Edgar Degas
dal 16/9/2011 al 10/12/2011
Segnalato da
16/9/2011
Edgar Degas
Royal Academy of Arts, London
Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement traces the development of the artist's ballet imagery throughout his career, from the documentary mode of the early 1870s to the sensuous expressiveness of his final years. The exhibition is the first to present Degas's progressive engagement with the figure in movement in the context of parallel advances in photography and early film.
The Royal Academy of Arts presents a landmark exhibition focusing on Edgar Degas’s preoccupation with
movement as an artist of the dance.
Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement traces the development of
the artist’s ballet imagery throughout his career, from the documentary mode of the early 1870s to the
sensuous expressiveness of his final years.
The exhibition is the first to present Degas’s progressive
engagement with the figure in movement in the context of parallel advances in photography and early
film; indeed, the artist was keenly aware of these technological developments and often directly involved
with them.
The exhibition comprises around 85 paintings, sculptures, pastels, drawings, prints and
photographs by Degas, as well as photographs by his contemporaries and examples of early film. It
brings together selected material from public institutions and private collections in Europe and North
America including both celebrated and little-known works by Degas.
Highlights of the exhibition include such masterpieces as the celebrated sculpture Little Dancer Aged
Fourteen (1880-81, cast. c.1922, Tate, London), which is displayed with a group of outstanding preparatory
drawings that together show the artist tracking around his subject like a cinematic eye; Dancer Posing for a
Photograph (1875, Pushkin State Museum of Art, Moscow); Dancer on Pointe (c. 1877-78, Private
collection); The Dance Lesson (c. 1879, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC); Dancers in a
Rehearsal Room with a Double Bass (c. 1882-85, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); and Three
Dancers (c. 1903, Beyeler Foundation, Basel).
Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement explores the fascinating links between Degas’s highly original
way of viewing and recording the dance and the inventive experiments being made at the same time in
photography by Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge and in film-making by such pioneers as the
Lumière brothers.
By presenting the artist in this context, the exhibition demonstrates that Degas was far
more than merely the creator of beautiful images of the ballet, but instead a modern, radical artist who
thought profoundly about visual problems and was fully attuned to the technological developments of his
time.
For further press information, please contact Simone Sagi - Royal Academy press office on Tel: 020 7300 5615, fax: 020 7300 8032, or email press.office@royalacademy.org.uk
Image: Edgar Degas, 'Two Dancers on the Stage', c. 1874. Oil on canvas, 61.5 x 46 cm. The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London.
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House, Piccadilly - London
hours:
10 am – 6 pm daily (last admission 5.30 pm)
Fridays and Saturdays until 10 pm (last admission 9.30 pm)
Admission:
£14 full price; £13 Registered Disabled and 60 + years; £9 NUS / ISIC cardholders; £4 12–18 years and
Income Support; £3 8–11 years; 7 and under free