Emilio Vedova: Between Tradition and Avant-Garde

Please join us for a panel discussion between Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Flavia Frigeri, Chanel Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, and Jennifer Sliwka, Lecturer at King’s College London. Their conversation will explore the duality at the heart of Emilio Vedova’s paintings, which look back to the Italian Renaissance and Tintoretto in particular, while also charting new territory for a post-expressionist, politically engaged form of abstraction.

 RSVP

 Dr Nicholas Cullinan has been Director of the National Portrait Gallery since 2015, overseeing a £35.5m transformation of the Gallery with architect Jamie Fobert. Prior to this, he was Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. From 2007–13, he was Curator of International Modern Art at Tate Modern, where he co-curated Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs with Sir Nicholas Serota in 2014. He received his BA, MA and PhD in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and in 2006–7 held the Hilla Rebay International Fellowship at the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao, New York and Venice.

Dr Flavia Frigeri is an art historian, curator and lecturer. As the Chanel Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, she is leading the three-year project Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture to enhance the representation of female artists and sitters in the collection. She was previously a Teaching Fellow in History of Art at University College London (UCL) and Curator, International Art at Tate Modern. She holds a PhD from UCL, an MA from University of Chicago and a BA from John Cabot University, Rome.

Dr Jennifer Sliwka is an art historian specialising in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art. She is a lecturer and curator based at King’s College London and the National Gallery, where she teaches a collaborative MA in Christianity & the Arts. From 2007–17 she was Curator at the National Gallery and, prior to that, worked at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.