Visual & Decorative Arts Blog

With the long-anticipated Moomin movie, Moomins on the Riviera, coming to cinemas in October 2014 and our beautiful 2015 Moomin Calendar now available in our Art of Fine Gifts range, it's not hard to rediscover a childish love for Moomintroll, his family and friends. The loveable trolls are only gaining in popularity since their beginnings as a comic strip in 1945.

With the Tate Modern's recent opening of the first ever UK retrospective of Kasimir Malevich, it is only appropriate to admire all of the artwork he has ever created, not just his later, Suprematist work. Even though he did change the entire idea of modern art in his later works, his early art is surprisingly pastoral, bucolic and agrarian. 

Although the renowned artist Erté died over 20 years ago, his art is still celebrated worldwide. Part of what makes him so amazing is that he was so widely talented: not only did he design costumes and sets for theatre, opera, and film, but he also created beautiful Art Deco fashion, jewellery and fashion illustrations. Because he had such immense gifts, it is no wonder that his work is still influential today.

We have been working with The Imperial War Museum for the last few years, creating great art calendars and books. So when we heard that there were to be refurbishments at the London museum, well we were more excited than anyone else. As a longstanding institution, IWM stands alone in its portrayal of conflicts across time, especially those that feature Britain and her allies. As proud partners of IWM, let's take a look at the recent refurbishments of the London facility and why its exhibitions are still relevant today. 

Tate Modern has just opened the first ever UK retrospective of Kasimir Malevich (1879–1935), a Russian artist who changed the face of modern art. With his radical ideas, his pioneering work on geometric abstract art left a lasting legacy.

Vincent Willem van Gogh, is now one of the most respected and well-known artists in the world. He is known for his post-impressionist paintings with bold colours that evoke an honest emotional reaction; self portraits, landscapes, cypresses and sunflowers are some of the most memorable subjects of the 2,100 works he completed in his short lifetime. Many of his most well-known pieces were completed in the last two years of his life, while he was suffering from severe mental illness. But of course, at the time, his work was only known to a small number of people (and appreciated by fewer still). It is an absolute tragedy that he died not knowing what the reaction to his work would eventually be, and how much pleasure he would give people all over the world. There is no doubt that his astounding artistic skill as well as his troubled life have touched millions. Today is the anniversary of his death and so I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at his brilliant Sunflowers, his life in letters and his death. 

Starry Night Over the Rhone is a culmination of the artistic genius of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). Though lesser known than its later counterpart, The Starry Night, the night sky had been haunting Van Gogh ever since he moved to Arles in February 1888. He moved in order to satiate his yearning to experience the colours of the South after living in Paris for many years. It would seem he found those colours in the night sky. In a letter to his sister Willemina, he said ‘Often it seems to me night is even more richly coloured than day.’ The sky is Prussian blue, ultramarine and cobalt, with sparking yellow gaslights and stars.

The Kiss is one of Gustav Klimt's most iconic works. Representative of many emotions and themes, Klimt broke the mould with this work by portraying the woman as someone who is submissive in her erotic love, yet still essentially feminine. The Kiss stands at the peak of Klimt's Golden Phase, melding together his passion for the colour and all that it represents. Spiritual, elegant and conveying the deepest sense of love, Gustav Klimt's masterpiece is a fascinating work of art full of influence and allegory. 

A University of Kentucky scholar is returning to England on a mission to study one of the greatest masterpieces of art, or, more precisely, of religious art and literature: the St Chad Gospels, an eighth-century illuminated manuscript housed in Lichfield Cathedral. William Endres has studied the manuscript before, but this time around he hopes new imaging could explain the mystery of its design. His goal is to make the illuminated manuscript digitally available to all scholars across the globe. It’s not likely that this manuscript could ever be lost, after surviving centuries through invasions and revolutions, but Endres is just another in a long line looking to preserve literature for the foreseeable future. 

The Great Wave is one of the great masterpieces of art. It has occupied a unique place in the affection of both Western and Eastern Cultures, since its creation in the early 1830s as the first of 36 Views of Mount Fuji, by the master of the Ukiyo-e style, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). Probably the most famous of all Japanese artworks, The Great Wave is a woodblock print, not a painting, and unlike many of its contemporaries it brought strong European influences into a cultural landscape dominated by eternal, East Asian sensibilities.