28 Sep Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 – 1593)  was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books — that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject.Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington is the first exhibition for this artist in the United States.  Sixteen examples of the fantastic composite heads painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo and some additional works, including drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, small bronzes, illustrated books and manuscripts, and ceramics, will provide a context for Arcimboldo’s inventions.
Exhibition runs till 9th of January, 2011         The bizarre works of Arcimboldo, especially his multiple images, were rediscovered in the early 20th century by Surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí. The exhibition entitled “The Arcimboldo Effect” at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1987) included numerous ‘double meaning’ paintings.

The Librarian, 1566, oil on canvas, Skokloster Castle, Sweden

Portrait of Rodolfo II as Vertunno

Primavera

Summer

Winter

Portrait with Vegetables

The Fire, Oil on Wood, 1566, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria

Selfportrait