Critics are already rushing to shape the debate on the nominees for the annual prize, which awards £25,000 to an artist under the age of 50.

Work by all four finalists will go on display at Tate Britain on 4 October 2010, and the winner will be announced on 6 December 2010.

Last year’s Turner Prize was won by Richard Wright (see image below), who is represented by the Gagosian Gallery, which will have a chance to net back-to-back wins, as it represents Dalwood.

For more information, visit: www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/

Fact: The Turner Prize, which was established in 1984 to promote contemporary art, is named after the 19th-century painter J.M.W. Turner. Past winners include Damien Hirst, Martin Creed, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Tomma Abts.

From 15 June to  31 July 2010, the Victoria & Albert Museum will showcase work by art and design students from the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art inspired by the V&A and its collections.

A related conference exploring museum and higher education collaboration will take place in July 2010.

For more information, visit: www.vam.ac.uk

Visit the show in the display in room 220, Sackler Centre, V&A, admission free.

To celebrate his first collaboration with the NYC Ballet (NYCB), world renowned architect, Santiago Calatrava will serve as an Honorary Chairman of the company’s Opening Gala on Thursday, 29 April, an event marking the start of the 2010 spring season.

Calatrava, who is best known for his acclaimed bridges, transportation centers and educational buildings, (see images below) agreed to create scenic designs for five of the company’s new productions after receiving a personal invitation from NYCB Ballet Master, Peter Martins. Not only are these the first stage designs that the celebrated architect has ever conceived, but he is also the only architect besides Philip Johnson (1981) to receive such an honor. The new season, appropriately titled, Architecture of Dance – New Choreography and Music Festival, will feature seven world premiere ballets and four commissioned scores, all dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts.

Among the five choreographers that Calatrava collaborated with is Benjamin Millepied, whose production is scheduled to debut during Thursday’s Opening Gala. Millepied’s Ballet will feature a Calatrava-designed, multi-functional environment, which uniquely illustrates the architect’s reoccurring theme of movement and flight.

Calatrava’s scenic designs will also appear in world premiere ballets choreographed by Melissa Barak, Mauro Bigonzetti, Christopher Wheeldon and Peter Martins. To ensure that his concept aligned with their productions, Calatrava met with each of the five choreographers to discuss their visions and artistic styles.

“I was deeply honored when Peter Martins approached me with this opportunity,” said architect, engineer and designer, Santiago Calatrava. “As an architect, I have always studied and sought inspiration from movement and the human body. To me, there is no muse greater than a dancer. It is my sincere hope that my scenic designs truly express the choreographers’ visions.”

The New York City Ballet’s 2010 Spring Season, which will run from May 4 – June 27, 2010, will feature performances of over 40 ballets, including those featuring Calatrava’s set designs.

Text: ArtDaily

Images below – Calatrava’s Lyon TGV train station, France.

The inauguration of the first Pinta London Art Show, from 4 – 6 June 2010, at Earls Court Exhibition Centre, will open a new chapter in the global expansion of Latin American art.

Following the three preceding shows, which established the prestige of Pinta New York, Pinta London participates in the process of globalization of modern and contemporary Latin American art through a program that includes around fifty renowned galleries, as well as curatorial strategies and visions that broaden the artistic projection of the continent.

For a list of exhibitors, click HERE.

Botero’s large-scale sculptures have been exhibited to critical and popular acclaim in public exhibitions around the globe, including on the Champs Elysées in Paris, Park Avenue in New York, Chicago, Venice, and most recently in Berlin, Athens and Seoul.

Botero’s monumental sculptures are formal masterpieces of composed volume and mass. He has said of his sculpture, “I never give particular traits to my figures. I don’t want them to have personality, but rather that they represent a type that I create. My sculptures do not carry any messages, social or otherwise… what matters for me is the form, the voluptuous surfaces which emphasize the sensuality of my work.”

Botero was born in Medellin, Columbia in 1932. He moved to Bogota in 1951 and had his first show there the same year. His first retrospective took place in 1970 in Germany at museums in Baden Baden, Berlin, Dusseldorf and Hamburg. Since then, Botero has continually showed in museums all over the world. In the last ten years he has had an astounding number of museum shows in the following countries: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the United States.

Botero’s work can be found in forty-six museums. Among the most prominent are the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany; Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany. Numerous monographs have been published on Botero’s work in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.

Text: ArtDaily

From 30 April to 9 August 2010 Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau will be devoting an extensive retrospective to the important Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Frida Kahlo is one of the great identification figures of Latin American art. She stands out as one of the most famous female artists of the first half of the 20th century.

Injured in a traffic accident on 17 September 1925 Frida Kahlo spent the rest of her life in pain as a consequence of her frequent operations. These profound experiences left their mark on her work and her world. Her acquaintances with prominent figures of her day as Leon Trotsky, André Breton and Nicholas Murray influenced her eventful life. In 1929 she married the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who supported her in her artistic career.

Frida Kahlo’s works refer back to the early art of Mexico, that of the Aztecs and the Mayas, reflecting the social, political, and above all private aspects of her life. In 1938 – 39 she had very successful one-person exhibitions in both New York and Paris.

The exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, curated by the art historian Helga Prignitz-Poda, will consist of about 150 works (paintings and drawings), making it the most comprehensive show of Frida Kahlo’s work ever staged. For the first time the two largest Kahlo collections will be on display together along with valuable loans from 30 Mexican and 15 North American museums and private collections.

New York Gallery Week, a new initiative organized collectively by 50 Manhattan-based contemporary art galleries and 7 not-for-profits – spanning Chelsea, SoHo, the Lower East Side/Bowery, the Upper East Side, and 57th Street – will launch its pilot program in May 2010.

With a shared desire to refocus the art world’s attention toward the city’s long-standing exceptional gallery programming, a group of emerging and established galleries have come together with a mission to put the spotlight back on the galleries and the artists.

The inaugural year’s NYGW is actually a long weekend (kicking off on Friday, 7 May  and ending on the evening of Monday 10 May). Galleries are normally closed Sundays and Mondays, yet NYGW’s participants will be open throughout the weekend with extended hours. NYGW will become an annual event, and expand to a full week in future years.

Schedule for the 2010 Event

Friday 7 May: Galleries have normal business hours. Several special events are scheduled.

Saturday 8 May: Galleries will be open 10.00 – 18.00. with special free programming throughout the day. All NYGW Chelsea & Uptown galleries host receptions for solo exhibitions with special extended hours 18.00 – 20.00.

Sunday May 9th: Galleries will be open 10.00 – 18.00. with special free programming throughout the day. All NYGW Bowery, Lower East Side, SoHo, & West Village galleries host receptions for solo exhibitions with special extended hours 18.00 – 20.00.

Monday 10 May: Galleries will be open 11.00 – 18.00

*For a complete listing of all special programmed events, please visit the New York Gallery Week website.

Started by Casey Kaplan, the founding committee members of NYGW include Jane Hait of Wallspace, Anton Kern, Friedrich Petzel, Jason Murison of Friedrich Petzel, Andrew Richards of Marian Goodman Gallery, Pascal Spengemann and Kelly Taxter of Taxter & Spengemann, David Zwirner, Angela Choon and Julia Joern of David Zwirner.

New York Gallery Week 2010
Friday, May 7 through Monday, May 10, 2010
www.newyorkgalleryweek.com

Pablo Picasso’s 1938 oil painting ‘Man with a Lollipop’ is seen during a media preview of 300 works by Picasso at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This is the first exhibition that will showcase the museum’s complete collection of the artist’s paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics.

Credit: ArtDaily

Last week, Lorenzo Quinn’s monumental bronze sculpture Give & Take III, measuring almost four metres high, was unveiled in Berkeley Square, London.

Taking more than a year to create and cast from bronze and brass, the sculpture weighs in at over 1,300kg.

The piece, which will be resident in the square for the next six months, forms part of Lorenzo’s major new solo exhibition, Equilibrium, which opened at Mayfair’s Halcyon Gallery, 24 Bruton Street, on Wednesday. Give and Take III will spend six months on public display in Berkeley Square until May 2010.

Yet another new contemporary art fair has been born, calling itself JUST MADRID. It will be taking place at the same time as ARCOMadrid from 18 - 21 February 2010, taking into account the international public travelling to the city during this time.

The fair will be held at La Lonja and Nave de Terneras in two unique industrial buildings with metal, brick and glass structures - perfect for hosting a fair of this kind.

JUST MADRID is being curated by art director Virginia Torrente, and is dedicated exclusively to emerging artists.

The fair aims to cover a pressing need in the Spanish contemporary art market to provide room for galleries that represent promising new artists, so it’s a shame that over 60% of galleries participating are coming from outside Spain.

JUST MADRID also has fringe sections titled Curators’ Desks, featuring curated spaces and Big Size Outside, a selection of installation-sculpture pieces presented by participating galleries and located in the area surrounding Nave de Terneras.

All the projects on show at JUST MADRID will be created specifically for the stands at the fair, and based on innovation, risk-taking and new formats showcasing a range of talent and promising new artists.

Hopefully, collectors and institutions investing in new talent will find in JUST MADRID an exciting selection of galleries and artists and it will be interesting to see what kind of response the show creates.

For more info or other press requests related with this project please contact:

URROZ PROYECTOS
Serrano 162 · 28002 Madrid
info@urrozproyectos.com
www.urrozproyectos.com

Tel: 00 34 915648856