Anthony Daley: Son of Rubens (27 August 2022 - 2 April 2023)
Dulwich Picture Gallery presents 12 new works by Abstract Expressionist painter Anthony Daley. Taking inspiration from the Gallery’s collection, Son of Rubens is a brand new display that explores Daley’s career-long fascination with the work of 17th century Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens.
Daley’s new paintings are the result of an immersive six-month meditation on Rubens’s Venus, Mars and Cupid (c.1635), one of 11 Rubens paintings in Dulwich Picture Gallery’s collection. Daley’s large-scale responses, with intriguing titles such as Nubian warmth (2022) and Hot waring cold heart (2022), pull Rubens’s iconic work directly into conversation, and interpret the painting through a distinctive emotional and abstract lens, with a joyful focus on colour and movement.
Daley is a celebrated British artist whose abstract paintings have been exhibited internationally. He first encountered Rubens’s work as a nine-year-old boy living in Jamaica and Rubens’s extraordinary use of oil paint continued to inspire Daley’s own study of art after moving to England a few years later.
Son of Rubens is part of Unlocking Paintings, a series of displays that presents new perspectives on the Gallery’s collection, inviting contemporary artists and thinkers to interpret historic themes.
The display is curated by Lisa Anderson, Managing Director of the Black Cultural Archives. She said:
“It’s been thrilling to open up this opportunity for Anthony Daley, a phenomenal painter whose work is so deserving of this platform and exposure. I’m delighted to have curated a show that will widen appreciation of the immense talent that exists within contemporary British painting and the fact that he shares my African-Caribbean heritage makes me immensely proud.”
Anthony Daley said:
“I’ve been fascinated by Rubens’s work since I was a child and the sheer gloriousness of his paintings opened the world up for me. I’ve been visiting Dulwich Picture Gallery since the 1980s and have always been drawn to Venus, Mars and Cupid so the opportunity to create these new paintings as both a response and a challenge has been incredibly exciting!”
The Son of Rubens display will be shown concurrently with Dulwich Picture Gallery’s new exhibition, M.K. Čiurlionis: Between Worlds (21 September 2022 – 12 March 2023).
Notes to Editors
Contact
Caitlin Collinson, PR Manager, c.collinson@dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
Anthony Daley
Anthony ‘Tony’ Daley moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1972, studying at Wimbledon College of Arts in 1982 and Chelsea College of Arts in 1983. Daley was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Painting Fellowship in 1984 and has been the subject of more than 25 solo exhibitions internationally, including exhibitions in London, New York, Los Angeles and Zurich. His work is held by major public institutions including Tate and National Portrait Gallery.
Unlocking Paintings
Unlocking Paintings is a series of displays that enables people to make personal connections with the paintings at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The series explores new ways to tell the stories of the collection, which are responsive and relevant to contemporary experience. Displays are centred around three key themes: pioneering new research, championing diverse contemporary painters and amplifying local voices within the collection.
Dulwich Picture Gallery
Dulwich Picture Gallery, founded in 1811, is the world’s first purpose-built public art gallery. It cares for and displays an outstanding collection of Old Master paintings within Sir John Soane’s pioneering architecture. As an independent gallery, which receives no regular public funding, it pursues its founders’ purpose of presenting art ‘for the inspection of the publick’ while engaging as many people as possible, of all ages and backgrounds, through a creative programme. Entering the gallery space visitors discover a surprising and contemplative experience that encourages the discovery of personal connections with historic works of art – a place to Find Yourself in Art.
Official Paint Partner: Mylands
