The healing presence of art - the 20th century

13 February 2013

Medicine in literature

19.00-20.15

Location: Wellcome Library

Free

Richard Cork takes his fascinating exploration of art in hospitals into the modern period, starting with Edvard Munch's treatment in a Copenhagen sanatorium and then travelling to London, where Cayley Robinson painted four monumental images at Middlesex Hospital during the Great War. Over in Mexico, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera produced astonishing works in hospitals, and in Devon Barbara Hepworth was inspired by the surgeons who operated on her daughter. Fernand Leger celebrated the conclusion of the Second World War by making paintings and sculpture for a new hospital in Normandy. And Chagall designed a dramatic series of stained-glass windows for a Medical Centre in Jerusalem. Cork ends his lecture by coming to London, where the great Russian sculptor Naum Gabo installed a beautiful revolving bronze Fountain in the garden of St Thomas's Hospital, opposite Big Ben.

Bookings are limited to two per person. Any additional bookings will be cancelled.

Tickets can be booked on the Wellcome Collection website.

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