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UNBELIEVABLE: Gwen john | History Defined

I thought my cuckoo clock was amazing, but it’s got nothing on my statue of Bert the cheery chef

Installed in my home, Bert is a conversation starter like no other. It usually begins with: ‘What on earth is that thing?’ writes Adrian Chiles

The Guardian - UK

‘A scramble down to a gorgeous expanse of beach’: readers’ favourite unsung places in Wales

From magical swimming spots to museums and pizza joints, our readers share their top Welsh discoveries

The Guardian - UK

Five Great Reads: new ways to look at female nudes, understanding the Maya and revisiting Infinite Jest

Guardian Australia’s weekend wrap of essential reads from the past seven days, selected by Imogen Dewey

The Guardian - AU

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‘Not for ogling’: forget Titian, Botticelli and the male fantasists – only women can paint great female nudes

From Yoko Ono to Frida Kahlo, from Louise Bourgeois to Artemisia Gentileschi, women have long been capturing the unvarnished truth about their own bodies – and that’s why my novel Female, Nude weaves them into the plot

The Guardian - UK

Go deep into Freud, follow Gwen John home and watch Giacometti melt – the week in art

The master portraitist’s process is spelled out, Cardiff celebrates the great Gwen, Lynda Benglis eyes up Giacometti and Scottish art schools wind back the clock

The Guardian - UK

Gwen John: Strange Beauties review – Wales’s great modern artist stuns us with the glory of solitude

In a superb, mystical retrospective, the painter sheds social trappings – and her clothes – as she uses her enormous intelligence to paint purely

The Guardian - UK

Bawdy Beryl, slick Seurat, titanic Tracey and the glory of Gaudí: the best art shows and architecture in 2026

Must-sees include Beryl Cook’s postwar brilliance, Tracey Emin’s new highs, Frida Kahlo’s confessions, plus Google’s HQ and Gaudí’s finally finished fever dream

The Guardian - UK

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Celia Paul and Stephanie Radok have devoted their lives to making art – and writing about it

Women artists have always struggled to maintain an art practice as the primary focus of their lives. Going it alone, they’ve needed to contrive ways to survive, or accept that with commitment to a human “other” comes domestic concerns – and very likely, the demands of motherhood.

The Conversation

Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World review – sex, squalor and jungle sweat for an eternal outsider

Artists as varied as Sarah Lucas, Gwen John and Georg Baselitz are called upon by critic-curator Hilton Als to chime with the writer of Wide Sargasso Sea

The Guardian - UK

Artists, Siblings, Visionaries by Judith Mackrell review – the remarkable lives of Gwen and Augustus John

Gwen’s talent vastly outshone her brother’s – but both are treated with subtlety in this outstanding dual biography

The Guardian - UK

Fights, flings and fabulous paintings: how sibling rivals Augustus and Gwen John exasperated each other

He was a wild, glamorous painter, the toast of the early 20th century, whose life and career eclipsed his sister’s. But, after dying almost unknown, Gwen is now having the last laugh

The Guardian - UK

Exhibition debunks ‘no Welsh art’ myth amid calls for permanent national gallery

More than 250 works from amateur and celebrated Welsh artists are on display at the National Library of Wales until September 2025

The Guardian - UK

Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain review: strikingly powerful

This comprehensive show might be wide-ranging, but there are some real gems here

Evening Standard

The best art and architecture of 2023

Our critics’ high points include a ceramic wedding cake you can climb inside to Alice Neel’s fearless portraits, plus a new children’s V&A and a school with lumpy yellow walls

The Guardian - UK

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The Conversation

Six must-see summer exhibitions – reviewed by our experts

Looking for something to do this Summer? Our experts have gone to some of the best exhibitions around the UK and given us their take on it. From retrospectives of painter Peter Howson’s work in Edinburgh and filmmaker Brian Desmond Hurst’s work in Belfast to a groundbreaking photography exhibition in…

The Conversation

Gwen John: often dismissed as a timid recluse, this unique and uncompromising artist painted relentlessly on her own terms

The quiet Welsh painter Gwen John was not like any other artist, male or female – she was genuinely unique. She was neither an heiress, like most unmarried modernist women, nor a conventional academic artist, like most women who had to make a living with their art.

The Week

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris review

The Welsh-born painter Gwen John is generally remembered as a “fragile”, isolated figure, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Neglected for some time after her death, John (1876-1939) was rediscovered in the 1980s, when she was reassessed as a reclusive talent overshadowed by two “bombastic male egos”: her brother, the…

The Guardian - UK

Kaye Donachie: Song for the Last Act review – painted women who refuse to sit still and be pretty

Flawed, preoccupied and animated, Donachie’s vivid portraits intrigue and charm in a lively exhibition; Gwen John feels anaemic by comparison

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The Guardian - UK

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris review – sacrifices art to history

Tensile and hard-won, the artist’s singular work is occasionally lost in the scrum of a show keen to situate her in a social, sexual and painterly whirl

The Guardian - UK

‘She was always searching for grandeur’: the revolutionary life of artist Gwen John

She is famous for painting solitary women. But, far from being the recluse of popular myth, this pupil of Whistler, admirer of Cézanne and lover of Rodin was ahead of her time

The Guardian - UK

Fabulous felines: why female artists love stroking, painting and spoiling cats

Suzanne Valadon fed hers caviar. Leonor Fini kept two dozen. And when Tracey Emin lost hers, the missing posters fetched £500 each. The writer of a new book about painters and moggies celebrates furry muses

The Conversation

The best art books of 2022

The category of “art book” is vast, like art itself, but the best ones mix beautiful, interesting images with engaging and intelligent text. The books on this short list range from groundbreaking scholarly texts to dreamy, personal reflections, but all find that balance between image and narrative that makes an…

The Guardian - UK

Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul review – a woman in her own image

The painter conveys her spiritual connection with a fellow obsessive and ascetic artist in this fascinating book of imagined correspondence that lays bare the creative process

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