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Critic's Choice: Top five exhibitions
By Hephzibah Anderson, Evening Standard 18.09.06
Going underground: Henry Moore’s Tube Shelter Perspective, 1941
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Henry Moore's war sketches are on display at the Imperial War Museum, and Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings and designs are at the V&A. Hephzibah Anderson surveys the best exhibitions London has to offer...
Henry Moore: War and Utility
Imperial War Museum
In 1939, Henry Moore's Hampstead studio was bombed. Left with no place to sculpt for three years, he picked up his sketchpad and created some of his best-loved and most powerfully poignant works. As an official war artist, he focused on the home front, both above and below ground. At the heart of this impressive exhibition are his Shelter Drawings, which evolved from sketches of the crowded underground platforms where Londoners huddled during the blitz. (020 7416 5320). Until Sun 25 Feb.
Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design
Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7
Whether dreaming up flying machines or pondering the anatomy of man, Leonardo jotted down his ideas in fluid, complex images, cramming page after page with ink and brownish red chalk. While his body of surviving work is scant, these questing, life-filled sketches — at once deeply scientific and dazzlingly vibrant — confirm his genius. (020 7942 2000). Until Sun 7 Jan.
How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art
Hayward Gallery, SE1
They've certainly been among the noisiest, but have the last six decades in British Art also been among the most fertile? This fiesta of homegrown talent insists that it's so, corralling work by the likes of Francis Bacon and Chris Ofili, Henry Moore and Sarah Lucas. Culled from the Arts Council Collection, its roll call of 130 artists moves from post-war austerity to Sixties zaniness and the brash exuberance of the Eighties. Though the exhibits themselves are patchy, it still makes for instructive viewing. (0870 3800 400). Until Sun 19 Nov.
Stubbs: A Celebration
Tate Britain, SW1
This year sees the 200th anniversary of George Stubbs's death, and Tate Britain is marking the occasion with a special display of some 30 works. Though the equestrian form was his specialist subject, this very English painter also captured broader aspects of rural life; the exhibition includes dramatic narrative scenes of haymakers and reapers, family groups, and studies of more exotic animals, as well as his famed thoroughbreds. (020 7887 8888). Until Sun 14 Jan.
LAST CHANCE:
Portrait Award
National Portrait Gallery, WC2
This year's winner has exhibited in the annual portrait jamboree on ten previous occasions, making the final cut no less than four times. The work that finally snagged Andrew Tift the £25,000-prize is a triptych of Lucian Freud's first wife, Kitty Garman. Seemingly oblivious, she's captured in acrylic, gazing away from the viewer. Elsewhere, subjects include an ageing clown, a praying father and a pregnant wife. (020 7306 0055). Until Mon 17 Sep.
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