The Easel

10th August 2021

Little Canaletto’s sordid city in the sky – Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited review

Jonathon Jones | The Guardian | 21st July 2021

Frederick Augustus, ruler of Saxony, commissioned Bellotto to paint five large studies of his massive hilltop fortress. Reunited in London for the first time since they were painted, these works are an impressive vanity project. More than that though, Bellotto used these landscapes to express a new idea – the power of nature. With their panoramic views and sharp contrast of light and shadow, they are “the first true stirrings of Romantic storminess.”

3rd August 2021

The Second Act of Andrew Forge

John Yau | Hyperallergic | 13th July 2021

Forge painted figurative work, unhappily. Mid-career, he moved to the US and abruptly adopted abstraction. Painting just tiny dots and dashes he created luminous fields of colour, “like looking into a storm of confetti”. These are not abstract expressionism’s random gestures but careful decisions about colour and placement. Indeed, perhaps they aren’t really abstractions, rather “an in-between state, neither dissipating nor coalescing into an image or shape.”

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