16 January 2008 - 6 April 2008
Comprising over 120 works by many of the most prominent Italian artists of the Modernist era, the Estorick Collection opened to the public in January 1998. Described by Sir Nicholas Serota as 'one of the finest collections of early 20th century Italian art anywhere in the world', it was formed in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Eric Estorick (1913-93), an American art-dealer, writer and political scientist, and is the only collection in the United Kingdom dedicated to this turbulent and fascinating period of Italian art.
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22 September 2010 - 19 December 2010
Whilst several major exhibitions have explored the propaganda imagery of Fascist Italy, art produced by those opposed to Mussolini and his regime has received surprisingly little attention. Against Mussolini brought together works produced in Italy and abroad throughout the Fascist era (1922- 43), but focused particularly on the period immediately after the dictator's fall from power following Italy's disastrous Second World War campaign. These last tragic years saw the re-emergence of Mussolini as the puppet leader of a Fascist administration in the north of the country and the onset of a bitter civil war, as the Resistance fought alongside the Allies to restore democracy and liberate Italy from tyranny.
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23 September 2015 - 20 December 2015
This fascinating exhibition presented the findings of a group of specialist art historians, restorers and scientists who examined key works from the Estorick’s permanent collection. Using the most up-to-date methods employed in the analysis of artworks, they shed new light on the different techniques used by a number of painters, and in some cases even revealed the presence of previously unknown images beneath, or on the back of, the Collection’s masterpieces.
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