The Easel

30th July 2019

Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing

Louise Clarke | Studio International | 29th July 2019

Da Vinci’s impatience is revealed by his output – fewer than 20 completed paintings but many thousands of pages of drawings. Few projects came to fruition, so the drawings are a record of his thinking. They show what we all know – his art reflected a scientific mind. One of the last drawings he did, of an old man, also reveals his humanity: “He redraws this old man’s nose again and again no longer sure of himself.”

Curator Clare Lilley on David Smith

Clare Lilley | Hauser and Wirth | 20th July 2019

Seeing photographs of some Picasso metal sculptures was, for Smith, an epiphany. He went on to explore metal sculpture in a body of work that “had no precedent”. Like a collagist, “material determined imagery”, and Smith used “tools, off-cuts, boiler lids, waste and bought steel” to create works with a strong human narrative. At his funeral he was described as “delicate as Vivaldi and as strong as a Mack truck”.

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