Exhibition: Visions and Visionaries

Visions and Visionaries brings together the romantic pre-Raphaelites and modern-day conceptual artists in this new exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery. From Rossetti, Millais and Burne-Jones to Perry, Latham and Pecchioli, join the dreamers where reality meets imagination.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, founders of the pre-Raphaelite movement, created surreal interpretations of historical and religious scenes, blending reality with their own imagining of fairy tales and myths. Their works Lorenzo and Isabella and Study for Saint Joachim for The Girlhood of the Virgin Mary feature alongside those of other pre-eminent nineteenth-century artists Sir John Gilbert (The Enchanted Forest), Edward Burne-Jones (St Agnes and St Dorothy) and a series of 25 drawings by William Blake illustrating poems by Thomas Gray.

The exhibition creates a narrative of the Visionary movement from the artists who laid the foundations of the genre, to the avant-garde generation and contemporary artists that drew from these works and were inspired to find new forms in their art. Four works by the pioneer of British conceptual art, John Latham, including the never-before displayed Untitled, 1980, Marcello Pecchioli’s Alien Priest stained glass panel and Turner-prize winner Grayson Perry’s At Woodbury Park bring this exhibition up to the present day and celebrate the forging of their order in the sweep of art history in which fable and realism merge.

Visions and Visionaries is a rare opportunity to see artwork from the Guildhall Art Gallery collection in a new light alongside loans from the Sir Denis Mahon Charitable Trust, Flat Time House, and Bologna-based, Association Age of Future.