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Are you looking for a creative way to melt away your winter blues? While you may be sick of staying indoors, cool temperatures can actually be great for your artistic side. In addition to learning a new craft or leafing through art books, winter is an ideal time for a museum visit.
Fortunately, February is full of exceptional exhibitions. From a Brooklyn-based spectacle that explores Frida Kahlo‘s “self-presentation” to France’s first Cubist exhibition in nearly 70 years, these shows are sure to keep your spirit bright and your creativity sharp this winter.
Explore five exhibitions we’re excited about this month.
Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the Brooklyn museum
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Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, a landmark exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, details Kahlo’s story through a collection of objects. These span personal photographs, iconic paintings by the artist, and a selection of authentic artifacts taken from Kahlo’s La Casa Azul, including “her iconic Tehuana clothing, contemporary and Mesoamerican jewelry, and some of the many hand-painted corsets and prosthetics used by the artist during her lifetime.”
Based on Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up—a recent show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London—this exhibition will be at the Brooklyn Museum from February 8 until May 12, 2019.
Le Cubisme (1907-1917) at the Centre Pompidou, Paris
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Though France is home to several stunning modern art museums, it rarely hosts exhibitions devoted entirely to Cubism. In fact, until Le Cubisme opened at the Pompidou late last year, it hadn’t had one since 1953.
In order to make up for lost time, Le Cubisme offers a comprehensive and captivating look at the movement. Transcending the oeuvres of its pioneers Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the show features work by lesser known artists who contributed to Cubism with their avant-garde art.
“The exhibition highlights the rich inventiveness and wide variety of the movement,” the Pompidou explains. “Not only did it introduce a geometric approach to forms and challenge classical representation, but its radical explorations and the creative drive of its members also paved the way to modern art.”
Le Cubisme closes on February 25, 2019.
Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, The Guggenheim, New York City
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Have you heard of Hilma af Klint? Though largely unknown for most of the 20th century, af Klint was one of the first artists to experiment with abstraction, culminating in a collection of “nonobjective and stunningly imaginative paintings” completed between 1906 and 1920.
In order to share these pieces with the public, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City has produced Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future. This groundbreaking show is af Klint’s first major solo exhibition in the United States, making it a must-see for modern art enthusiasts both familiar with and new to “af Klint’s long-underrecognized artistic achievements.”
This exhibition is on-view until April 23, 2019.
Pierre Bonnard: The Colour Of Memory at the Tate Modern, London
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Like other Post-Impressionist artists, Pierre Bonnard is known for his experimental art. What sets his work apart, however, is his unique approach to portraying his subjects.
According to the Tate Modern, Bonnard “preferred to work from memory, imaginatively capturing the spirit of a moment and expressing it through his unique handling of color and innovative sense of composition”—a fact that has inspired Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory. The first major exhibition of the artist’s work since 1998, this show highlights and contextualizes Bonnard’s role as a colorist in both the Les Nabis movement and in modern art as a whole.
Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory is open until May 6, 2019.
Wayne Thiebaud: Paintings and Drawings at SFMOMA
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As a native Northern Californian, contemporary artist Wayne Thiebaud has had a decades-long relationship with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1942, when he was just 22 years old, he paid his first visit to the site. Now, nearly 80 years later, SFMOMA is putting on a major retrospective of his work.
Wayne Thiebaud: Paintings and Drawings features a comprehensive collection of pieces by the artist. Spanning 50 years, these pieces include painted landscapes, life drawings, and, of course, his sugary-sweet Confections series.
This exhibition is on-view until April 28, 2019.
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