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In addition to being one of the most iconic musicians of the modern era, Dylan is a painter, a sculptor, a filmmaker and a best-selling author. He has been awarded America’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, the Pulitzer Prize, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize and France’s Officer de la Legion d’honneur. He has won an Oscar and eleven Grammy Awards. In 2016 Dylan became the first singer-songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and in 2019, Dylan’s first comprehensive solo museum exhibition opened in the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, Retrospectrum. Visited by over 100,000 visitors in the opening 3 months, it cemented him as one of the most important contemporary visual artists.
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Bob Dylan is one of America’s greatest cultural figures - a man from the remote provinces who had the inner strength to bring his creative vision to the whole world. Millions of people see themselves in Dylan’s music, poetry and art.
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DISCOVER ARTWORK
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Paintings
'The works conjure a feeling of transience, a journey from the metropolis to the natural world via road, bridge, rail and air. Together they present a panoramic vision of the American landscape from Dylan’s particular perspective. Dylan’s artwork invites the viewer to participate in a trip from city to country, night time to daytime, around the clock and the calendar. Through music, words and art, Dylan remains restlessly creative, going down the road with his eyes wide open. As he sang in 1965, ‘he not busy being born is busy dying.’
BILL FLANAGAN,2019 -
Sculpture
'I’ve been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country – where you could breathe it and smell it every day. And I’ve always worked with it in one form or another.’
Bob DylanGrowing up in an area known as the ‘Iron Range’, Dylan was surrounded by industry during his childhood. Reclaimed by the artist, the tools of the past now adorn gates, screens, furniture and wall hangings. With their repurposed parts given a new function, the Ironworks retain both the rawness and the history of their origins. The gates are carefully crafted, and contain symbols, jokes and allusions. They are decorative and they are functional. You can appreciate the gates as art, interpret them as metaphors, or you can simply close them to create peace and safety.
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Lyrics & Drawings
Mondo Scripto features some of Dylan’s most renowned lyrics, handwritten in pen on paper and each accompanied by a corresponding graphite drawing. They demonstrate a direct engagement between his visual art and his songwriting. Dylan’s lyrics can be oblique or straightforward, elevated or conversational. He is a master of the songwriter’s craft. Dylan returns to songs again and again – tweaking and reworking them. In live performance, he often presents a new version of a well-known song. For Mondo Scripto, some songs have had a few lines changed, while others have had verses completely rewritten. The pencil drawings continue this dialogue between past and present, fixed and fluid, conducted by an artist who changed the relationship between music and words forever.
‘He has made himself a prism through which the music, words, images and experiences that he has found meaningful have refracted in endless variation and become wholly his, and wholly ours – the work of an artist for the ages.’
Tom Piazza, Mondo Scripto
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‘Bob Dylan truly is one of the most influential cultural icons of our age. I do believe there is no one like him and there will be no one like him for a very long time. He has the incredible ability to continue to speak to audiences of all generations through the multiple disciplines of the arts. We are very proud to have worked and represented him as a visual artist for over 14 years. His drawings, paintings and ironworks are all celebrated in this incredible global touring museum exhibition that opened in China at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai.’
Paul Green, President & Founder, Halcyon Gallery
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EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHT
The US premiere of Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum at the Frost Art Museum in Miami will be on view from 30 November 2021. The exhibition will feature more than 180 of Dylan's paintings, drawings and sculptures, spanning six decades of his life, including his new series, titled 'Deep Focus'.
