Home setting for folk art
Monday, January 11th, 2010
Folk art has long been popular in the United States but Britons have been slow to recognize its worth. The recently-opened Crane Gallery, housed in rooms above a row of shops in Sloane Street, is setting about putting things right. Own by Hungarian-born art dealer. Andres – whose own remarkable collection of naïve art is frequently loaned to exhibitions here and abroad – the gallery is decorated in the style
of a private home, complete with sitting-rooms and bedroom. Small-print wallpapers provide charming backgrounds for pictures and an open fire offers a glowing welcome in the dinning-room.
Naïve art flourished between the mid-eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century and never pretended to be anything else. Yet as a contemporary record of everyday life, (more…)