by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog Photos from MONA, Carl Kruse and Blooloop In 2006 the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities closed for a huge revamping and after the input of $75 million and five years of construction the Museum of Old and New Art emerged (MONA). Located in Holbart, Tasmania, the museum
Simonetta Vespucci: Venus of the Renaissance
By Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog In the church of Florence of San Salvatore Ognissanti, where the secular exponents of her family are exhibited, rests today the beautiful Simonetta Vespucci in her secular sleep. But there was a time when the prodigious beauty was the inspiring muse of major Renaissance artists, such
Charlotte Salomon, the Painter Killed in Auschwitz between Life and Theater
By Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog Charlotte Salomon, a Berlin Jewish artist, was one of the most original and pioneering female painters of the 1900s. Her work “Life? or Theater? ” condenses her artistic career: some eight hundred compositions that trace her artistic life; an innovative style that we could compare to
Van Gogh’s Chair: Omens of Tragedy
By Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog I first saw Vincent Van Gogh’s painting ‘Van Gogh’s Chair’ (1888) in secondary school, in the middle of an art class. My art teacher had no particular regard for art history. She found it uninteresting, and it was never a fundamental part of the classes
Activist Art – Art as Protest
by Rosie Lesso for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog Art and politics have a closely intertwined relationship going back millennia. But it is only in the past 100 years that artists have embraced art as a form of political protest, one that can educate, inspire or instigate change. Known as ‘activist art’ or ‘protest art,’
Andrea Liguori, a Wonderful Mind in Berlin
by Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog Into the urban traffic of Berlin so many people are walking, with them come ideas from all over the world, sometimes changing the surrounding environment. This is the case of Andrea Liguori, an architect from Palermo who has now lived in Berlin for many years. I
Steve McCurry: Vulnerability Made Immortal
By Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog Member of the Magnum, Steve McCurry graduated in 1974 in Cinematography and Theater from the University of Pennsylvania. He began work as a freelance photographer in the late 1970s, dispatching reports from India and Afghanistan, the countries with which his work is most identified. The turning
More on Action Painting
One of our readers wanted more on action painting, the technique highlighted in our previous post on Jackson Pollock, and our resident writer Asia Leonardi — who wrote the original Pollock piece — was happy to oblige with a quick survey. Take it away Asia! Action painting is as an immediate, free, spontaneous painting in
When did we Stop Criticizing Art?
by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog When I was around 13, I visited the Tate Gallery at the Liverpool Docks in Northern England primarily to see an exhibition of J.M.W. Turner and Cy Twombly, a starkly contrasting set of artists and the latter of which I actually had next-to-no prior knowledge
Infinite Worlds Upside Down – The Interior Landscapes of Maurits Cornelis Escher
by Asia Leonardi for the Carl Kruse Arts Blog The graphic art of Maurits Cornelis Escher is different from that of any other artist, instantly recognizable to millions of people around the world, representing an always compelling combination of art and mathematics. Escher’s world, which explores issues of infinity and paradox, of impossible geometry and