World Art Collections Exhibition
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

Eye-Music
Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz

Eye-Music, an exhibition of abstract art which explores the fascinating and complex relationship between Western art and music at the beginning of the 20th century, opens at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, on Tuesday 2 October and runs until Sunday 9 December. This touring exhibition has been organised by Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.

“For the artists included in this exhibition, it was the ability of music to transcend the material world that became such an important motive in their drive towards abstraction”
— Frances Guy, Curator.

Searching for a new visual language at the beginning of the 20th century, many artists were inspired by musical form and ideas in their early experiments in abstract art. The exhibition encompasses a wide range of artists who translated their passion for music —be it Bach, Debussy, Scheönberg, ragtime, jazz or boogie-woogie — into visual art. The show includes 10 works from the Sainsbury Centre’s UEA Collection of Abstract and Constructivist Art, Architecture and Design.

“It is wonderful to see this important group of UEA works in this context. It is also good to be working with Pal/ant House Gallery which, like the Sainsbury Centre, has recently re-opened after a critically acclaimed building project”
— Nichola Johnson, Director, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.

In the first decades of the 20th century many artists found inspiration in music, breaking the boundaries of how visual art could be defined. In Europe, Paul Klee (1879-1949) began to use music as a guiding principle in his theories of art to develop a new visual harmony.

“One day I must be able to improvise freely on the keyboard of colours: the row of watercolours in my paint-box”
— Paul Klee.

In Paris, František Kupka (1871-1957) was influenced by the work of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), in particular, the composer’s exemplary use of the fugal form. Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) relationship with artists from the German expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider’) and the composer Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), illustrated a growing enthusiasm for music and art. Kandinsky’s, Cossacks, 1910-11 is a highlight of the show.

By the 1920s, the syncopated rhythms of jazz and dance music had spread across Europe and America. Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) famously found inspiration in the boogie-woogie music of Albert Ammons, Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis and others. In Britain, artists such as John Tunnard and Alan Davie, both jazz musicians (a drummer and saxophonist respectively), found music gave their art rhythm, energy, and, especially in the case of Davie, spontaneity, very much in the spirit of free-form jazz.

The Eye-Music exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts will be accompanied by an exciting season of events including talks, workshops and concerts and will involve special collaborations with the University of East Anglia’s School of Music.