In the small town of Sudbury in Suffolk, in the east of England, the visitor can admire more than just fine architecture, as the town has been a major textile center since the late Middle Ages. The visitor has the opportunity to visit the Gainsborough Centre, an international, now artistic center organized around the old city cell, which is nothing less than the home where the great British artist was born in 1727. Not only Thomas Gainsborough is associated with Suffolk, but also John Constable, who was born half a century later. The portraits of the first and the landscapes of the second largely symbolize England in the second half of the 18th century and especially the period of the reign of George III (1760-1820). This distinctive Britishness is captured in countless works of art, music, architecture and literature. Gainsborough is important for another reason as well. He influenced his contemporaries and the next generation of artists. That’s why turning the house where he was born and raised into a museum and art center open to all currents sounds quite consistent with his legacy. Gainsborough House was opened as a multipurpose center with interesting new architecture that echoes the main living cell and spreads out like a web of art-filled rooms. The tapestries of purely British colors (ruby and emerald) in Gainsborough Hall contain about 20 works by the artist. In a separate room of the old house there is a biographical exhibition about Gainsborough. Another room has been converted into an 18th century artist’s studio. The Music Room is dedicated to Gainsborough’s passion for music and related themes in his writing. The Cedric Morris Hall houses the collection of renowned artist Cedric Morris (1889–1982), donated to the Gainsborough Centre. Another room is devoted to periodical exhibitions. The opening was for Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), the first black person to vote in England and the first black person to write an obituary. Gainsborough drew it. The Gainsborough Center cost approximately £10 million to build.

World view

BRUSSELS
Athletes of Hercules
The exhibition of paintings by the Czech artist Vojtek Kovarik, entitled “The Labors of Hercules”, is inspired by the mythology of ancient Greece. Presented in Brussels at the Mendes Wood DM Gallery, it reveals the talent of the 29-year-old artist who has childhood memories of Greek landscapes. He is inspired by the German Expressionists and Picasso. In his own work, one can feel the interwar spirit and the kind of peculiar Art Deco aesthetics.

TEXAS
Aventon West
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of American photographer Richard Avedon. As part of the Year of Avedon, USA, with events organized by the Richard Avedon Foundation, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas is presenting black and white portraits from the In the American West series. The series was commissioned by said museum in 1979. Avedon presented the result in 1985.

PARIS
Pastel
The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has one of the richest collections of pastel works, around 500 works. Part of the collection is on display until July 2. This is a fascinating exhibition based on the extensive collections of Degas and Redon, who radically reinvented pastel art and established it as a painting category in its own right (and popular). The collection of pastels comes from the Louvre. In 1986 it was transferred to Orsay and has been constantly replenished ever since.

LAUSANNE
The story of the flood
The Élysée Museum in Lausanne, a major center for photography, has an exhibition that tells the history of flow photography in many directions and techniques. The meaning of blurry photography, when it is the goal of the photographer, is a special art that many creators have mastered. The exhibition links these photographs to the first visual representations of fog and the impression of aether in 18th-century painting and later art history.

LONDON
After Impressionism
At the National Gallery in London, the exhibition “After Impressionism” brings together the great works of artists from the period at the dawn of modernism, the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With Gauguin, Van Gogh and Cezanne as cornerstones, the artistic fermentations after 1880 (and up to the First World War) reflected great changes in society and the welcome of a new age. Interesting references to our time.