This story was published in 1999 and the exhibition is now closed The enormous influence of the designer, painter, critic and historianRoger Fry is at the heart of the new winter exhibition at theCourtauld Gallery in London’s Somerset House.
‘Art Made Modern: Roger Fry’s Vision of Art’, opened onOctober 15 and runs until January 24. It looks at the career of theman who shocked British society when he introduced FrenchPost-Impressionist painting to London in two exhibitions, and was theintimate of the Bloomsbury Group of painters, writers, designers andthinkers.
Fry, who died in 1934 at the age of 68, was passionate about modernart and encouraged British artists to follow French examples ofexperiment. Works from the Courtauld as well as important loans willbring together paintings by Picasso, Mattisse, Van Gogh, Cezanne andSeurat, and show them next to a selection of the work of Britishpainters of the early 20th Century.
There are also the Old Master pictures which influenced him, buy thelikes of Uccello, El Greco, Rembrandt, Chardin and Rubens.
But Fry was also a practitioner, and the exhibition includesfurniture, textiles and ceramics produced by his Omega Workshops.
