Tuesday, October 18, 2022
7:30 PM

Diaghilev conceived of music, choreography, set design, and costume as equal, integral aspects of the ballet, and he commissioned many great composers, choreographers, and artists to create original works for the Ballets Russes. In its 20-year history, the company could boast of an illustrious, international “Who’s Who” of collaborators, elevating ballet to a new height in the cultural hierarchy. Ruthless and dictatorial, Diaghilev persevered in realizing his artistic vision, until, debilitated by diabetes, he died in Venice in 1929.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022
7:30 PM

Influenced by the dance innovations of Isadora Duncan, Richard Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, and the synaesthetic theories of Charles Baudelaire, Diaghilev finally achieved his ultimate synthesis of the arts with his creation of the Ballets Russes, which opened in 1909 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Dancers included Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Mikhail Fokine. The Ballets Russes toured throughout Europe and the Americas uninterruptedly for two decades, from 1909 to 1929.

Tuesday, October 4, 2022
7:30 PM

The great turning point for Diaghilev came when he moved to Paris in 1906. He organized an exhibition for the Salon d’Automne entitled Two Centuries of Russian Art and Sculpture. Filling 12 galleries in the Grand Palais, it included 750 works by 103 artists. In 1907, he produced a series of concerts at the Paris Opera, featuring Russian nationalist composers, which culminated in Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (in Russian) with Fyodor Chaliapin in the title role.

Tuesday, September 27, 2022
7:30 PM

In 1905, Diaghilev organized a historic portrait exhibition of Russian art treasures at the Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg. He himself traveled to secure loans of more than 4,000 paintings, owned by 450 collectors. The innovative installation of the exhibition displayed groups of paintings in differently decorated interiors to create a sense of artistic synthesis. It was a huge success, catapulting Diaghilev to the pinnacle of the Russian cultural elite.

Tuesdays, September 20, 27; October 4, 11 & 18, 2022
7:30 PM

Join music, art, literary, and dance historian Victoria Martino in a five-week lecture series, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Diaghilev by rediscovering and redefining the scope of his immeasurable influence on modern culture.

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Who was Sergei Diaghilev? What did he do? Condemned by his own country as the ultimate exemplar of bourgeois decadence and depravity, he was excised from Soviet cultural history. Yet, in the international world of art, music, dance, and theater, he was revered, even idolized, as the greatest impresario of all time. Creator, critic, curator, Diaghilev played all these roles, defining for many the very meaning of contemporary art in the 20th century. In his role as founder and director of the legendary Ballets Russes, Diaghilev commissioned and patronized a veritable lexicon of artists, choreographers, composers, dancers, and designers: from Matisse to Picasso, Fokine to Massine, Debussy to Stravinsky, Nijinsky to Pavlova, Bakst to Chanel.

Tuesday, September 20, 2022
7:30 PM

Born in 1872 to parents of nobility, Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev was raised in Russian high society and sent to study law at the University of St. Petersburg. In 1890, he joined the Nevsky Pickwickians, an informal circle of student intellectuals who founded a progressive art journal, Mir iskusstva (“The World of Art”). As Chief Editor, Diaghilev became the primary spokesman for contemporary art. In 1899, he was appointed artistic advisor to the Imperial Theatres in Moscow.

Tuesday, March 8, 2022
6:30 PM

In 1938, with war on the horizon, Mondrian decided to move to London. There he was welcomed by the Circle group, which had published his first essay in English, Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art. The bombardment of London led him to flee to New York City, where he was received with enthusiasm by artists and collectors. Invigorated by the vibrant energy of the city, he worked tirelessly, until his death from pneumonia in 1944.

Tuesday, March 1, 2022
6:30 PM

Although he returned to Paris at the end of the war, Mondrian continued his close collaboration with the artists of De Stijl. The 1920 publication of his booklet, Le Néo-plasticisme, served to disseminate his new theories throughout Europe. In the course of the years that followed, Mondrian’s artistic innovation led to the development of a unique pictorial language. Ever pursuing pure abstraction, he became affiliated with the international art associations, Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création.

Tuesday, February 22, 2022
6:30 PM

In the summer of 1914, Mondrian returned to the Netherlands to visit his father, who was seriously ill. The outbreak of World War I prevented him from returning to Paris, so he settled in the avant-garde artists’ colony of Laren, where he met Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg. With Van Doesburg, Mondrian founded the journal, De Stijl (The Style), in which he published essays defining his artistic theory, which he named Neoplasticism.

Tuesday, February 15, 2022
6:30 PM

In 1911, Mondriaan visited the Moderne Kunstkring exhibition in Amsterdam. He was so impressed by the avant-garde work of the Cubists, that he immediately resolved to move to Paris. Upon arrival, he changed his name, dropping an “a” from “Mondriaan,” as a symbol of his complete immersion into a new culture and society. Experimenting with the style of Picasso and Braque, Mondrian found a way to integrate representational form and geometric abstraction in his work.

Tuesdays, February 8, 15, 22, March 1 & 8, 2022
6:30 PM

Join art historian Victoria Martino, as she honors the legendary “father of modernism,” Piet Mondrian, in a five-week lecture series, commemorating the 150th birthday of the artist.

Heir to the venerated Dutch landscape tradition, Mondrian became a pioneer of abstract art, and a leading exponent of the Dutch avant-garde movement, De Stijl (The Style). His lifelong search for absolute purity of form, color, and line reflected his deeply held spiritual belief in a balanced and harmonious universe.

This five-week lecture series will trace Mondrian's dramatic development through a veritable lexicon of art movements: from his early representational landscapes, through Fauvism, pointillism, post-impressionism, neo-impressionism, luminism, and cubism, to the final breakthrough of his unique personal style, which has become synonymous with twentieth-century modernism.

Tuesday, February 8, 2022
6:30 PM

Born into a devout Calvinist family in central Holland, Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, Jr. was encouraged by his family to draw and paint from early childhood. In 1892, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam, where his academic training focused on drawing from the model, copying the Old Masters, and genre painting. He supported himself by making scientific drawings, producing copies of museum paintings, and giving private drawing lessons in his studio.

Tuesday, October 12, 2021
6:30 PM

Join art and music historian Victoria Martino on September 14, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, as she begins a five-week celebration of the poet’s power of inspiration, ranging from medieval to modern times.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021
6:30 PM

Join art and music historian Victoria Martino on September 14, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, as she begins a five-week celebration of the poet’s power of inspiration, ranging from medieval to modern times.

Tuesday, September 28, 2021
6:30 PM

Join art and music historian Victoria Martino on September 14, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, as she begins a five-week celebration of the poet’s power of inspiration, ranging from medieval to modern times.

Tuesday, September 21, 2021
6:30 PM

Join art and music historian Victoria Martino on September 14, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, as she begins a five-week celebration of the poet’s power of inspiration, ranging from medieval to modern times.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021
6:30 PM

Join art and music historian Victoria Martino on September 14, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, as she begins a five-week celebration of the poet’s power of inspiration, ranging from medieval to modern times.

Tuesdays, September 14, 21 & 28; October 5 & 12, 2021
6:30 PM

Join art and music historian Victoria Martino on September 14, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, as she begins a five-week celebration of the poet’s power of inspiration, ranging from medieval to modern times.

ONLINE VICTORIA MARTINO LECTURE-CONCERT

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of J.S. Bachʼs composition of his Six Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin in 1720, Baroque violinist and scholar Victoria Martino will provide the audience with a unique opportunity to hear these celebrated masterpieces of the violin repertoire performed from Bachʼs autograph manuscript on an original period instrument. She will intersperse her performance with lively commentary about Bachʼs life, circumstances, and ideas, as well as remarks and explanations about the specific musical structure and form of the individual pieces.

More info / Get tickets →

ONLINE VICTORIA MARTINO LECTURE-CONCERT

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of J.S. Bachʼs composition of his Six Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin in 1720, Baroque violinist and scholar Victoria Martino will provide the audience with a unique opportunity to hear these celebrated masterpieces of the violin repertoire performed from Bachʼs autograph manuscript on an original period instrument. She will intersperse her performance with lively commentary about Bachʼs life, circumstances, and ideas, as well as remarks and explanations about the specific musical structure and form of the individual pieces.

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ONLINE VICTORIA MARTINO ART HISTORY LECTURE

In the summer of 1520, Dürer and his wife set out for an extended journey through the Netherlands. Traveling to the major cities of the north, the now universally revered artist established close friendships with the greatest painters of the region. Never content to stop learning, he diligently studied the works of the 15th century Flemish masters. Having contracted a mysterious illness on his journey, his health gradually began to decline. In his remaining years, he focused his attention primarily on theoretical writings and scientific illustrations. Yet some of his last paintings reveal a master at the peak of his genius. He died at the age of 56, leaving not only a massive legacy of work and a vibrant workshop, but also scores of imitators for centuries thereafter.

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ONLINE VICTORIA MARTINO ART HISTORY LECTURE

Such was Dürer’s renown that he was retained in 1512 as the chief artist for the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I. Dürer’s greatest commission during this period was The Triumphal Arch, the largest woodcut ever produced, requiring 192 blocks. He collaborated with other prominent German artists to produce a Triumphal Procession and to design marginal images for the Emperor's prayer book. His many paintings from these years included several official portraits of the Emperor, the last one completed shortly before Maximilian's death in 1519.

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ONLINE

Determined to assimilate the virtuosity of the Italian artists, Dürer spent another protracted sojourn in Venice with shorter visits to other parts of Italy. Reluctantly returning once more to Nürnberg, he purchased a large house in the center of the city and was elevated to membership in the parliamentary council. In a city where artists were regarded as mere craftsmen, Dürer's new status heralded an era of sovereignty, distinguished by the creation of his most celebrated masterworks.

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Following the tradition of young journeymen, Dürer spent nearly four years visiting and studying with master artists in Alsace, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and other cities in Germany. Returning home to Nürnberg in 1494, he married Agnes Frey, the daughter of a local craftsman. Only a few months after the wedding, he left his new bride, crossing the Alps into Italy, where he absorbed the advanced style and techniques of the most prominent Quattrocento artists. In 1495, immediately upon his return to his hometown, he established his own workshop, and with it, a growing reputation.

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Born in the independent and prosperous city of Nürnberg, Albrecht Dürer was the third child and second son of the goldsmith Albrecht Dürer the Elder and his wife, Barbara, who bore a total of 18 children. Dürer began his training as a draftsman in his father’s workshop. He displayed such a precocious talent, that in 1486, Dürer’s father arranged for his apprenticeship to the local master painter and woodcut illustrator, Michael Wohlgemuth. Completing his studies after three years, the young journeyman set out on his travels, seeking commissions and the perfection of his skills.

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Join art historian Victoria Martino for a fascinating five-week lecture series, celebrating the 550th birthday of the most important artist of the Northern Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer. Arguably the greatest German artist of all time, Dürer's oeuvre includes more than 1,000 drawings, 100 engravings and etchings, nearly 250 woodcuts, 100 paintings, and 40 watercolors. This extraordinarily prolific artist was also an influential theorist, producing three treatises in nine volumes on subjects of Measurement, Human Proportion, and Fortification. Renowned throughout Europe before he reached the age of 20, due to the widespread sales of his celebrated woodcuts, this polymath was universally compared to Apelles, Phidias, and Zeuxis, the greatest artists of classical antiquity.

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Join Victoria Martino on December 16, in a celebration of Beethoven’s actual 250th birthday with what she calls “a Spectacular Sensory Spectacle of Sight and Sound!” With an excellent academic and performance background, Martino will draw upon her unique and extensive expertise in music, art, literature, and history to combine all the arts to transport the audience viscerally into the life and times of Beethoven. The Wednesday evening event will be a synchronization of musical and visual material and include dramatic readings from Beethoven’s correspondence.

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