Recently reopened, the gallery at the Palazzo Cini in Venice is presenting a number of extraordinary rediscovered masterpieces from the famed collection of Vittorio Cini.
 
A number of extraordinary masterpieces from the Vittorio Cini Collection in Venice, Italy, will be on display for the first time at the Palazzo Cini. Opened on April 8 and on view through November 15, “Rediscovered Masterpieces” is a tasty treat for any art lover and connoisseur. In addition to several rare Veneto paintings, the exhibition celebrates the legacy of one of Italy’s most prominent art collections during the 20th century.
 
The gallery writes, “The exhibition highlights how Vittorio Cini took an interest in later centuries, from the 16th century of Titian and Lorenzo Lotto to the 18th century of Giambattista Tiepolo, Canaletto, and the Guardi.”
 
To learn more, visit the Palazzo Cini Gallery.
 
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New works from the accomplished painter Louis Escobedo are gracing the walls of 717 Gallery this month in Maryland. Details are just a click away.
 
Any opportunity to see the work of nationally recognized painter Louis Escobedo is a good one. “Unseen Secrets: Florals & Interiors” is a captivating solo exhibition of Escobedo’s newest works, and naturally they have a springtime theme. The gallery reports, “Escobedo has an astonishing talent for creating extraordinary paintings inspired by ordinary subjects. A portion of the appeal of his paintings comes from his choice of surprising, otherwise overlooked subject matter. Escobedo doesn’t search out his topics, rather they seem to find him.”
 

Louis Escobedo, “New One,” oil, 12 x 12 in. (c) 717 Gallery 2016

 
Indeed, Escobedo has an uncanny ability to make the mundane beautiful, and his talent for such is on full display during “Florals & Interiors.” The exhibition will be on view through May 27.
 
To learn more, visit 717 Gallery.
 
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Now through September 2016, four major exhibitions have been — or will be — mounted in France as part of the third edition of the Normandy Impressionist Festival. Get the details here!
 
Four major exhibitions are scheduled to open over the next two months in France as part of a relatively new festival that celebrates one of the nation’s many intellectual contributions: impressionism. Four different sides of the style will be presented at each show, which begins on April 16 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. This first exhibition will featured works from Impressionism’s founders, including Manet, Monet, Degas, and Renoir. Also opening on April 16 are two other shows: “Frits Thaulow: Landscapes by Nature” at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen, and “Eugéne Boudin: Craftsman in Light” at the Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux in Le Havre. Finally, on June 25, “Childhood in the Era of Impressionists: 1860-1910” will open at the Musée Eugéne Boudin in Honfleur.
 
Whether one is to see one or them all, each presents a unique vision of both historical and contemporary impressionism. They will undoubtedly be a fascinating glimpse into the growth and evolution of the style in its native country.
 
To learn more, visit here.
 
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Floral subjects abound in the art world as everyone thaws from winter’s chill. However, this New York-based organization has tossed another wildly popular genre in the mix.
 
Partnering with a contemporary floral design magazine, Portraits, Inc. is presenting a number of masterfully produced floral-themed portraits and still lifes this month. Opening April 21, “In Full Bloom” is also the organization’s way of acknowledging the growing convention of informal portraiture, especially ones that situate their subjects in pastoral or garden settings.
 
Via its press release, Portraits, Inc. writes, “These special works, which intentionally blur the distinction between narrative figure painting and formal portraiture, are historically referred to as ‘conversation pieces’ and are sure to become cherished heirlooms in the family art collection.”
 

Dawn Whitelaw, oil, (c) Portraits, Inc. 2016

 
The expressive, looser paint application seen in many of the paintings also lends itself to the informal approach. Continuing, the organization states, “Outdoor works, capturing the feeling of flickering light and the warmth of the sun, are ideally suited for this type of impressionistic handling as well. ‘Conversation pieces’ are also particularly well-suited for children’s portraiture as it captures the lightness and spirit of youth.” The exhibition is sure to offer a delightful display of beauty, skill, and personality. “In Full Bloom” opens on April 21 and will be on view through May 26.
 
To learn more, visit Portraits, Inc.
 
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An upcoming exhibition in South Carolina may leave visitors certain that spring has officially arrived.
 
Opening April 28 at the delightful Ann Long Fine Art in Charleston, South Carolina, is a group exhibition of still life paintings, featuring predominantly floral subjects. Visitors will almost be able to smell the lovely fragrances so characteristic of the spring season. To learn more, visit Ann Long Fine Art.
 
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What if someone suggested to you that tattoo artists, fine artists, and collectors all have much in common? Whether your reaction to that is positive or negative, opinions may change after this exhibition.
 
Abend Gallery in Denver, Colorado, has recently opened a fascinating exhibition that explores two seemingly dissimilar artistic disciplines: painting and tattooing. For a long time in American culture, tattooing has been framed in a negative light, i.e., that terrible mistake you made in defiance of your parents in college, or the lovely portrait of your now ex-partner etched forever into your thigh. Be that as it may, there are thousands of tattoo artists around the country who are supremely gifted artistically. Moreover, those who get tattoos often do so to satisfy aesthetic and adornment needs similar to those of fine art collectors — at least, in the mind of exhibition organizers.
 

Derek Harrison, “Pink Gloves,” oil, 14 x 11 in. (c) Abend Gallery 2016

 
“Nexus” is a revealing group exhibition of works from 34 acclaimed painters, including  Jeremy Mann, Teresa Oaxaca, Julio Reyes, Vincent Xeus, and Adrian Gottlieb. The aim of the show, which opened on April 8, is to draw parallels between painting, tattooing, and collecting in ways never before explored. The gallery suggests, “Tattoo and painting, as different as their consumer demographics are, satisfy the same needs in their enthusiasts: the need for beauty, for adornment, for personal meaning, for longevity. Like acquiring a painting, acquiring a tattoo must mean the acquisition of an aesthetic and well-crafted work of art that will last a lifetime.”
 

Teresa Oaxaca, “Carousel,” oil, 25 x 37 in. (c) Abend Gallery 2016

 
Although some may find tattooing distasteful and, perhaps, intimidating, the practice has a deeply rooted tradition and subculture that has influenced artists for generations, including those artists featured in the exhibition. Continuing, the gallery writes, “The works in this show are all paintings by fine artists who have been influenced by tattoo culture and the imagery intrinsic to that culture; by tattoo artists who wield paintbrushes, and by several individuals who have successfully made a dual career out of both painting and tattooing. In these paintings one can witness the influence and crossover between the two mediums and subcultures.”
 
“Nexus” will hang through May 7. To learn more, visit Abend Gallery.
 
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The intersection of nature and manmade infrastructure is a fascinating theme that has found itself the subject of artists for centuries. What does this idea look like through the eyes of an adroit realist today?
 
During a career that has spanned over 30 years, painter Valeri Larko has continually found inspiration in the abandoned, dilapidated landscapes in the cities of America’s northeast. Having spent most of her life in Northern New Jersey, Larko has always been surrounded by endless miles of industrial landscapes, many sprawling and many in states of ruin. As hinted above, Larko finds herself fascinated by the collision of nature and industry, which reveals to the artist stories at the fringes of city life.
 

Valeri Larko, “MNG Automotive,” 2013, oil on linen, 21 x 70 in. (c) Valeri Larko 2016

 
Recently, Larko has explored various sites around Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx in New York, which has resulted in a captivating exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. On view now through June 26, “Bronx Focus: Paintings by Valeri Larko” will feature these recent works, with specific attention paid to the museum’s home, the Bronx. The museum reports, “The works in the exhibition serve as a record of the vibrant graffiti culture as displayed in structures throughout the borough now, and on the verge of extinction. Other paintings showcase glimpses of the salt marshes and creeks that have managed to thrive within the urban sprawl. Larko’s paintings remind viewers of a Bronx that coexists as both a city and nature reserve, capable of gritty and touching beauty, while also focusing on themes of memory, preservation, and expansion.”
 

Valeri Larko, “Meat Packing Plant, Bronx,” 2012, oil on linen, 20 x 66 in. (c) Valeri Larko 2016

 
Central to Larko’s process involves on site painting, en plein air. “She spends months or years working on her canvases directly in the presence of her subjects,” the museum adds. “Bronx Focus: Paintings by Valeri Larko” will hang through June 26.
 
To learn more, visit the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
 
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Despite the hustle and bustle of our everyday experiences, each of us occupies a private universe within, and it is often the only place of silence and tranquility in a modern world that moves at 1000 mph.
 
Acutely observed and skillfully painted, the most recent series of pictures by artist Marta Penter (b.1957) seeks to capture the essence of this interior world. Opened on April 7 at San Francisco’s Caldwell Snyder Gallery, “Among Silence” showcases Penter’s outstanding achievements. Drawing from her own background in psychology, Penter was inspired to explore this theme during a recent trip abroad to London, Paris, and Berlin, where she “photographed the multitudes in the streets, intuitively seeking out moments of silence” the gallery reports. “What do I shoot?” Penter recalls feeling. “Silence yourself. Or, in other words, in the midst of all the turmoil lies silence. That is what I encounter, that is what I photograph, that is what I paint. Because people may be there, all of them occupying the same place, but each one of them is within his or her own private and silent universe.”
 

Marta Penter, “Girl with Blue Beach Chair,” oil on canvas, 47 x 47 in. (c) Caldwell Snyder Gallery 2016

Marta Penter, “Two Girls in Vienna,” oil on paper, 43 x 60 in. (c) Caldwell Snyder Gallery 2016

Marta Penter, “The Cornershop,” oil on canvas, 71 x 47 in. (c) Caldwell Snyder Gallery 2016

 
Characteristic of Penter’s work, the exhibition features large-scale canvases with a monochrome palette. However, more recently the artist has begun to include concentrated areas of sapphire blue, which give the paintings a dream-like and surrealist tone. The artistic choice blends beautifully with Penter’s conceptual goals. Her style and subjects work in concert to “meticulously catalogue the countless social cues of dress, hairstyle, posture, and facial expression that allow us to negotiate the realm of others while carving out space for our own experience” the gallery continues. “As she works, Penter identifies so closely with her subjects as to become one with them: ‘Whenever I represent a knitted blouse, it feels as if the brushes are the knitting needles themselves; it is as if I am knitting, stitch by stitch, such fabric.’ Explaining her preference for large-scale canvases, she cites her desire to “fully immerse the viewer in each painting — to not only depict intimacy in a literal sense, but to repcreate its energy.”
 
“Among Silence” opened on April 7 and will hang through April 30. To learn more, visit Caldwell Snyder Gallery.
 
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Today, not nearly enough Americans realize that Cincinnati was once hailed as the “Queen City of the West”: It was one of the key centers of 19th-century America thanks to its superb transport links and its position on the edge of what was then the frontier.
 
Founded during this golden age, in 1881, was the Cincinnati Art Museum, which now surveys the city from its hilltop perch. At the “CAM” are more than 60,000 artworks spanning 6,000 years of world history, though out-of-towners are particularly intrigued by the Cincinnati Wing, which showcases the talents who originated or flourished here in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them were Frank Duveneck, Elizabeth Nourse, J.H. Twachtman, and Hiram Powers, as well as Maria Longworth Nichols, whose Rookwood Pottery featured prominently in America’s Arts & Crafts movement.
 

The Taft Museum of Art’s Music Room: Thomas Gainsborough’s “Edward and William Tomkinson” (c. 1784) is surrounded by two Frans Hals portraits (c. 1650); over the fireplace hangs Raimundo de Madrazo Garretta’s portrait of Charles Taft (1902). Photo: Tony Walsh.

 
Equally beloved is downtown’s Taft Museum of Art, a graceful villa (c. 1820) opened to the public in 1932 to showcase the historical masterworks acquired by Charles and Anna Taft. Now numbering 700, the collection ranges from Renaissance enamels to Chinese porcelains to paintings by Rembrandt and Whistler.
 
Not far from the Taft are other artistic attractions. Founded in 1939, the Contemporary Arts Center is a non-collecting presenter of innovative art from elsewhere, housed in a still-edgy 2003 building designed by the late Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid. Across the street, inside the multi-disciplinary Aronoff Center for the Arts is the Weston Art Gallery, which presents free contemporary exhibitions.
 

Façade of the Contemporary Arts Center, designed by Zaha Hadid. Photo: Roland Halbe.

 
Established as early as 1869, the Art Academy of Cincinnati teaches thousands annually, and hosts exhibitions of faculty and student art in its Pearlman and Chidlaw Galleries. Be sure to visit Cincinnati Art Galleries, which handles traditional, modern, and contemporary American and European paintings, Western and sporting art, and decorative arts, with a strong accent on Cincinnati and Midwestern material. Nearby is the 5th Street Gallery, a collaborative of artists working in diverse media. While downtown, be sure to check out the rotating displays of cutting-edge art in the public rooms of the 21c Museum Hotel, one in a growing chain of hip boutique hotels.
 
The charming neighborhood of Hyde Park offers a cluster of galleries to explore. Malton Gallery features work by nearly 100 contemporary artists, while Mary Ran Gallery handles the estates of important modernists, as well as 19th- and 20th-century American and European material and contemporary artists like Chuck Marshall. Miller Gallery shows work made by artists living now around the corner and around the world. Operated by the dean of Cincinnati’s dealers, Phyllis Weston Gallery emphasizes the cutting-edge, but look out for the superb landscapes of artists like Cole Carothers. Though admired locally for art and antiques, Treadway Gallery has built a national following by collaborating with John Toomey Gallery of Oak Park, Illinois, on auctions heavy on the Arts & Crafts period.
 
Several important venues are scattered around the region. Located just off Wooster Pike, Eisele Gallery of Fine Art is renowned for both historic paintings and contemporary ones by such talents as Howard Behrens, John Michael Carter, and MaryBeth Karaus. Rottinghaus Gallery, in the O’Bryonville area, has both historical and contemporary artists, with strength in those from Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. On Findlay Street, Carl Solway Gallery handles blue-chip contemporary art leaning toward the cutting-edge, and in the historically German neighborhood of Over the Rhine, Clay Street Press makes and sells hand-pulled prints. Established in 1890, the Cincinnati Art Club on Parkside has long offered camaraderie to its members, but also free exhibitions of contemporary art in its Wessel Gallery. In the evolving neighborhood of East Walnut Hills, Manifest is a force for change through art, and has developed expertise in exhibiting realist work by local talents.
 

Frank Duveneck (1848-1919), “Whistling Boy,” 1872, oil on canvas, 27 7/8 x 21 1/8 in. (c) Cincinnati Art Museum 2016

 
Greenwich House Gallery specializes in contemporary plein air painting, and has enjoyed particular success representing Camille Pissarro’s great-grandson Frederic Bonin Pissarro, who often paints Paris. One of the area’s oldest firms is The Miller Gallery, founded in 1960 by Gary Gleason and Laura Miller Gleason; their contemporary inventory encompasses local artists as well as international ones from as far away as Israel, with particular strength in sculpture.
 
On the campus of the University of Cincinnati are two galleries operated by its College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). Opened in 1971, Row House Gallery is located in the historic eastside neighborhood of Milford and offers an eclectic display of paintings and prints. Finally, in the northeastern suburb of Indian Hill, the Greenacres Foundation runs the Greenacres Arts Center, an elegant 1927 mansion set on 600 acres of woodland and farmland. Here everyone can learn about nature, horses, and art, including the 26 local artists who make up the Greenacres Artists Guild.
 

The Cincinnati Art Museum’s Façade

 
The past and present of murals are ably demonstrated in Cincinnati. The magnificent, jukebox-shaped Union Terminal no longer welcomes trains, but it does welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors to enjoy its newer role as the Cincinnati Museum Center. Inside are several institutions, including the Cincinnati History Museum, and also the remarkable murals created by Winold Reiss and Pierre Bourdelle. This tradition is alive and well in Cincinnati today thanks to ArtWork’s Mural Art program, which has created more than 100 murals in 36 neighborhoods over the past six years. Among their subjects are such famous Cincinnatians as singer James Brown, artist Tom Wesselmann, and the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who actually took her stage name from the Oakley neighborhood. In a similar vein, be sure to visit the American Sign Museum, which opened its permanent home in 2012 in the up-and-coming area of Camp Washington.
 

MaryBeth Karaus, “Lush Life,” oil, 48 x 24 in. (c) MaryBeth Karaus 2016

 
Finally, if you want to take home another souvenir of your Cincinnati visit, check the sale schedule at Cowan’s Auctions, which handles a broad range of American and European paintings and sculpture, military collectibles and political memorabilia, early photography, American Indian artifacts, and antique furniture.
 
This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.