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This display introduces you to some of the best-loved artworks in the Tate collection

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Highlights

This display introduces you to some of the best-loved artworks in the Tate collection. Linked by themes such as colour, these rooms with highlight artworks from a range of countries, cultures and times.

Tate Modern
Natalie Bell Building Level 2

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1 room in Start Display

Alexander Calder, Mobile c.1932

By suspending forms that move with the flow of air, Calder revolutionised sculpture. Marcel Duchamp dubbed these works ‘mobiles’. Rather than a solid object of mass and weight, they continually redefine the space around them as they move. Calder’s subtle balance of form and colour resulted in works that suggest an animated version of paintings by friends such as Joan Miró. This very early example was acquired by Julian Trevelyan when he first got to know Calder in the early 1930s.

Gallery label, July 2008

1/6
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Bridget Riley, To a Summer’s Day 2 1980

Coloured stripes cross along a common band, reminiscent of twisting ribbons, to create a wave pattern. The choice of colours was intended to provoke an optical mix in the eye, with as much interaction as possible between colours. Light blue and yellow ochre form the basic pair of colours into which occasional threads of rose and violet are introduced to accentuate the warm and cold accents across the canvas. The title refers to William Shakespeare’s sonnet ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

Gallery label, October 2016

2/6
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Fiona Rae, Untitled (grey and brown) 1991

In the early 1990s Fiona Rae started painting big, busy paintings which feature a wide range of colours. Does this picture seem chaotic or messy at first glance? In fact, every element has been carefully considered by the artist. Look closer at the different kinds of marks that Rae has made with the paint. You’ll be able to spot thick brush strokes, dribbled liquid paint, and even patches smeared with a fingertip. You might also see recognisable shapes or images. Rae borrows the techniques and ideas of other artists and combines them with pictures and styles taken from popular culture. For the artist, ‘any one kind of painting language is ... as interesting as another’.

Gallery label, November 2021

3/6
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Henri Matisse, The Snail 1953

WHAT EFFECTS ARE CREATED BY PLACING DIFFERENT COLOURS NEXT TO EACH OTHER?
Henri Matisse loved making art. But when he was in his 60s ill health made it difficult for him to paint. Instead he started ‘painting with scissors’, cutting painted paper into shapes. He had assistants to help him in the studio. They moved the paper pieces following Matisse’s directions, pinning them to the walls of his studio. If you look closely at The Snail you can see small pin holes. Matisse has arranged the paper in the spiral shape of a snail’s shell, placing colours next to each other to create a vibrant effect: green and red, orange and blue, pink and yellow.
‘It is not enough to place colours, however beautiful, one beside the other; colours must also react on one another.’

Gallery label, July 2020

4/6
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Yves Klein, IKB 79 1959

In 1947, Klein began making monochrome paintings, which he associated with freedom from ideas of representation or personal expression. A decade later, he developed his trademark, patented colour, International Klein Blue (IKB). This colour, he believed, had a quality close to pure space, and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched. He described it as ‘a Blue in itself, disengaged from all functional justification’. Klein made around 200 monochrome paintings using IKB. He did not give titles to these works but, after his death, his widow assigned a number to each one.

Gallery label, November 2005

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