Tate Modern in London: 5 paintings you have to see

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Ailis Brennan2 May 2018

London is home to a frankly mind-boggling amount of world class art - so where do you start?

If your tastes are more Pop Art than Poussin, then Tate Modern has to be top of your list.

Thanks to the completion of its considerable extension in 2016, Tate Modern is capable of showing more of its permanent collection than ever before.

With so much to see, what should you look out for? We’ve picked out a fine bunch of paintings that should be on your must-find list.

Pablo Picasso, Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (Femme nue dans un fauteuil rouge), 1932

Pablo Picasso’s paintings have been challenging, inspiring and completely revolutionising the art world for over a century. This painting was created in one of the most intriguing years of his life - both artistically and personally. It is a portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, his mistress 28 years his junior, and one of three absorbing paintings he made of her over just five days in 1932. Picturing Walter as a sensual, goddess-like figure, this painting is a prime example of how Picasso worked with speed, instinct and passion.

Joan Miró, Painting, 1927

Succession Miro/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2017

The unique style of Barcelona-born Miró encompasses some of the most game-changing ideas in twentieth century painting. His paintings are at once abstract, minimal, with little or confused narrative and are delicately surreal. In this work, Miró allows the canvas to be an outlet for the subconscious, an idea championed by Surrealists like Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp. Suggestions of breasts and genitalia float across the canvas as if Miró was painting them from a dream - a method Miró called “automatic painting”.

Wyndham Lewis, Workshop, c.1914-5

Wyndham Lewis and the estate of Mrs G A Wyndham Lewis by kind permission of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust (a registered chari

In the years before the First World War, artist and writer Wyndham Lewis set about championing an artistic style that was fiercely engaged with the modern world. Vorticism, the movement that arose, turns its back on rolling English pastures, and dives head-first into the dynamism of the city, much like Italian artists did with their Futurism movement. Their aggressive stance was, however, cooled by the horror of the First World War, and enthusiasm for machine-led modernity waned in the art world.

Kazimir Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism, 1925 or 1926

Tate Photography

Kazimir Malevich was one of the purest pioneers of abstract art. The Russian avant garde artist is responsible for the first paintings in the world that weren’t actually of anything. Best known for his Black Square (a painting of, you guessed it, a black square), Malevich defined a new moved called Suprematism. This discarded any notion of representing the outside world, and focused instead of shapes, colours and space. This paintings is one of the most elegant examples of Malevich’s experiments.

Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum? 1989

Courtesy www.guerrillagirls.com

Anonymous art activism group Guerilla Girls wanted their art to make a change in the outside world, and their works fight against sexism and racism in art institutions at the highest level. The scandalous disparity between the number of women artists in New York’s Metropolitan Museum and the number of female nudes is displayed in black and white (and yellow and pink). The figure is shocking, and the poster has become an emblem of taking the feminist fight to the art world.

15 paintings to see in London

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