Art Talks with Martin Randall

TUCSON ART TALKS brings Art Talks on a wide variety of art history topics to your public library, school, residential facility, business, auditorium or home. With years of experience speaking at museums, libraries and other venues in the Tucson area, these highly popular and engaging talks are sure to fascinate and delight!

 Although the Italian Impressionist Giuseppe De Nittis is almost unknown today outside Italy, he was a prominent and highly successful artist in Paris during his lifetime, closely connected with the other French Impressionists like Monet, Manet, and Degas, who are household names today. His short career was so intense that it captured everything that was happening in Europe at the time, from rural life in southern Italy where he was born, to the 1872 eruption of Mount Vesuvius that he witnessed first-hand, to everyday life amongst the bourgeoisie and middle class of Paris and London.

De Nittis chronicled the rise of industrialization, the repercussions of the Franco-Prussian War, and the Belle Epoque that followed it, a time of peace and prosperity in Europe, which he depicted in glorious detail in Paris and London, often presaging the work of the later French Impressionists.

Free admission.

Piet Mondrian's abstract paintings of blocks of bold primary colors and black lines are among the most recognizable images in 20th century modern art, colorfully chic without becoming cold and sterile. But Mondrian didn't start out like that. His early works depicting the Dutch countryside, rivers and windmills in beautiful realism show few hints that he would go on to become one of the greatest abstract artists of the century.

In this talk we explore Mondrian's transformation from a talented figurative artist to a groundbreaking abstract modernist, with his instantly recognizable style that has been imitated in design, fashion and architecture. We also examine the impetus behind his modern paintings which at first look so similar to each other, but on closer examination and understanding, can be seen as a striking and fascinating evolution. 

Free admission.