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!

Isaac Levitan (1860-1900) captured the beauty of the vast Russian countryside with his luminous landscapes that could only be Russia. Transcending politics, his art gives us an insight into the Russian people and the world they lived in before the revolution.

In this talk we begin with a brief survey of Russian art through the ages, before focusing on the life and work of Isaac Levitan. He was a close friend of the writer Anton Chekhov and their lives were in many ways intertwined. In Levitan's short life, he produced some of the most beautiful and evocative paintings of the Russian countryside.

Free admission.

Until the time of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-69), western art had been predominantly religious, with scenes of figures or events from the Bible, or else of royalty or wealthy patrons. Bruegel took a radical new approach. He practically invented the landscape in western art, and he also gave us our very first glimpse of ourselves, of the life lived by the common people, our own ancestors.

In this talk we look at the life of Bruegel, and examine some of his greatest works. In doing so, we learn a little about the lives our ancestors lived.

Free admission.

In another of our Virtual Museum Visits we travel to Quito, the capital city of Ecuador in South America, to visit the fabulous Casa del Alabado Museum of Pre-Columbian art. One of the best-curated collections of the art of the ancient Americas that this commentator has ever seen, the Casa del Alabado Museum gives fresh perspectives into the lives, beliefs and art of the people of ancient America, and leaves us with a deeper understanding of these complex and fascinating cultures.

Free admission.