A MAJOR retrospective of one of Scotland’s most celebrated female artists is part of a “Wonder Woman” season during the Edinburgh Art Festival this year.
The exhibition of Dame Elizabeth Blackadder is one of three shows focusing on female innovators in the arts world.
Blackadder, who was born in Falkirk in 1931 and studied, then taught at Edinburgh College of Art, was the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy. In 2001, she was made the first female Artist Limner by HRH The Queen, a position within the Royal Household unique to Scotland.
In 2012, Blackadder was chosen to paint the official Christmas card of then First Minister Alex Salmond. Her work can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, London’s Tate Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and has also appeared on a set of Royal Mail stamps.
Dame Elizabeth Blackadder (1931-2021) – A Celebration will be staged at the Scottish Gallery which will also be launching a new monograph on Blackadder’s life and work by Duncan Macmillan.
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Blackadder painted largely in oil and watercolours but was also a skilled printmaker, working in a variety of printing techniques. Her sensitivity to her surroundings inspired still-life paintings in which she depicted objects in her studio often brought home from travels around Europe and Asia.
With work from her early to late career including printmaking, works on paper and major oils, the exhibition will also feature a new tapestry by Dovecot Studios.
Running alongside the Blackadder retrospective at the Scottish Gallery is Wendy Ramshaw – The Early Years (1939-2018). This show will reveal rare, early works from one of the world’s most innovative jewellers and sculptors of the modern era. Ramshaw’s work is represented in over 70 collections worldwide, encompassing designs for textiles, screens, gateways and sculpture.
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The third Wonder Woman exhibition celebrates Danish ceramist Bodil Manz, who is renowned for her slip cast porcelain cylinders, which she decorates in abstract or geometric patterns often on both sides. The effect is a pattern on the one side, offset by a shadow of a related pattern on the other.
Manz has had solo exhibitions worldwide and her work is represented in public collections all over the world. In 2007 she was awarded the Grand Prize at the World Ceramic Biennale, Korea, and was shortlisted as one of the finalists for the LOEWE craft prize in 2020.
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