werner Gallery focusing on the German pioneer’s early works on paper. (more…)

Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island (1976) (P.054), all images courtesy Victoria Miro

Photographer Francesca Woodman is the subject of an exhibition exploring her broad range of innovative techniques at Victoria Miro this month, focusing on a theme of the zigzag as both a geometric and compositional form.

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Wassily Kandinsky, Group with Crinolines (1909), via Art Observed

On view at the Guggenheim New York is an exhibition of early works by the pioneering Russian modernist Wassily Kandinsky, made between the years of 1901 and 1911, during the time he and his partner Gabriele Münter traveled extensively throughout Europe, Tunisia, and Russia.  The works, featuring a blend of Kandinsky’s developing lyrical style and his more early, studied figurative pieces and landscapes offer a strong look at an oft-overlooked part of the artist’s career.

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Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of Qusuquzah (2008) all images courtesy Galerie Nathalie Obadia and The Monaco Project for the Arts

At the Pavillon Bosio at the École Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques in Monaco is a collection of paintings, a series of photographs, and a new video by American artist Mickalene Thomas. Entitled Femme au divan II, the exhibition will remain on view through August 31st, and includes a series of photographs and paintings incorporating Thomas’s fascination with various time periods and perspectives on female African-American identity.

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