Helene Schjerfbeck, Self-Portrait, Black Background (detail)

Talk

Curator’s introduction: Helene Schjerfbeck

Friday 13 September 2019 11am - 12pm

The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts

£10, £6

Priority booking opens to Friends of the RA at 10am on Thursday 30 May 2019. Booking opens to the public at 10am on 31 May 2019.

Helene Schjerfbeck

Go to the exhibition

Exhibition curator Jeremy Lewison discusses Helene Schjerfbeck, whose work is introduced for the first time to British audiences in an exhibition that foregrounds her approach to portraiture and self-portraiture.

Organised in collaboration with the Finnish National Gallery, the Ateneum, this exhibition charts the development of Schjerfbeck's painting from naturalism, typical of late 19th-century Salon painting, to a pared down, modern figuration. Responding to contemporary fashion but basing her practice on a close study of Old Master painting, Schjerfbeck created a unique oeuvre including some of the most powerful self-portraits of the 20th century.

In this event curator Jeremy Lewison will discuss the key themes and works in the exhibition, looking at the the relationship between Schjerfbeck’s paintings and her sources as well as situating her within the wider European context of modernist painters. Alienation, modernity and old age are just some of the themes that will be covered.

Jeremy Lewison is an independent curator. He was previously Director of Collections at Tate where he was a curator for 18 years. He was the curator of Turner Monet Twombly: Later Paintings and of the recent Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life.

£10, £6

Priority booking opens to Friends of the RA at 10am on Thursday 30 May 2019. Booking opens to the public at 10am on 31 May 2019.