Tag Archives: mayfair

A rebel at London’s Royal College of Art

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THE CARTWRIGHT HALL Art Gallery in Bradford has a collection of paintings by David Hockney (born 1937), some of which he did when he was as young as 16. These early paintings, though not as adventurous as his later work, show that even as a teenager, he was a skilled artist. He studied art at Bradford College of Art. Then, between 1959 and 1962, he continued his studies at London’s Royal College of Art (‘RCA’). It was after his arrival in London that Hockney began experimenting with new ways of expression in painting. Apparently, he was not an ideal student in the eyes of the RCA. For example, he did not attend lectures and did not do the prescribed coursework. Yet, he created numerous paintings that are evidence of his skilful breaking away from conventional painting. Today, we caught the last day of an exhibition of the paintings he did between 1959 and 1963. It was held at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert Gallery in Mayfair’s Bury Street.

Detail from the Diploma etching

The gallery’s website explained:

“Exhibited together for the first time, these early paintings embellished with love hearts, graphic text, suggestive shapes and depictions of friends and lovers reveal David Hockney’s precocious talent during the most formative chapter of his career.

In 1959, Hockney moved from Bradford to begin his studies at the Royal College of Art, London, where he was determined to experience the capital’s postwar bohemian culture as well as absorb the modern and contemporary art in its museums and galleries. The exhibition focuses on this period before Hockney relocated to the United States at the end of 1963 and reveals his discovery of an unmistakably personal style of painting that would establish him as the most important artist of his generation.”

It was exciting to view the images he created during this important period of his artistic development. However, for a while the RCA failed to appreciate him, and for a while threatened not to award him his degree. An article in Wikipedia revealed:

“When the RCA said it would not let him graduate if he did not complete an assignment of a life drawing of a live model in 1962, Hockney painted ‘Life Painting for a Diploma’ in protest. He had refused to write an essay required for the final examination and said that he should be assessed solely on his artworks. Recognising his talent and growing reputation, the RCA changed its regulations and awarded him a diploma.”

An etching in the exhibition, “The Diploma”, created in 1962, reflects Hockney’s protestation. Since graduating from the RCA, Hockney has been given awards by many prestigious institutions, and was made a Royal Academician.

Having seen his earliest known works in Bradford, the works done while at the RCA, and later creations, it is easy to understand why Hockney is now regarded as an artist of the highest calibre.

Portrayed between lives in a Mayfair art gallery

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FRANCESCO CLEMENTE IS an artist born in Naples (Italy) in 1952. Since 1973, he has been visiting India regularly, and has worked there. He has developed a great interest in Asian religions including Hinduism and Buddhism. The 8 paintings in his exhibition, which is showing at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery in Mayfair’s Dover Street until 27 September 2025, are evidence of Clemente’s interest in these belief systems.

The exhibition is called “Francesco Clemente: Self-Portraits in the Bardo”. The Bardo in the title is a concept of Tibetan Buddhism. It is the state of consciousness during the period between death and rebirth. The artist is depicted in the forefront of each picture. Behind them are fantastic depictions of both the peaceful and the angry deities that are believed to inhabit the Bardo. Whereas Clemente paints himself mainly in shades of grey, the deities are painted in vivid reds, yellows, and black. The artist insisted that the gallery walls be painted purple. This makes these vibrant paintings look even more dramatic.

Hung in a lovely large room with a patterned stucco ceiling, this small exhibition is definitely worth seeing.

A club where ladies met in Mayfair (London)

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NUMBER 35 DOVER Street in London’s Mayfair houses an art gallery on its ground and first floors. The hallway, where a concierge sits behind a desk has four old stained-glass windows, each of them depicting a lady. They look like Pre-Raphaelite images. The marble floor of the lift is inlaid with brass letters, spelling the word ‘Empress’.

Between 1898 and 1955, number 35 Dover Street was the clubhouse of a women’s club, the Empress Club, which was founded in 1897. It was not the only women’s club in the area (Albemarle Street, Dover Street and Grafton Street), which because of the presence of several clubs for women was known  popularly as ‘Petticoat Alley’. A website about the lost clubs of London (https://clubland.substack.com/p/lost-clubs-the-empress-club-1897) has a page detailing the history of the Empress Club. In late Victorian and Edwardian times, it was Mayfair’s leading women’s social club. Its members were mostly from aristocratic families. The feminist activist Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was a member.

The Empress Club began to decline slowly after WW1. During WW2, its members raised money and collected goods for the troops. In 1941, the club was badly damaged during the Blitz. Although attempts were made to revive the club in 1949, it could only stagger on unsteadily. It became a centre for illegal gambling, and was subject to a police raid in 1955. The website noted:

“In 1955, the Club was raided under the Betting Act, and nine men were arrested for illegal gambling on the premises, including popular comedian Tommy Knox of the ‘Crazy Gang’, who was remanded in custody. Knox was bound over to keep the peace, and the Club’s owners, Empress (Berkeley Square) Hotels, were fined £75. In the aftermath of the raid, and a wave of negative publicity portraying the Club in a seedy light, it dissolved later that year, and the building was sold off.”

In 2022, the building, which was designed by the architects John Thomas Wimperis & William Henry Arber, who were best known for building theatres, was completely refurbished. The people responsible for the refurbishment were architectural interior designer Maison Arabella and Orbit Architects. The gallery, which is housed within it is Lévy Gorvy Dayan, which is currently showing an excellent exhibition about which I will write soon.

Stark naked and crouching on a pedestal in London’s Mayfair

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MY PARENTS HAD a small collection of works of modern art in our home in London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb. These included an engraving by the Italian artist Emilio Greco (1913-1995). I have no idea where this image is now, but having grown up with it I was familiar with the artist’s name even if I knew nothing about him.

Today (14 July 2025) while walking near the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, we passed a modern fountain, and close to it, a bronze sculpture of a naked woman, perched on a cylindrical stone pedestal. On the pedestal are carved the words: “A gift to the City of Westminster from the President of the Italian Republic. 20th November 1987. Sponsored by the Italian Bank in London.” The President at that time was Francesco Cossiga (1928-2010).  There was no mention of the creator of this artwork on the pedestal. However, at the base of the sculpture I could make out: “Emilio Greco 1977”. It had been made by the artist, whose engraving used to hang on the wall of our living room.

A website (https://pssauk.org/public-sculpture-of-britain/biography/greco-emilio/) provides some information about the artist, and his sculpture in Mayfair, which is a bronze casting of his sculpture “Crouching Figure No. 4”, created in 1973.  

The sculpture is a great addition to the area, and is sometimes referred to as ‘Mayfair Lady’!

Sunflowers on the walls in London’s Mayfair

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SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL artists have been influenced and inspired by creators who preceded them. In the case of the German artist Anselm Kiefer (born 1945), he has been both influenced and inspired by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), who was born almost a century before him. Both artists have broken boundaries, and explored new ways of expressing themselves in painting. At two Mayfair galleries, White Cube (Mason Yard; until 16 August 2025) and Thaddeus Ropac (in Dover Street), you can see some of Kiefer’s paintings that illustrate his response to Van Gogh, and in particular the Dutch artist’s depictions of sunflowers and wheat fields.

By Anselm Kiefer

At the age of 18, Anselm Kiefer made a journey following in the footsteps of Van Gogh. The White Cube’s website revealed the route he took:

“… from the Netherlands to Belgium, Paris, and finally to Arles, where, in the final years of his life, Van Gogh created many of his most iconic works.”

It is those works painted in Arles that are reflected in Kiefer’s creations that are on display in both galleries as well as in a temporary exhibition in London’s Royal Academy in Piccadilly. Almost all of Kiefer’s images at White Cube and Thaddeus Ropac contain sunflowers and/or depictions of fields of agricultural crops. Unlike Van Gogh’s paintings, there are no human figures depicted in Kiefer’s artworks. In one of them, there is a flock of menacing looking black birds with wings outstretched. Kiefer’s crops made by sticking materials onto his canvases look much more sinister than the often-vivid depictions of agricultural landscapes created by Van Gogh. In their own ways, both Van Gogh and Kiefer portray the world as a disturbed place. In the case of the Dutch artist, this might have been due to his psychologically disturbed state of mind when he was in Arles. In Kiefer’s case, one must remember that he was born at the end of WW2 in a country devastated by conflict and the horrendous dictatorship that preceded it.

Although I am often less than convinced by pairing and comparing two artists in exhibitions such as that at the Royal Academy, but putting Vincent and Anselm side-by-side is both intriguing and appropriate. Having viewed the Kiefer works at the two Mayfair galleries, I now look forward to seeing how the Royal Academy’s curators have dealt with the relationship between the two artists.

AN artist born in Egypt who makes sculptures in Switzerland

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THE WADDINGTON CUSTOT Gallery in Mayfair’s Cork Street puts on excellent exhibitions and the current show, which goes on until 10 April 2025, is no exception. It is an exhibition of sculptures by Yves Dana, who was born in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1959. He moved with his family to Switzerland in 1961. It is there that he lives and works. In the early 1980s, he set up a sculpture studio in Lausanne (Switzerland). In 1996, he paid a return visit to Egypt. Following that, his approach to sculpture changed dramatically. The sculptures on display at Waddington Custot were made long after that visit to the land of his birth; they date from 2004 until 2024.

Each of the works we saw, both at the gallery and outdoors in Smithson Plaza (near Bury Street), is pleasing to the eye. Many of the sculptures allude to the art of Ancient Egypt in subtle ways. Several of the artworks brought to mind the simple beauty of Cycladic sculptures and others evoke the harshness of desert climates.  The gallery’s website revealed that Dana:

“… sources the best quality stone from around the world, including limestone from Egypt, France and Turkey, serpentine from Italy and diabase from Germany. He combines innovative carving techniques with traditional tools to create precise planar forms. With each work created over several weeks or months, the physicality of carving stone, with deep sensitivity to its tones and texture, is evident in the subtlest details of each work.”

This is very evident as one looks at the often sensuously shaped abstract forms of his sculptures. Where there is an interesting detail inherent in the material, he shapes the sculpture so that the viewer’s eyes are drawn to it. Although Dana imposes his artistic will on the materials he employs, he is also sympathetic to their original forms and textures and does not force them to submit totally to his compositional ideas. `Put another way, it seems that Dana’s compositions are guided by the physical properties and shape of the materials he is using.

As you can gather from what I have written, brief though it is, I enjoyed seeing this show and getting to know the work of an artist, whom I had not known about before.

Dwarfed by dogs in Mayfair’s Dover Street

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SOME SAY SMALL is beautiful. But can colossal also be beautiful? This is something that can be explored at the Thaddeus Ropac Gallery in London’s Dover Street until 2 April 2025, where three much larger than life realistic looking sculptures of dogs are on display. These dogs, each about 10 feet high, have been created by the artist Ron Mueck, who was born in Australia in 1958. He now works in the UK.

As the gallery’s website explained:

“Over a career spanning three decades, Mueck is celebrated for exploring the physiological implications of scale. Whether miniaturised or enlarged, his use of scale heightens our awareness of the relative spaces our own bodies occupy, as he charts the full spectrum of human experience with striking perceptiveness.”

The three dogs on display in the exhibition ought to feel menacing, but I did not experience this sensation. I was more amused than over-awed.

An artist from Bolivia in London’s Mayfair

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KENIA ALMARAZ MURILLO was born in Bolivia in 1994. She moved to Paris in France at the age of 11 years. Until the 30th of January 2025, there is an exhibition of her work at the Waddington Custot Gallery in London’s Cork Street.

All of the exhibits contain woven textiles. Many of them also have objects added to them, making them like three-dimensional collages. The objects she has added were salvaged from Parisian scrapyards whilst the yarns she has used are indigenous South American in origin. The resulting artworks are both beautiful and exciting.

I can strongly recommend seeing this well-displayed show in a gallery a few yards away from the northernentrance to Burlington.

Tipu Sultan on ceramic plates in London’s Mayfair

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ADEELA SULEMAN IS an artist based in Karachi (Pakistan). She was born in 1970 and educated at the University of Karachi. In an exhibition at London’s Grosvenor Gallery, a collection of her works relating to the life of Tipu Sultan (the ‘Tiger of Mysore’: 1751-1799) is on display until the 25th of October 2024.

For those who are unaware of his fame, Tipu Sultan (son of Hyder Ali) ruled the independent kingdom of Mysore, and defended it against the attacks of the British. However, in the end, he was killed while defending his fortress at Srirangapatna. Before his demise, he was forced to deliver two of his sons to be held by the British as hostages. This happened in 1792. His death 7 years later was due to treachery within his court.

Adeela Suleyman has painted exquisite scenes depicting stages in Tipu’s life. The paintings have been created on vintage ceramic plates (platters). Each plate is surrounded by an elaborately carved timber picture frame. The paintings are rich in detail, and reminded me of Persian or Mughal miniatures. They portray episodes of Tipu’s story colourfully and vividly. Each of the images is a delight to see. What the artist has created is an attractive and respectful memorial to a great man. According to the gallery’s catalogue, the images can be sold separately, but it would be a shame to have this collection dispersed; it would be better to keep it intact.

In addition to the painted plates, there are some sculptural items (relating to Tipu) created by the artist. although they are eye-catching, it is the painted plates that appealed to me much more.

The cathedral of the Ukrainians near to London’s Selfridges

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THE NATURAL HISTORY Museum in South Kensington, a well-known landmark, was designed by the architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905). Not too distant from this edifice, there is a church he designed in 1891. It is an unusual building with an oval nave, and it stands on the corner of Duke Street and Weighhouse Street. It was built originally as a place of worship for the Congregational King’s Weigh House congregation. During WW2, the church was badly damaged, and in the 1950s, after the church had been repaired, the congregation had declined significantly.

In 1968, the church was acquired by the Ukrainian Catholics in the UK, and it became known as the ‘Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile’. Now, it is called the ‘The Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family’. Fitted with a colourful iconostasis that hides the high altar, its congregation practise the Orthodox rites but look to the Pope in Rome as their religious leader. The oval shape of the nave, with an oval gallery running around it on the first floor makes for an interesting and unusual feeling of space within the church. The building contains much decorative tiling, which was put there when it was built. In 2022, when the Russians attacked Ukraine, the cathedral became a rallying point for Ukrainians residing in Britain.

With its adaptation to the needs of its Ukrainian congregation and its unconventional design, this church near Selfridges is well worth a visit.