Drawn to Paper: Degas to Rego
In 2020 Piano Nobile presented Drawn to Paper: Degas to Rego, an online exhibition which showcased works on paper by some of the leading figures of European modernism. The works were made over a century and they demonstrate the creative breakthroughs which British, American and European artists have made when confronted with a blank sheet of paper. Starting with Edgar Degas in late-nineteenth-century Paris, the exhibition continued with paragons of continental modernism, Picasso, Miró and Léger, and concluded with works made by Rego and Freud in London in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Many of the works in the exhibition came from the same private collection and had not been seen in public since they were acquired in the 1970s and early ‘80s. At the heart of the collection is a group of works made by leading artists on the mid-twentieth-century Paris art scene, including the American Alexander Calder and Spaniards Picasso, Dalí and Miró, as well as the French artists Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger. Also included in the exhibition were works by leading British artists of their generation, Walter Sickert and Duncan Grant among them, as well as works on paper by South African artist Irma Stern and the American artist Cy Twombly.
The exhibition was accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication with a prefatory essay and catalogue entries.
