The Enduring Mark
This exhibition celebrates drawing as an expression of the beauty, vigor, and ephemerality of life. With extraordinary works by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Ludovico Carracci, Peter Paul Rubens, Fran莽ois Boucher, Edgar Degas, Paul C茅zanne, Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and others, it charts a history of European and American drawing from the fifteenth to the twentieth century.
The drawings on view are from the collection of Chicago-based art connoisseurs Richard and Mary L. Gray. The Grays鈥� keen and independent aesthetic sensibility led them to acquire many exquisite works by marvelous lesser-known artists whose work sheds new light on the fascinating and complex evolution of subject matter and style. The Gray Collection is especially rich in Italian drawing, enabling a focus on several Italian cultural centers鈥擱ome, Bologna, and Venice鈥攄uring the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. A highlight of the Italian works is a group of exquisite red chalk drawings from the seventeenth century that captures the unique ability of this medium to express the sensual nuances of the human form.
Proceeding in loosely chronological order, beginning with works from the Renaissance, the exhibition suggests how social, political, and cultural changes impacted the development of European and American art. While frequently reflecting the cultural power of the Catholic church and occasionally touching on specific historical incidents, the works in the Gray Collection are, for the most part, intimate encounters with the human form and, by extension, with humanity itself.
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This exhibition celebrates drawing as an expression of the beauty, vigor, and ephemerality of life. With extraordinary works by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Ludovico Carracci, Peter Paul Rubens, Fran莽ois Boucher, Edgar Degas, Paul C茅zanne, Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and others, it charts a history of European and American drawing from the fifteenth to the twentieth century.
The drawings on view are from the collection of Chicago-based art connoisseurs Richard and Mary L. Gray. The Grays鈥� keen and independent aesthetic sensibility led them to acquire many exquisite works by marvelous lesser-known artists whose work sheds new light on the fascinating and complex evolution of subject matter and style. The Gray Collection is especially rich in Italian drawing, enabling a focus on several Italian cultural centers鈥擱ome, Bologna, and Venice鈥攄uring the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. A highlight of the Italian works is a group of exquisite red chalk drawings from the seventeenth century that captures the unique ability of this medium to express the sensual nuances of the human form.
Proceeding in loosely chronological order, beginning with works from the Renaissance, the exhibition suggests how social, political, and cultural changes impacted the development of European and American art. While frequently reflecting the cultural power of the Catholic church and occasionally touching on specific historical incidents, the works in the Gray Collection are, for the most part, intimate encounters with the human form and, by extension, with humanity itself.
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One of the world鈥檚 leading private collections of European and American works on paper has gone on view at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive this summer, highlighting a major new gift to the museum鈥檚 collection.
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