Displaying items by tag: preparatory drawings

The Detroit Institute of Arts, renowned for its Diego Rivera murals, is set to open a public exhibition of his works and those of his wife, Frida Kahlo, this month, the biggest since the museum's collection was threatened in the city's bankruptcy.

"Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit" will feature nearly 70 works by the Mexican artists and is the first to focus on the 11 months they spent in Detroit in 1932 and 1933, when Rivera worked mainly on the "Detroit Industry" murals.

Rivera's preparatory drawings for the 27-panel "Detroit Industry" frescoes, which have not been shown in nearly 30 years, will be part of the exhibit opening on Sunday.

Thanks to a grant from Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project, the Detroit Institute of Arts has embarked on a research endeavor focused on examining and digitally photographing 13 full-scale preparatory drawings by Diego Rivera for his Detroit Industry murals. The drawings have not been viewed since 1986 and have never been photographed. The project, which started on July 22, 2013, will last through August 2, 2013 and will include any necessary conservation work on the drawings.

Rivera gave the drawings, which are housed in a climate-controlled custom storage in the museum, to the DIA after he completed his monumental Detroit Industry murals in 1933. The series of frescoes, which features 27 panels surrounding the museum’s Rivera Court, depict the then state-of-the-art Ford Motor Company River Rouge Plant. The murals stirred up controversy following their completion and critics deemed the works blasphemous, vulgar, un-American and Marxist propaganda. While members of the Detroit community called for the destruction of the murals, commissioner Edsel Ford and DIA Director Wilhelm Valentiner defended the murals’ right to exist.

Following the research project, 5 of the 13 panels will be go on view at DIA as part of an exhibition of works by Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo created during their time in Detroit.

Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) Virgin and Child with Saint Anne currently resides in the Louvre’s illustrious collection in Paris. Last year, the painting was the highlight of an exhibition at the French institution, which included compositional sketches, preparatory drawings, and landscape studies as well as related works by other artists. The work even made an appearance at the Louvre’s outpost in Lens, an industrial town in northern France. Considered his final masterpiece, da Vinci worked on Virgin and Child with Saint Anne for years, ultimately leaving the painting unfinished at the time of his death in 1519.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles recently put a different version of the painting on view. The work, which appeared in the Louvre’s exhibition, was made in da Vinci’s workshop, but not by his hand. It will remain on view with the museum’s Italian Renaissance paintings indefinitely.

The painting was bequeathed to UCLA in 1939 by California real estate developer Willitts J. Hole. The work was transferred to the Hammer Museum in 1995 after the university took over management and operation of the institution. Sadly, Virgin Child with Saint Anne has spent decades in storage. In fact, it hasn’t been prominently displayed since the 1940s when it hung in the UCLA library. The reason the work has languished in storage for so long is that the Hammer Gallery requires that any work displayed in its historical art galleries be a part of founder Armand Hammer’s personal collection. Since Virgin and Child with Saint Anne was a gift, it doesn’t qualify.

The painting arrived at the Getty in 2010 prior to being shipped to Paris for the Louvre exhibition. Museum staff analyzed, cleaned, and repaired some varnish before shipping the painting to Europe. Now that Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is back at the Getty, museum officials are happy to have the work on public display.