The KMSKA features the exhibition Turning Heads

From 20 October 2023 to 21 January 2024, Turning Heads will run at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), the first major exhibition since its reopening. The expo highlights old masters' fascination with the face. You will discover how artists such as Rubens, Bruegel, Rembrandt and Vermeer experimented liberally with expressions, play of light and accessories. And how they explored the language of the face in a time before emojis.

Turning Heads gathers 76 Belgian and international masterpieces. You will come face to face with the grotesque heads of Quinten Metsijs, the peasant heads of Pieter Bruegel, the study heads by Peter Paul Rubens and the expressive mugs by Adriaen Brouwer and Rembrandt. The exhibition tells you how artists in the Low Countries got to grips with the face in a playful way. From the 16th to the 17th century; from the study head to the tronie.

common people, uncommon faces

For their creative experiments, old masters would freely make use of anonymous models. Common people, uncommon faces. Through five themes, the exhibition deals with how the fascination for the head grew into a proper genre.

Visitors will also be invited to get to work themselves. They will make a study head, draw their own tronie and experiment with headgear, expressions and light. In this way, they will experience step by step what it means to study and capture faces as an artist. Besides the on-site text, there is also a poetic and informative audio story. In this audio, the host discusses the themes in dialogue with author Heleen Debruyne, art historian Dr. Elmer Kolfin, social psychologist Dr. Batje Mesquita and art photographer Dirk Braeckman.

Study heads

From the late 15th century, the fascination with facial expressions is evident. It even leads to paintings featuring only faces. The expo compares two of those: Christ Carrying the Cross by Bosch and Jesus among the Doctors by Dürer, which most exceptionally will be leaving the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

In the 17th century, masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer for the first time freed the head from the context of biblical and mythological scenes. This resulted in small intimate works of remarkable heads. Rubens grew up with the heads painted by Bosch, Dürer and other predecessors. In Italy, he was also introduced to the principle of study heads: drawings, sketches and paintings of the heads of anonymous models - from various perspectives and always with a neutral facial expression. Depending on their ultimate role in the painting, these preliminary studies are assigned a specific emotion or expression. Thus they are fitted into the whole, like a jigsaw puzzle. Turning Heads brings together the finest examples of this studio work. Some of the heads are so lifelike they look like photographs.

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"Turning Heads is not about portraits. About anything but portraits, actually. Artists make use of people we don't need to recognise. It's those heads we show. Very ordinary people. Where the face tells its own story. Often they are small works, stunningly executed. You don't get any closer to the artist."

Dr. Nico Van Hout, Head of Collection Research

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Striking climax

In the seventeenth century, Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer drive the art of 'anonymous heads' to a striking climax. They get creative with the studied heads and expressive faces they discover on their trips to Flanders.

Artists begin to use the face as a way to display their skills freely. They add headgear and exotic robes. They also experiment liberally with facial expressions and light. Frans Hals' Laughing Boy illustrates well how artists explore basic emotions. This is done in a nuanced way or through extreme expressions as in Adriaen Brouwer's The Bitter Potion and Joos Van Craesbeeck's The Smoker. The masters also play abundantly with light and shadow. In Vermeer's Girl with the Red Hat, light dances over a hat with exotic feathers. Her expression is mysterious, inviting. It is one of Vermeer's smallest works, but perhaps the ultimate synthesis of the genre of tronies.

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"From the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, top museums worldwide are lending works by the great masters for this exhibition. Including pieces by Flemish Masters that are otherwise hardly ever seen in their home country. Turning Heads will thus only increase the international appeal of Flanders as an art nation and of Antwerp as an art city."

Peter De Wilde, CEO Visit Flanders

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 NOTE TO THE PRESS 

Turning Heads is a collaboration between KMSKA and National Gallery of Ireland. After featuring at the KMSKA, the expo will travel on to Dublin. The Antwerp venue was curated by Dr. Nico Van Hout and Dr. Koen Bulckens.

Turning Heads is an exhibition under the Flemish Indemnity Decree and came about with the support of Visit Flanders.

Images can be found here.

CONTACT

Lore Jans

Press and PR

E           lore.jans@kmska.be 
M          0032 476 23 94 73