Preview: best art exhibitions in Europe, fall 2023

A first look at some of the most interesting art exhibitions that will be on view in Europe in autumn 2023.

Image: Frans Hals, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ (detail). The Wallace Collection, London // Sources: Belvedere, Vienna / National Gallery, London / Royal Academy, London / Museo Thyssen, Madrid / Munch Museum, Oslo / Louvre, Paris

Louise Bourgeois – Belvedere, Vienna (22 September 2023 – 28 January 2024)

Presented in the Baroque galleries of the Lower Belvedere, Louise Bourgeois’s paintings from the 1940s will be placed in dialogue with a selection of sculptures, installations, drawings, and prints from all periods of her storied career. The exhibition represents the first time these paintings will be exhibited as a body of work in Europe, and it is the first major exhibition of Bourgeois’s work in Vienna in a generation.

Marina Abramovic – Royal Academy, London (23 September — 10 December 2023)

In Abramović’s first major exhibition in the UK, the exhibition brings together works spanning her 50-year career. Curated in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will offer visitors the sort of intense, physical encounter for which she has become known. Abramović will participate in the programme of talks and events surrounding the exhibition.

Frans Hals – National Gallery, London (30 September 2023 – 21 January 2024)

One of the world’s best-known pictures Frans Hals’s ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ will be loaned for the first time in autumn 2023. The portrait will be a major draw in an exhibition at the National Gallery that will be the largest devoted to the artist’s work for more than thirty years.

Picasso. The Sacred and the Profane – Museo Thyssen, Madrid (4 October 2023 – 14 January 2024)

The exhibition includes some thirty works that will be presented in three rooms on the first floor of the museum. Works by Picasso belonging to the Museum and various loans from the Musée national Picasso Paris and other collectors and institutions will be in dialogue with paintings by El Greco, Rubens, Zurbarán, Van der Hamen, Delacroix, a sculpture by Pedro de Mena and engravings by Goya.

Munch’s Goya – Munch Museum, Oslo (28 October 2023 – 11 February 2024)

This exhibition demonstrates how Goya’s art was rediscovered and exhibited in the late 19th century, which allowed Edvard Munch and his artistic contemporaries to be exposed to Goya’s universe. The drawings, paintings and prints by Munch are not intended to claim a direct link between the two artists, but act as a reminder that exploring the murkier, mystical, grotesque side of humanity is an obsession shared by artists of all periods. 

Claude Gillot – Louvre, Paris (9 November 2023 – 12 February 2024)

Draughtsman and engraver Claude Gillot (Langres, 1673–Paris, 1722) owes much of his reputation to the whimsy of his drawings and the freedom of his prints, earning him the image of an undisciplined artist. By bringing together some one hundred works, this show seeks to demonstrate that drawing, in its technical diversity, was Gillot’s favoured means of expression – his painted work, in contrast, is rare, being limited to a dozen canvases, some of which raise questions of attribution.