At the fascinating Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Over 130 paintings, sculptures and photographs from collections around the world displaying the art of Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and others.

The exhibition shows the diversity of the phenomenon of Abstract Expressionism which, although it had its roots in Europe, was developed by a new wave of both immigrant and American artists in the USA from the mid-1940s.

Jackson Pollock ‘Mural’ (1943)

Arshile Gorky ‘Water of the Flowery Mill’ (1944)

Mark Rothko ‘Yellow Band’ (1956)

Willem de Kooning ‘Woman in Forest’ (c.1963 – 64)

Robert Motherwell ‘Elegy to the Spanish Republic, no. 126’ (1972 – 75)

‘The Rupf Collection’ at the Guggenheim

Also an opportunity to see an excellent exhibition featuring seventy works from the Rupf Collection including paintings by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and others.

Andre Derain ‘Landscape near Cassis’ (1907)

Georges Braque ‘Houses in L’Estaque’ (1908)

Georges Braque ‘Violin and Bow’ (1911)

Pablo Picasso ‘Violin Hanging on the Wall’ (1913)

Fernand Leger ‘Still Life’ (1922)

Juan Gris ‘Book and Pipe’ (1925)

An extremely entertaining production of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ at the National Theatre, with the excellent Tamsin Greig as the cross-gendered Malvolia.

At the Royal Academy, London for this excellent exhibition of Russian art marking the one-hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

The exhibition surveys the entire artistic landscape of post-Revolutionary Russia, mixing the Socialist Realism of Isaak Brodsky with the avant-garde art of Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky and the films of Sergei Eisenstein.

Isaak Brodsky ‘V.I.Lenin and Manifestation’ (1919)

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev ‘Bolshevik’ (1920)

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin ‘Fantasy’ (1925)

Kazimir Malevich ‘Peasants’ (c.1930)

Wassily Kandinsky ‘Blue Crest’ (detail, 1917)

At the Courtauld Gallery in London to see its excellent permanent collection, featuring art from the Renaissance up to the twentieth century.

Robert Campin ‘The Entombment’ (c.1425)

Botticelli ‘Trinity with Saints’ (1491 – 93)

Edouard Manet ‘Bar at the Folies Bergère’ (1882)

Vincent van Gogh ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear’ (1889)

Paul Cezanne ‘The Card Players’ (1892 – 95)

At the National Gallery, London to see highlights of the Renaissance collection.

Jan van Eyck ‘The Arnolfini Portrait’ (1434)

Botticelli ‘Venus and Mars’ (c.1485)

Giovanni Bellini ‘Doge Leonardo Loredan’ (1501 – 02)

Leonardo da Vinci ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ (1491 – 1508)

Raphael ‘Madonna of the Pinks’ (1506 – 07)

In Toulouse to see the impressive Fondation Bemberg exhibition, the personal collection of the wealthy Argentine Georges Bemberg (1915–2011). It is an extremely eclectic collection of paintings from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Lucas Cranach ‘Venus and Cupid’ (c. 1530)

Paul Gauguin ‘Head of a Young Boy’ (1888)

Henry-Edmund Cross ‘La Chaine des Maures’ (1906 – 07)

Maurice de Vlaminck ‘Still Life with Fish’ (1907)

Paul Serusier ‘Fern Harvesters in the Bois d’Armour’ (c.1910)

At the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris for the ‘Icons of Modern Art – Sergei Shchukin’ exhibition. The exhibition shows 130 works on loan from museums in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, one of the most significant collections of modern art of the early twentieth century, with works by Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Cézanne, Rousseau and Derain. It is incredible that one man could have built such a collection as Sergei Shchukin and it must have been devastating to lose it when it was appropriated by Lenin after the Russian Revolution.

Claude Monet ‘Dejeuner sur l’Herbe’ (1866)

Paul Gauguin ‘What, Are you Jealous?’ (1892)

Pablo Picasso ‘Portrait of Soler’ (1903)

Henri Matisse ‘Red Room (Harmony in Red)’ (1908)

Kazimir Malevich ‘Woman with a Rake’ (1930 – 32)

At the Musée d’Orsay, Paris for the exhibition ‘Frédéric Bazille: The Youth of Impressionism’. Bazille was a key figure at the birth of Impressionism, but he died tragically at the age of only 28 during the Franco-Prussian War.

Frédéric Bazille ‘Réunion de Famille’ (c.1867)

Frédéric Bazille ‘La vue de Village’ (1868)

Frédéric Bazille ‘Summer Scene’ (1869)

Frédéric Bazille ‘Jeune femme aux Pivoines’ (1870)

At the Louvre in Paris to view the Italian and Northern Renaissance collections.

Giotto ‘Saint Francis receiving the Stigmatization’ (c.1295 – 1300)

Fra Angelico ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ (c.1430 – 32)

Paolo Uccello ‘The Battle of San Romano’ (c.1435 – 40)

Andrea Mantegna ‘Saint Sebastian’ (c.1480)

Leonardo da Vinci ‘Portrait of Lisa Gherardini’ (c.1503 – 19)

Jan van Eyck ‘Madonna of Chancellor Rolin’ (c.1435)

Rogier van der Weyden ‘Annunciation’ (c.1434)

Jan Provoost ‘Allegory of Christianity’ (1510 – 15)

Hans Memling ‘Portrait of an Old Woman’ (1470 – 72)

R.I.P Leonard Cohen, who has died aged 82.   I was introduced to his music when I was a teenager by the wonderful ‘Songs of Leonard Cohen’ album and to his writing by his novel ‘Beautiful Losers’.

I was lucky enough to be able to see him live on his famous 1979 tour, backed by the excellent Texas band ‘Passenger’, and immortalized on the ‘Field Commander Cohen’ album. He was a wonderful songwriter and poet.