Carlo Crivelli: Shadows on the Sky

Interesting online lecture from Richard Stemp on the 15th century artists, Carlo Crivelli.

Stemp based his talk on an exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham which I had hoped to get to but ran out of time. I’ve always been fascinated by Crivelli as the National Gallery have a lot of his rather strange pictures and years ago I did a study morning with the speaker on the large Annunciation painting which overran and was great fun.

Stemp talked about how Crivelli balances reality and illusionism in his work to delineate real and visionary space. There were details in the pictures which I’d never questioned with a modern eye as we are now used to surrealism but I now realise how unusual these details were at the time and the reasons behind them.

The Ikon is usually a contemporary art gallery but put on this show due to an Ampersand Grant which allows a curator to put on their dream exhibition. The speaker took us through the beautiful contemporary responses to the work which are also in the show. I love the idea of a broom with gems set in it to imitate paint splatters.

 

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