3 May – 2 September 2012
by Anna McNay

Faun uncovering a sleeping nude figure reclining on a bed; plate 27 of the Vollard Suite (VS 27). 12 June 1936, Etching and aquatint. Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973). Copyright of Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

“To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.”

HS portrait of bearded man, Ambrose Vollard, publisher of the Vollard Suite; plate 99 of the Vollard Suite (VS 99). 4 March 1937. Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973). Copyright of Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

With an attitude like this, it is no surprise to see the plethora of classical motifs present in Picasso’s Vollard Suite, a set of 100 prints, currently on show for the first time in their entirety in a British public institution, at the British Museum. Named after avant-garde Paris art dealer and print publisher Ambroise Vollard, who was responsible both for giving Picasso his first Parisian exhibition (joint with fellow Spanish painter, Francisco Iturrino, in 1901), and for establishing his reputation as a printmaker, this particular set is a new acquisition for the museum, and, having never been shown in public before, is in pristine condition.

Minotaur crouching over sleeping woman; plate 93 of the Vollard Suite (VS 93). 18 June 1933, plate reworked probably at the end of 1934. Drypoint. Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973). Copyright of Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

Although not formally trained in the techniques, Picasso experimented with a variety of print methods, including etching, engraving, dry point, aquatint, and sugar aquatint, bringing forth different stylistic effects. The earliest works of the Suite, which was produced between 1933-37, are of heavy-limbed, seated nudes, adorned with ivy wreaths, and very much indebted to the classical prototype of the Venus Pudica (the Venus of Modesty). In contrast to similar subjects by Rembrandt and Ingres, displayed alongside, Picasso’s lines are sparse, crisp, and clean. This continues into the main body of the Suite, some 46 works produced en masse in a six-week period in 1933, depicting the sculptor’s studio – again, transposed into a classical setting.

Nude bearded sculptor working on staute with model (Marie Therese) posing; plate 59 of the Vollard Suite (VS 59). 31 March 1933. Etching. Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973). Copyright of Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

Employing features from Ovid’s Metamorphosis and the myth of Pygmalion, we are again met with wreaths and vases of flowers (evoking the presence of a modern day Aphrodite as model), and a sculptor reaching out to touch his creation, as if to see whether it mightn’t come to life. These images are calm and serene, and many suggest a sense of both artistic and erotic fulfilment between the sculptor and his model, very clearly based on Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s muse and mistress at the time. Having met outside a Parisian department store in 1927, when Marie-Thérèse was not yet 18, they had embarked upon a passionate affair, culminating with her pregnancy in 1935, at the same time as Picasso’s wife, Olga Khokhlova, left him, and he was moving on to a new affair with later muse, Dora Maar.

Male bearded figure violently embraces nude reclining female figure; plate 29 of the Vollard Suite (VS 29). Plate reworked 2 November 1933. Etching, aquatint and drypoint. Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973). Copyright Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

This period of personal tumult, which also coincides with increasing political turbulence across Europe, is reflected in 15 etchings of a minotaur – a mythical beast: half-man, half-bull – which first appears in a print in May 1933. This animal became something of an alter-ego for Picasso, who represented himself in this guise in scenes of unbridled passion with his model, in which agitated, scratchy lines further capture the mood and aggression of the relationship, with aquatint also being used to give a darker, ominous background tone. As in the myth, the beast is ultimately slain, but, in Picasso’s own twist, he returns in later works, blinded, and led by a young girl with Marie-Thérèse’s features. This forlorn and pathetic figure can be seen to pre-figure those in the major work, Guernica (1937), which ensued shortly after the final prints in this Suite.

Young sculptor at work; plate 46 of the Vollard Suite. 23 March 1933. Etching. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Presented by the Hamish Parker Charitable Trust in memory of Major Horace Parker. Copyright Succession Picasso/DACS 2011 <br/>

The final three prints were produced upon Vollard’s request in 1937. He had, at this point, been given 97 works, and wanted to have this rounded up to 100, and so Picasso added a quick three portraits of the dealer himself. The 310 paper print sets, and a further three on vellum, were then completed in Paris, and delivered to Vollard in May 1939. Two months later, however, he met an untimely death in a car accident, and so the prints were never published, and ended up remaining in a warehouse until the 1950s. The set on display here comes directly from the heirs of Henri Petiet, who bought up most of the prints from the Vollard estate. They are shown not only alongside prints and drawings by Picasso’s influential predecessors, Goya, Rembrandt, and Ingres, but also accompanied by a number of examples of classical sculpture and objects from the British Museum’s own collection. The similarities between the figures on Picasso’s pages, and those decorating a bronze Etruscan mirror from 525-500 BC, and a red-figured Athenian vase from 490-480 BC, are striking, and really highlight the artist’s openly professed engagement with classical art. Thus, whether or not one accepts his belief that objects from the past retain a living presence, here, in his works, he certainly imbues the mythical motifs with new vitality, quite inspiring to view, and perfectly at home in the Print Rooms of the British Museum.

Anna McNay is a London-based writer, curator and researcher. She has an academic background as a doctoral candidate, tutor, and lecturer in German and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, and as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is also a qualified and experienced CELTA tutor. You can read her own blog here 

by Matt Foden

As well as wedding photography, my wife and I regularly carry out lifestyle portrait shoots of families. As part of these shoots we are tasked with getting really natural looking pictures of children- photos that really capture their personality and energy.

 Whilst it does take a while to master the art of photographing children there are a few easy steps you can take to immediately improve the quality of the pictures you take of your own kids, regardless of your camera, experience or level of skill:

Shoot from their level- When I look at most snapshots of children you notice that 95% of them are taken at the adult’s eye level. This means that the photographer is standing above the child looking down on them. Generally speaking this ‘diminishes’ the stature of the child. Instead try kneeling down when taking the picture so that you are at the same height as the child. This almost always makes for more flattering and ‘engaging’ portraits of children.

Get them involved in an activity- We don’t shoot in studios- at all! That’s because we want to capture natural looking portraits of children ‘being children’. Instead we take families to a park or similar outdoor venue. We then encourage the children to engage in a fun activity- it could be a game of hide and seek or ‘it’. Whilst the children are fully involved in their games Brenda and I then to capture natural, candid moments, which are always much nicer in my opinion. This is easy enough for you to recreate with your own kids. The trick is to be patient- wait for your kids to be fully engaged in the game before you even take your camera out. Then simply capture those great moments!

Take advantage of window light- A great way to get beautiful looking, relaxed portraits at home is to place your child next to a large window. Make sure that you then switch off the flash on your camera. This natural daylight is far more interesting and dramatic than the harsh and flat light that on-camera flash creates. If you find that the shadow-side of the child’s face is too dark then ask someone to hold up a white sheet or piece of card near that side of the face (though not so near that it appears in the frame!) This has the effect of ‘bouncing’ some of the natural light back into the shadows.

Upgrade to a digital SLR- Although you can get amazing portraits with pretty much any camera there are certain advantages in buying an SLR (cameras with interchangeable lenses that use an internal mirror). Firstly, with a digital SLR there is no discernible ‘lag’ time between the moment you press the shutter button and when the picture gets taken. With compact cameras by the time the picture has been taken you have often lost the moment! SLR’s tend to have much better, faster and more accurate auto focus systems too, which is really handy when you’re taking those natural shots of your kids playing. Whilst it used to be the case that digital SLRs were very expensive, you can now buy them for under £300.

I do hope that you found these tips useful. The beauty of digital photography is that there’s no limit to the amount of photos you can take- so go experiment, and have lots of fun in the process!

Matt and his wife Brenda run Matt Foden Photography, a wedding and portrait photography business based near Croydon in Surrey.

Quentin Blake: As Large as Life
The Foundling Museum; 12 January – 15 April 2012
by Anna McNay 

The Foundling Hospital was set up in 1739 by Captain Charles Coram, following nearly 20 years of campaigning, and finally being granted a Royal charter by George II. During the 18th century, nearly 1,000 babies each year were abandoned in the streets of London, and, without such philanthropic causes as Coram’s, they were simply left to perish. The Foundling Museum, set up in 1998 in the original building on Coram’s Fields, tells the story of the hospital and some of its early children. It also contains a number of works of art by William Hogarth (1697-1764) and his contemporaries. Hogarth, as one of the founding governors of the hospital, initiated the idea that artists might donate paintings and sculptures in order to attract wealthy, polite society, in the hope that they might make donations for the care of the children.

From the series Mothers and Babies Underwater (c) Quentin Blake

The idea of bringing art into hospitals is one currently being taken forward again by Stephen Barnham and Dr Nick Rhodes of the Nightingale Project, a charity, founded in 1988, whose aim is to brighten up mental health hospitals through the arts. As an early commission, they asked Children’s Laureate and well-loved illustrator, Quentin Blake (born 1932), perhaps best known for his collaborations with Roald Dahl, to produce a series of pictures for the walls of the mental health ward for older adults in Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow.

Blake soon settled on the theme of the circus, wanting to highlight that his fellow seniors were still full of beans and not necessarily ready to kowtow to the rules of every day life! Fire breathers, tightrope and stilt walkers, acrobats, all a mix of colours and ages, cavort amongst performing animals in a carnivalesque and celebratory manner. This is certainly not a scene one would associate with a glum NHS old person’s hospital ward.

From the series Mothers and Babies Underwater (c) Quentin Blake

Since the success of this project, Blake has been involved in producing works for a number of other hospitals and healthcare settings, both in the UK and in France. Giclée prints of over sixty of these, from four locations, are on show now at the Foundling Museum. They are also on sale, as limited editions, to raise money for the Coram charity.

From the series Welcome to Planet Zog (c) Quentin Blake

Alongside the Northwick Park commission, entitled Our Friends in the Circus (2009), visitors to the Foundling Museum can enjoy equally lively and colourful works in the series Welcome to Planet Zog (2007), produced for the wards and waiting areas of Alexandra Avenue Health and Social Care Centre for Young People in South Harrow. As with Our Friends in the Circus, the idea in Blake’s mind was to create a parallel world, with lots going on, so that patients and visitors having to wait a long time for appointments would get drawn in and lost in their heads, adding to the narrative. In Zog, the patients inhabit stripy trees, and are tended by purple and green aliens, who study their tongues and feed them spoonfuls of medicine. There are also more playful interactions, where the aliens read from storybooks, or they join together with the children to play a variety of instruments. Going to hospital on this planet would be a fun and uplifting experience.

From the series Welcome to Planet Zog (c) Quentin Blake

Ordinary Life in Vincent Square (2010), produced for the Eating Disorders Clinic in Vincent Square, London, differs from the other series, however, by being far more a portrait of the simple pleasures of real life. Speaking with the patients before beginning his drawings, Blake realised that they were largely highly intelligent and sensitive people who had become estranged from normality. He therefore abandoned his usual approach of working with metaphor, and sought to create happy, every day, relaxed images of couples walking in the rain, going for picnics, shopping at the market, feeding the birds, playing with dogs and cats, putting on lipstick, packing a suitcase, and having a lazy day on the couch. Many include references to food or self-image, but, Blake says, these are not intended to be “propaganda”. Instead, the focus is on conviviality and normality – the simple joys which get forgotten when one is caught up in the misery of every single thought being about food and starvation.

From the series Ordinary Life (c) Quentin Blake

The final series, Mothers and Babies Underwater (2011), shown apart from the others, on the first floor, is Blake’s most recent and largest series to date, commissioned for the new maternity ward at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Angers, France. These images, depicting mothers and babies swimming underwater, and mothers, and sometimes fathers, waist deep in water, holding their infants tenderly aloft, also differ from those for the mental health wards, in that each is filled with only one colour, and, at that, a watery blue, green, or purple. The swimming scenes are intended to represent a new-found freedom, following the pains of labour, and the most important element in them is the eye contact between mother and baby. Asked how he knew this, without being either a mother, or having a child of his own, Blake answers that he simply puts himself in the situation which he is illustrating, and becomes a part of the scene. Clearly he has an ability to empathise with a wide range of people, adults and children alike, and this, along with his quick wit and lively and cheerful imagery makes him the perfect illustrator for what might otherwise seem quite oppressive and glum settings.

“I think the very presence of pictures helps to make being in, or visiting a hospital a more normal, less alien experience,” he says. And, indeed, the most frequent comments heard from patients in the mental health wards include “They make me smile” and “They make me laugh.” It would seem, therefore, that, therapeutically speaking, the idea has been a huge success, and maybe more hospitals and healthcare centres ought to readopt Hogarth’s idea from over 270 years ago of integrating art into healthcare settings.

Limited edition prints are available for purchase from the museum or via the
artfinder website

A free iPad app has also been developed in conjunction with artfinder:

Anna McNay is a London-based writer, curator and researcher. She has an academic background as a doctoral candidate, tutor, and lecturer in German and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, and as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is also a qualified and experienced CELTA tutor. You can read her own blog here 

The Crisis Commission; Somerset House; 14 March – 22 April 2012
by Anna McNay

“Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch to lay him down and die.” (Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist)

As poignant now as in Dickensian times, this citation is wrapped around the astronomical globe, placed in lieu of a head, on Yinka Shonibare’s Homeless Man (2012), a life-sized model of a man bent double under the weight of 11 suitcases, precariously balanced, on his back. Carrying the burdens of his past life on his shoulders, this sculpture is one of 14 works of art by prominent artists (all but one of which were created specifically for this commission), in a new exhibition on show in the East Wing Galleries of Somerset House, in collaboration with Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people. Alongside these donated works, five pieces by artists who are themselves homeless or vulnerably housed are also on display. These bear testament to the benefits of Crisis, which, as well as formal learning opportunities providing a route back to paid employment, also offers a wide range of art activities, in the form of practical and creative workshops, for homeless people across the UK.

“Art was my saviour from tears. I am just observing what I see in a world where there’s no justice, just us,” says William James West, one of the beneficiaries of the charity. His work, Soup Run (2011), is included in the exhibition, and depicts a couple of dark stick men, running and trampling on a third, lying prostate, and being rained down upon by spills and drips of brown, green and yellow acrylic paint and soup powder, seemingly descending from dark and heavy clouds above. Throwing these materials in anger at the canvas, there is a clear expression of frustration and, perhaps, some degree of ambivalence towards the nutritional substance which indeed helps to prolong a homeless person’s life, but, equally, also, his squalid misery.

The exhibition comes at a critical moment, since, after years of declining trends, 2010 marked a recommencement of a rise in homelessness, and, during the past year, 15% more people have approached their local council in need of emergency housing. Attributed to the economic downturn and reforms to housing and welfare introduced by the Coalition Government, Crisis predicts that these figures will sadly continue to rise. The exhibition therefore aims, not only to raise awareness of the spreading plight, but also some much needed funds. To this end, an auction of the works will be held at Christies on 3 May.

“I don’t think you can take all the time, I feel you have to give more than you take.” Let’s hope this is the attitude people attend the sale with. It is the view expressed by Craig O’Keefe, model for Gillian Wearing’s donation to the exhibition, Craig (2012), a miniature bronze sculpture standing atop a marble plinth, holding one of her trademark paper signs, with the words “Served in Kajaki Afghanistan.” The plinth bears a silver plaque telling Craig’s story of how, due to undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder, he quickly lost all his money to alcoholism and ended up homeless upon his return to the UK, before finally receiving help from Veterans Aid, quitting drinking, finding a job, and now also working as a volunteer to help the homeless. “I can see potential in people to turn their lives around.”

The largest work in the show, an installation by Nika Neelova entitled Partings (2012), also echoes this glimmer of hope. Comprising concrete casts from a Somerset House door, falling away from a central timber house frame, held at disturbing angles by ropes, the entire piece is coloured a charred black. With the house literally falling apart, this is a bleak and desolate metaphor for the remnants of a life, falling apart at the seams. Nevertheless, even in this dark despair, the basic structure does still stand, and could be rebuilt, given the appropriate help.

It is Tracey Emin who, to my mind, sums the situation up most succinctly. Alongside two new self-portraits of the artist masturbating, Deep Blue III and Deep Blue V (both 2011), a gesture which she has described before as reinforcing feelings of loneliness and isolation, she has created two neons, a turquoise edition reading Trust Me (2011), and its counterpart in coral pink, Trust Yourself (2012). The latter is underlined twice, as if to emphasise that this really is the key to moving on: risking change and asking for and accepting help; daring to believe that no matter how bad things seem, there always is hope, and you still have potential. An apparently simple maxim, but often one which, in the darkness of lost hope, requires something as bright as Emin’s seemingly tawdry back street neon to reach those who need to be reminded.

For more information please visit: www.crisis.org.uk

The works by Yinka Shonibare MBE, Gillian Wearing, Nika Neelova and Tracey Emin, mentioned above, will be up for auction at Christies on 3 May, alongside others by Anthony Gormley, Sir Anthony Caro, Jonathan Yeo, Nathan Coley and Bob and Roberta Smith.

The works by non-professional artists are available for sale in a silent auction during the exhibition run.

Anna McNay is a London-based writer, curator and researcher. She has an academic background as a doctoral candidate, tutor, and lecturer in German and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, and as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is also a qualified and experienced CELTA tutor. You can read her own blog here 

by Anna McNay

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Scottish Artist in St Ives
The Fleming Collection
10 January – 5 April 2012

Geoff and Scruffy 1953, image courtesy of the Barns Graham Charitable Trust

“Wilhelmina Barns-Graham is usually regarded as a St. Ives School painter which does not do justice to the immense influence that Scotland had on her work,” says Selina Skipwith, Keeper of Art at The Fleming Collection. “The centenary of her birth provides us with an appropriate opportunity to set the record straight.” And so it is that the Collection is now hosting a small but thorough retrospective of the painter’s works, centering on this new thesis by curator and biographer Lynne Green, which highlights her prominent position as an abstract painter and colourist, greatly indebted and loyal to her Scottish roots.

Born in St. Andrews in 1912, Barns-Graham trained at the Edinburgh College of Art from 1931-7, and moved down to St. Ives in 1940, where she immediately became involved in the prominent art societies of the time, and remained a central figure on the scene for five decades to come. In 1960, however, she inherited her maternal family home, Balmungo, in Fife, and from then on split her time between these two poles of the British Isles. The artist herself, although proudly a part of the St. Ives School, was equally cognisant of her Scottish heritage, and of the influence of her teachers in Edinburgh, including prominent Scottish colourist, S. J. Peploe, and William Gillies, who imparted on her “the love of rich colour and the tactile handling of paint” (Lynne Green in her catalogue essay to accompany the exhibition). The Edinburgh College of Art prospectus for 1935-6, for example, stated its ethos that: “Art is the power of expressing emotion or feeling through representation – not necessarily imitative representation, although real training or study must begin there. To be able to express an emotion by means of form or colour may be said to be the foundation of all Art…” (Lynne Green, as above). And, indeed, this inspiration can be seen in the trajectory of Barns-Graham’s career, presented here in a roughly chronological order.

Afghanistan 2000, Acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91.5 cm

Opening on the ground floor, visitors are first met with some very early works – mainly still lives and portraits – from Barns-Graham’s student portfolio. These then progress to her initial paintings upon arrival in St. Ives, including layered landscapes of the sleepy harbour, depicting cottages, the church, and boats (View of St. Ives, 1940, and Sleeping Town, 1948). It was in St. Ives, of course, where Barns-Graham met the likes of Ben Nicholson, and began to experiment with elements of contemporaneous British modernism. Although her early works still kept a firm grasp on their figurative subjects (such as Red Table, 1952), her style became increasingly abstracted and geometric, showing also the influence of earlier Cubism. A series of works, two of which are on display here, bear the title of Geoff and Scruffy, named after a friend and his dog. The works themselves, however, bear no visual reference to their namesakes, with, for example, Geoff and Scruffy (White Images on Black, Brown, and White) (1953), consisting merely of a moon shape and a pentagon, experimenting purely with form and basic colour contrast.

Following two visits to Switzerland and the glaciers of Grindelwald in the late 1940s, there was a significant change in Barns-Graham’s work, as she embarked, over the next decade, upon a series of increasingly abstract meditations on the glacier theme, studying their geometry, sharp contours, shadows, and abrupt angles. Her focus was on drawing and the line, another key component of her education in Edinburgh. Whilst this period, and the early 1960s, are often considered to be Barns-Graham’s “mature” period, hence her designation as a St. Ives artist, it is really in the final decades of her life (she died in St. Andrews in 2004), that her early training and love of colour and gesture truly came to the fore, in a period of voracious activity and artistic output, based both in Cornwall and Fife. This time span is joyously documented, along with a glass case of early photographs and sketches, in the downstairs gallery space, where the visitor is met with a cacophony of colour and brush stroke.

White Circle Series I 2003, Screenprint six colours on paper edition of 70 by Graal Press

Starting in the late 1970s, with her meditation series, Barns-Graham seemingly abandoned figuration to devote herself to form, colour, and gesture. Warm Up, Cool Down (1979), for example, is a tight grid of bluish squares, each varying only slightly in tone, and yet conveying a depth of mood and ever changing degree of temperature. Her Scorpio Series of the 1990s, however, rejects this geometry and sense of order, and moves on to a battleground of flamboyant brush strokes, which leap across the canvas in an array of vibrant colours. A decade later and this has been pared down to much scantier composition, where the ground takes prominence, and a couple of strokes speak volumes as they punctuate the surface. The burning yellows in Afghanistan (2000), and the black outline of a circle, capture the dry heat of the desert sun, with the scratchy white stroke seeming equally as parched as it soars hastily down the centre of the canvas. Untitled (Grey) (2001), on the other hand, is cooler, reflecting instead something almost celestial, with suggestions of moons and planets, and the cool tones of a night sky.

Towards the end of her life, Barns-Graham also began experimenting with screen prints, in collaboration with Graal Press, which allowed for still further vitality of colour and freedom of experimentation. White Circle Series I (2003) is an early example, and later posthumous prints, bearing titles such as Cobalt and Pink Playing Games (2006), express succinctly the enjoyment and playfulness inherent to Barns-Graham’s gestural works, minimalist but excitingly loud, singing to you, and leaping out from the canvas eurythmically, whilst simultaneously inviting you in to dance. Whilst not denying the quality of Barns-Graham’s earlier St. Ives period, it would be an immense oversight to pigeon hole her only in that school and to ignore the spontaneous and vital expressions of colour and gesture in her later works which root her firmly in her Scottish past. This exhibition beautifully captures the variety of her output, and the tension and progression between the abstract and the figurative, the cool, calm modernist style and her later indulgence in a full spectrum of rainbow hues. It is invigorating and inspiring, and well worth a visit.

Anna McNay is a London-based writer, curator and researcher. She has an academic background as a doctoral candidate, tutor, and lecturer in German and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, and as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is also a qualified and experienced CELTA tutor. You can read her own blog here 

by Anna McNay

Lygia Pape: Magnetized Space
Serpentine Gallery
7 December 2011 – 19 February 2012

Lygia Pape Livro do Tempo (Book of Time) 1961-63 Installation view, Magnetized space Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2011 © Projeto Lygia Pape and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Lygia Pape (1927-2004) was a leading Brazilian artist and founding member of the Neo Concrete movement, dedicated to the inclusion of art in everyday life, whose output and styles are so diverse that her current exhibition at the Serpentine, a pared down version of a larger show held in Madrid last year, and her first major exhibition in the UK, has been described by Adrian Searle as having the feel of a group show [‘Lygia Pape: modernist with a bossa nova beat,’ The Guardian, 07 December 2011]. Nevertheless, there are a number of themes which seem to permeate and link the highly experimental and daring works on display.

Lygia Pape Sem título (Untitled) 1956 Tempera / Oil on wood 40 x 40 x 3.2 cm Courtesy of Projeto Lygia Pape © Projeto Lygia Pape

The main body of the exhibition consists of small untitled works from the 1950s, including a series of geometric abstracts, both flat tempera on wood, highly reminiscent of Mondrian, with coloured squares, rectangles, and intersecting lines, and reliefs on wood, built up with a mixture of tempera, oil, and industrial paint. A series of black and white woodcuts on Japanese paper, Sem titulo: Tecelar (Untitled: Weaving) (from 1956-1959) continue with the geometric approach, but seem to return to nature, capturing and crystallising the grain of the wood. The Japanese element is further picked up in Livro da Arquitectura (Book of Architecture) (1959-1960), displayed next door in a glass showcase, and consisting of various reliefs built up on sheets of paper, origami-style, and with titles as geographically diverse as Pirâmide (Pyramid) and Casa japonesa (Japanese House).

Lygia Pape Ttéia 1, C (Web) 2011 Installation view, Magnetized Space Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2011 © Projeto Lygia Pape

Delicate and carefully constructed, these works stand in stark contrast to the in your face Eat Me (1975), a disturbing and slightly nauseating projection of a lipsticked mouth sucking on something suggestively phallic, interspersed with a bearded mouth (seen so close that the beard and moustache resemble rather more intimate bodily hair), puffing and protruding its tongue, which greets the visitor as he enters the gallery, and which, owing to the looped accompanying 1970s porn soundtrack, follows him around as he regards the somewhat mismatched works in the other rooms.

Lygia Pape Sem título: Tecelar (Untitled: Weaving) 1956 Woodcut on Japanese paper 32.5 x 44.5 cm Courtesy of Projeto Lygia Pape © Projeto Lygia Pape

Livro do Tempo (Book of Time) (1961-63) is the most space consuming work in the show, consisting of 365 painted wooden reliefs – blue, red, yellow, black, and white – basically squares, but with their corners cut off or middles cut out and replaced elsewhere on the form, creating a lego-like pattern the full length of the east gallery wall. The highlight of the show, however, is Ttéia I, C (Web) (1976-2011), a sculptural installation in the central gallery, which looks just like rays of golden light cutting through the dark at angles, but is actually made from nine semi-transparent rectangular prisms of thread, strung up with wood and nails, and highlighted with spotlights. This would be a place to stand and wonder, to be transported to another world, to admire the beauty of pure geometry and natural phenomena (light), were it, sadly, not for the omnipresent and inescapable soundtrack of Eat Me.

Lygia Pape Roda dos Prazeres (Wheels of Pleasure) 1968 Photograph Courtesy of Projecto Lygia Pape © Projeto Lygia Pape

Other works in the exhibition span poetry, photography, and video, including the documentary-style Livro da Criaçao (Book of Creation) (1959) showing Pape at work, folding coloured paper, revealing new layers and forms, exploring and experimenting. Her work is a mixture of political commentary, geometric exploration, and, overarching it all, a poignant capturing of Latin American life in the 20th century. Some of the formal works may leave you cold and some of the videos may shock, but I am sure, amongst the varied range of work on show here, there will be something to please even the most sceptical of visitors.

Lygia Pape Sem título: Tecelar (Untitled: Weaving) 1956 Woodcut on Japanese paper 35 x 44.5 cm Courtesy of Projeto Lygia Pape © Projeto Lygia Pape

Anna McNay is a London-based writer, curator and researcher. She has an academic background as a doctoral candidate, tutor, and lecturer in German and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, and as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is also a qualified and experienced CELTA tutor. You can read her own blog here