Founded in 2001 by Katrin Bellinger, the Tavolozza Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organisation based near Munich, Germany. Named Tavolozza, the Italian word for palette, the flat surface on which a painter arranges and mixes paints, the Foundation offers a range of support to museums, galleries and other cultural and educational institutions. This includes providing funding for exhibitions, acquisitions, scholarly publications as well as special projects such as conferences and study days.
The Foundation is particularly interested in furthering research into the theme of the artist at work and promoting it internationally through educational initiatives. Works encompassing that precise subject form the core of the Katrin Bellinger collection, which is also administered by the Foundation (see www.katrinbellingercollection.com).
For information on applying for grants, please e-mail [email protected]
The Tavolozza Foundation aims to make works on paper more accessible to the public hoping to heighten awareness of the medium. To this end it offers a range of support to museums, galleries, and other cultural and educational institutions, including providing funding for exhibitions, acquisitions, scholarly publications as well as special projects such as conferences and study days. Digitisation of collections of works on paper with the aim of making them available online to a wider public is another area of support. The Foundation is particularly interested in research furthering understanding around the artistic process relating to the theme of ‘The Artist at Work’.
For more information or to apply for support please e-mail [email protected]
The Foundation supported the Wallace Collection in the creation of the Riesener Microsite. Launched in 2020, the microsite is dedicated to one of the eighteenth century’s most celebrated furniture-makers, Jean-Henri Riesener (1734–1806). The Wallace Collection has one of the most important holdings of Riesener furniture in the world and this site provides information about his life, his work for the royal French court and his patrons. Most importantly, it examines the furniture at the Wallace Collection, revealing insights into his working methods, the materials he used and the cabinetmaking techniques he employed.
The Foundation supported the initiative to create the first-ever international network of museums based on artists’ former studios or homes: www.artiststudiomuseum.org. Launched in 2016 the network, concentrating on museums in Europe, provides resources and exciting collaborative opportunities intended to inspire future exhibitions and publications. The Tavolozza continues to support the project and its continued growth, as studio museums are added regularly to the website.
The Tavolozza supported the William Shipley Group for RSA History Symposium, held at the Royal Academy on Friday, 27 March 2015, ‘Drawing: A Pre-eminent Skill’. William Shipley (1715-1803) was a drawing master and founder of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in 1754. One of the first aims of the Society was to encourage drawing ability in young boys and girls, in the hope that good design would reinvigorate the British school of painting as well as induce the production of increasingly competitive British manufactured goods. To mark the tercentenary of Shipley’s birth in 2015 and to honour Shipley’s biographer and historian of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), Dr David G.C. Allan, the William Shipley Group for RSA History held a one-day symposium. The event considered the story of drawing schools from their inception up to the foundation of the Royal Academy, with a focus on the work of Shipley’s own school. It also explored the work of a regional academy. See the Press page for Dr Susanna Avery-Quash’s report on the symposium for the William Shipley Group newsletter.
The principal focus of the Tavolozza is the representation of the artist at work, particularly in the atelier with its original trappings. To this end, the Foundation supports initiatives that explore the subject such as the International Colloquium on Artists’ Studio Museums held at the Watts Gallery, the last remaining artist studio and house of the 19th century retaining its original collection, in Surrey on 15 November 2013.
The aim of the colloquium was to establish an international network of Artists’ Studio Museums. Pioneered by the Watts Gallery in collaboration with Giles Waterfield, Senior Research Fellow, the event explored opportunities for some of the most important Artists’ Studio Museums to promote international co-operation between museums devoted to the preservation of artists’ studios. Speakers included directors and curators from a range of institutions including the Rubenshuis, Antwerp; the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham; Francis Bacon’s Studio, Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane; the Max Liebermann Villa, Berlin; the Polenovo Museum, Russia; the Musée Bourdelle, Paris; and the Gallen-Kallela Museum, Helsinki.
A resounding success, the colloquium resulted in establishing a framework to launch the first ever international network of artist’s studio museums.
The Tavolozza Foundation supports public art collections across the United Kingdom, Europe and North America including the following:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Cambridge (supported the acquisition of the Portrait of Claude-Armand Gérôme)
Art UK (website)
London
Sir John Soane’s Museum
London (Trustee; Supporter, ‘Adopt-a-Model’ initiative)
The National Gallery
London (Trustee & The George Beaumont Circle)
The British Museum
London (The Ottley Group & The Vollard Group)
Victoria and Albert Museum
London
The Wallace Collection
London
Leighton House
London
Royal Academy of Art
London
The Courtauld Gallery
London
The Ashmolean Museum
Oxford (The Elias Ashmole Society)
The Watts Gallery
Guildford, Surrey
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
West Bretton, Wakefield (Supporter Circle)
The Bowes Museum
Newgate, Barnard Castle
The Rembrandthuis
Amsterdam
The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen
Dresden
The Kunsthalle
Hamburg
The Kunsthalle
Karlsruhe
The Bayrische Staatsgemäldesammlung
Munich
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Los Angeles (The Disegno Group)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York (Visiting Committee, Department of Drawings and Prints)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York (Visiting Committee for Paper Conservation)
The Foundation also provides funding to a variety of organisations that promote the liberal arts and education.
The Royal Drawings School
London (Patron)
The Royal Opera House
London (Maestro's Circle)
IntoUniversity
London
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte
Munich
Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen
Munich
Master Drawings Association
New York
L’Association Mariette
Paris
The Hazara Charitable Trust
Romford
Scholarship, MA in the in Art Market and the History of Collecting, The University of Buckingham and the National Gallery in association with Waddesdon Manor
Buckingham and London
Scholarship, History of Art and Film Department, University of Leicester
Leicester
The University of Reading
Reading
Art UK (website)
London
Hospital Rooms
London
Rheinisches Kuratorium
Germany
CW+
UK
Prince's Trust
UK
Drs Adriano Aymonino and Silvia Davoli, Paper Marbles: Pier Leone Ghezzi’s “Studio di Molte Pietre”, The MIT Press, forthcoming 2022
Professor Rocco Sinisgalli, De Prospectiva Pingendi by Piero della Francesca, The MIT Press, forthcoming 2022
Dr Noam Andrews, Irregular Bodies: The Platonic Solids in Early Modern Europe, The MIT Press, forthcoming 2022
Alma Zevi, Not Vital: Sculptures from 1968 to 2020, forthcoming September 2021
Autumn 2021 issue of Master Drawings Journal (Volume 59, Number 3)
Hui Luan Tran, Vor-Bildliches Sterben. Der Tod der Kleopatra als bildtheoretisches Motiv in der Frühen Neuzeit, zephir 9, Edition Imorde, 2020
Dr Marianne Koos, ‘Malerei als Augentrug. Alexander Roslins Selbstporträt mit Marie Suzanne Giroust-Roslin an der Staffelei’, in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 83 (2020), pp. 506-553
Sarah Ferrari and Alessandra Pattanaro, eds., Disegnare l’antico, riproporre l’antico nel Cinquecento. Taccuini, copie e studi intorno a Girolamo da Carpi, Padova University Press, Padua, 2019
Jan Marsh, with contributions by Peter Funnell, Charlotte Gere, Pamela Gerrish Nunn, and Alison Smith, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2019
Catherine Jenkins, Nadine M. Orenstein, and Freyda Spira, The Renaissance of Etching, exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2019
Kate Macfarlane (ed.), with an essay by Hannah Williams and texts by Marco Livingstone, Deanna Petherbridge, Karsten Schubert, Anita Viola Sganzerla and Colin Wiggins, Close: Drawn Portraits, exhibition catalogue, Drawing Room, London, 2018
Dr. Nino Nanobashvili, Die Ausbildung von Künstlern und Dilettanti: Das ABC des Zeichnens, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2018
Deanna Petherbridge and Anita V. Sganzerla, Artists at Work, Paul Holberton Publishing with The Courtauld Gallery, London, 2018
Dr. Thea Vignau-Wilberg, Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel: Art and Science Around 1600, Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2017
Sonja Brink and Beat Wismer (eds.), Idea Et Inventio: Italienische Zeichnungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts aus der Sammlung der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf im Museum Kunstpalast, Band1, Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2017
Michael Plomp, Martin Sonnabend and Christoph Vogtherr (eds.), Watteau, Thoth, Uitgeverij, 2017
Building Identity: Chaim Gross and Artist’s Homes and Studios in New York City, 1953-74, The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, New York, 2017
Lucia Tantardini, Aurelio Luini: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Ugo Bozzi Editore, Rome (in preparation)
Yuri Primarosa, Ottavio Leoni (1587-1630), eccellente miniator di ritratti. Catalogo ragionato dell’opera grafica e pittorica, Ugo Bozzi Editore, Rome, 2017
Nicole Hegener (ed.), Nackte Gestalten: Die Wiederkehr des antiken Akts in der Renaissanceplastik/Naked Revival: The Return of the Ancient Nude in Renaissance Sculpture, proceedings of international conference, The Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 7-9 April 2016 (forthcoming, expected 2021)
Special issue of Upstate Diary dedicated to Alexander Calder, 2, 2016
Sibylle Appuhn-Radtke, Josef H. Biller, Dagmar Dietrich and Maria-Luise Hopp-Gantner (eds.), Johann Andreas Wolff (1652–1716) – Hofmaler und Kunstintendant, Munich, 2016
Kurt Zeitler (ed.), Linien – Musik des Sichtbaren: Festschrift für Michael Semff, Berlin, 2015
Notes in Honor of William W. Robinson, special issue of Master Drawings, 53, no. 4 (Winter 2015)
Adriano Aymonino and Anne Varick Lauder, Drawn from the Antique: Artists & the Classical Ideal, Libanus Press with Sir John Soane’s Museum, London and The Teylers Museum, Haarlem, 2015
Peter Märker, Carl Philipp Fohr 1795-1818. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Munich, 2015
Kurt Zeitler, Linien – Musik des Sichtbaren: Festschrift für Michael Semff, Berlin and Munich, 2015
Florian Härb, The Drawings of Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), Rome, 2015
Gottfried Boehm, Matthias Schaller: Das Meisterstück, 2015
Stijn Alsteens, ‘The Drawings of Pieter Coecke van Aelst’, Master Drawings, 52, no. 3 (Autumn 2014)
Claudia Schnitzer, Constellation Felix: Die Planetenfeste Augusts des Starken anlässlich der Vermählung seines Sohnes Friedrich August mit der Kaisertochter Maria Josepha 1719 in Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, 2014
Peter Schatborn and Leonore van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, Amsterdam, 2014
Adriano Aymonino, with Lucy Gwynn and Mirco Modolo, Paper Palaces: The Topham Collection as a Source for British Neo-Classicism, Eton College, 2013
Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Georges Brunel and Camille Debraban, The Male Nude: Eighteenth-century Drawings from the Paris Academy, London, 2013
Fritz Koreny, Hieronymus Bosch. Die Zeichnungen. Werkstatt und Nachfolge bis zum Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts, Turnhout, 2012
The Foundation sponsors many exhibitions and catalogues of Old Master drawings, paintings as well as contemporary art.
Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 9 October 2021 — 13 February 2022
Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present celebrates of the artistry of pastel through rarely seen holdings from the Museums’ Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, as well as prominent collections from Northern California. Through eighty masterworks, the exhibition traces the technical evolution of pastel, from its introduction in 16th-century Europe to works created as recently as 2020. Highlighting the creative process behind the works, the exhibition emphasizes pastel’s versatility over five centuries of human creativity, through drawings by Rosalba Carriera, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, Diego Rivera, Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, John Altoon, Rupert García, and Joan Mitchell.
Read more: www.famsf.org/press-room/pastel-color-line
BAROQUE BRILLIANCE Drawings and Prints by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Kunsthaus Zürich 10 December 2021 — 6 March 2022
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione unquestionably merits a prominent place in the pantheon of Italian draughtsmen. He commits his compositions to paper with a breathtaking nonchalance almost unparalleled among Baroque artists. At the same time, he is a pioneering experimenter in the field of printmaking. The monotype process which he developed was still being used in the 19th century by artists such as Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin. The Kunsthaus Zürich is now devoting a solo show to this virtuoso of art on paper, looking in particular at his relationship with his great role model, Rembrandt.
Read more: www.kunsthaus.ch/en/besuch-planen/ausstellungen/barockes-feuer/
By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT 30 September 2021 — 9 January 2022
Women artists played a vibrant yet overlooked role in Italy around 1600. The first exhibition solely dedicated to Italian women artists at the Wadsworth, By Her Hand explores how important women artists succeeded in the male-dominated art world of the time. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–after 1654), one of the most fascinating seventeenth-century Italian painters, will take center stage.
Read more: www.thewadsworth.org/explore/upcoming-exhibitions/byherhand/
Turner’s Modern World
Tate Britain, London 28 October 2020 — 12 September 2021
One of Britain’s greatest artists, J.M.W. Turner lived and worked at the peak of the industrial revolution. Steam replaced sail; machine-power replaced manpower; political and social reforms transformed society.Many artists ignored these changes but Turner faced up to these new challenges. This exhibition will show how he transformed the way he painted to better capture this new world.
See: www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turners-modern-world
Goya’s Graphic Imagination
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 12 February — 2 May 2021
This exhibition will explore Goya’s graphic imagination and how his drawings and prints allowed him to share his complex ideas and respond to the turbulent social and political changes occurring in the world around him.
See: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2020/goyas-graphic-imagination
Der Arbeit die Schönheit geben. Tiepolo und seine Werkstatt in Würzburg
Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg, Gemäldegalerie 31 October 2020 — 15 July 2021
Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770) created his world-renowned frescoes in the Würzburg Residence between 1750 and 1753. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of his death, the Martin von Wagner Museum, which is housed in the Residence, is presenting drawings, etchings, and paintings by Tiepolo, including numerous works from his immediate sphere of activity in Würzburg: sketched notes by his son, Giandomenico, and traced copies by his most important employee, Georg Anton Urlaub.
The works presented come primarily from the holdings of the university museum, and are supplemented by international loans.
Städel’s Legacy. Master Drawings from the Founder’s Collection
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main 13 May — 16 August 2020
The Frankfurt-based merchant and banker Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816) bequeathed a large art collection to the Städel Museum, which, in addition to paintings and prints, also included over 4,600 drawings. The Städel Museum will be presenting a selection of ninety-five master drawings which will give an exemplary impression of the character, order and artistic significance of the former drawing collection of Johann Friedrich Städel. Outstanding works by Raphael, Correggio and Primaticcio, Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard, Dürer, Roos and Reinhart, as well as Goltzius, Rembrandt and De Wit, are presented – following the tradition of the founder’s collection – according to ‘European schools’ and discussed in detail in an accompanying catalogue.
Piranesi drawings: visions of antiquity
British Museum, London 20 February — 9 August 2020
Step back in time in this landmark display of drawings by Neoclassicist printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Celebrating the 300th anniversary of his birth in 1720, this display presents the Museum’s complete collection of Piranesi’s drawings, which is unique in being entirely by the master himself. Explore the formidable quality of his pen and chalk studies and track his artistic evolution in this stunning new display.
See: blog.britishmuseum.org/whats-on-at-the-british-museum-in-2020/
Carmontelle (1717-1806)
Musée Condé, Chantilly, France 5 September 2020 — 3 January 2021
Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company
The Wallace Collection, London 4 December 2019 — 19 April 2020
The Wallace Collection presents Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company. Guest curated by renowned writer and historian William Dalrymple, this is the first UK exhibition of works by Indian master painters commissioned by East India Company officials in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Pre-Raphaelite Sisters
National Portrait Gallery, London 17 October 2019 — 26 January 2020
170 years after the first pictures were exhibited by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1849, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, explores the overlooked contribution of twelve women to this iconic artistic movement. Featuring new discoveries and unseen works from public and private collections across the world, this show reveals the women behind the pictures and their creative roles in Pre-Raphaelite’s successive phases between 1850 and 1900.
See: www.npg.org.uk/whatson/pre-raphaelite-sisters/exhibition/
Picasso and Paper
Royal Academy of Arts 25 January — 13 April 2020
Pablo Picasso rewrote the rules of painting, but he also tore up the rulebook for paper. Bringing together more than 300 of the artist’s works, both on and with paper, this exhibition spans his entire prolific career and represents a significant chapter in modern art.
Edmund de Waal: psalm
Venice 8 May — 29 September 2019
Learn more here: www.edmunddewaal.com/news/psalm
Rembrandt’s Mark (Rembrandts Strich)
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Residenzschloss, Dresden 14 June — 15 September 2019
The exhibition celebrated Rembrandt as artists’ artist – as teacher, paragon, source of inspiration, authority and challenge for others.
See: https://kupferstich-kabinett.skd.museum/en/exhibitions/rembrandts-mark/
The Nude Mona Lisa
Musée Condé, Chantilly, France 1 June — 6 October 2019
For the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, the Domaine de Chantilly celebrated the artist’s genius through one of his lesser-known and enigmatic yet seminal work: the Nude Mona Lisa.
See: www.domainedechantilly.com/en/event/the-nude-mona-lisa/
Drawing in Tintoretto’s Venice
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York 12 October 2018 — 6 January 2019
Idea and Inventio: Italian drawings of the 15th and 16th Centuries
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
24 March — 18 June 2017
Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva
29 September 2017 — 7 January 2018
Hardly any period brought to the fore as many epochal artists in Italy as the 15th and 16th centuries. The broad spectrum of artists shown in this exhibition ranged from Perugino and Raffael, to Michelangelo, Veronese and Barocci through to Vasari.
The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt
National Portrait Gallery, London 13 July — 22 October 2017
The creative encounter between individual artists and sitters was explored in this major exhibition featuring portrait drawings by some of the outstanding masters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Raphael: The Drawings
The Ashmolean, Oxford 1 June — 3 September 2017
Not Vital
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield 21 May 2016 — 2 January 2017
See: YSP/Not-Vital
Making Colour
National Gallery, London 18 June — 7 September 2014
Franz Ludwig Catel: Italienbilder der Romantik
Hamburger Kunsthalle 16 October 2015 — 31 January 2016
Further information www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/
Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album
The Courtauld Gallery, London 26 February — 25 May 2015
Johann Christian Reinhart, Ein deutscher Landschaftsmaler in Rom
Kunsthalle Hamburg 26 October 2012 — 27 January 2013
Master Drawings
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 25 May — 18 August 2013
Fragonard, Poesie und Leidenschaft
Kunsthalle Karlsruhe 30 November 2013 — 23 February 2014
The Beauty of the Line: Stefano della Bella as a Draughtsman
Kunsthalle Hamburg 25 October 2013 — 26 January 2014
The Young Dürer: Drawing the Figure
The Courtauld Gallery, London 17 October 2013 — 12 January 2014
A Victorian Obsession: The Pérez Simón Collection
Leighton House Museum, London 14 November 2014 — 6 April 2015
Drawn from the Antique: Artists & the Classical Ideal
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
25 June — 26 September 2015
Teylers Museum, Haarlem
11 March — 31 May 2015
Further information www.soane.org
Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish
Musée Bourdelle, Paris
31 March — 12 July 2015
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
4 October 2014 — 25 January 2015
Further information www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk and www.bourdelle.paris.fr