Monet’s Italian paintings: Just in time to recognize the 100th anniversary of the death of one of the 20th century’s most influential painters, the de Young Museum in San Francisco is presenting “Monet and Venice.” Opening Saturday and continuing through July 26, the exhibition features more than 20 of the 37 paintings Claude Monet (1840-1926) created on a 1908 trip to the famed Italian canal city with his wife Alice. Initially planning a two-week visit, Monet, so taken with Venice’s remarkable air, light and water, stayed for three months. At age 68, he painted dozens of canvases, often depicting the same subject (the Grand Canal and numerous palaces) but at different times of day.
In addition to Monet’s paintings of Venice, the exhibition includes a few of his famous water lilies, along with thematically related paintings by his predecessors (particularly Giovanni Antonio Canal, aka Canaletto, 1697-1768) and contemporaries such as Paul Signac, John Singer Sargent, Paul Signac, and J.M.W. Turner.
Exhibit co-curator Melissa E. Buron, chief curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum and former director of curatorial affairs of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, described how Monet painted the Venice works during a time when he was thinking of abandoning his water lilies. She called the Italy trip a catalyst for his later work, adding, that, without Venice, “Monet’s career and legacy would be different.” A Monet quote painted on one gallery wall says, “My trip to Venice has had the advantage of making me see my [water lily] canvases with a better eye.”
“Monet and Venice” is co-curated by Lisa Small, senior curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum, which contributed three paintings to the exhibition. Buron said she hopes the exhibit would provide “a fresh look at an artist many people feel they know very well.”
“Monet and Venice” runs March 21 through July 26 at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. Admission is $40-$65 general; $37 for seniors; $31 for students with ID; $25 for ages 6 to 17; free for ages 5 and under. Visit famsf.org.
Freebie of the week: Saturday is Rosie the Riveter Day, a nationwide holiday commemorating women who took jobs in munitions factories and naval shipyards to replace the men who fought in World War II. The idea of gender-specific jobs is now largely outdated, of course, and the Rosie the Riveter campaign helped launch the economic/labor evolution that has made it so. The campaign boasts the famed “We Can Do It” poster depicting a muscle-clinching woman created by J. Howard Miller, which had a relatively un-observed presence during World War II but was circulated more widely during the 1980s, not as a reference to patriotism, but as a symbol of feminism.
The caricature of Rosie the Riveter was born not in an illustration but a 1942 song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. Regardless of the poster, Rosie the Riveter Day is a reminder of the women who answered the call for their country in a time of great need, a time when the U.S. was a much more unified country than it is today. The holiday is also a big deal for the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, which will host a ceremony running from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the park, 1414 Harbour Way South. There will be a variety of music, films and historical displays, and a chance to reflect on an icon that says an awful lot about America.
“Rosie the Riveter represents more than a moment in history, she represents the power of ordinary people to rise to extraordinary challenges,” said Sarah Pritchard, executive director of Rosie the Riveter Trust. “National Rosie the Riveter Day is a chance to honor the legacy of our home front heroes and celebrate the profound social change sparked right here in Richmond.” Visit rosietheriveter.org.
Head-bangers and mariachi: While we haven’t checked the band’s claim that it’s the one, and only one, band in existence that marries the musical styles of metal and mariachi, we are happy to report that the creatively named Metalachi will be barnstorming the Bay Area this weekend. The five-member Los Angeles-based band featuring metal-loving, classically-trained mariachi musicians have been plying their craft for more than a decade, performing at events and venues ranging from county fairs and intimate clubs to festivals and rock/metal cruises. Their set list touches on metal favorites — from Metallica, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses and Ozzy Osbourne, to GWAR and Rob Zombie — and the group reportedly does a killer cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Fronted by vocalist Vega De La Rockha and featuring violinist Queen Kyla, Metalachi swoops into the Bay Area for a trio of gigs this weekend: 8 p.m. Thursday at the Cornerstone in Berkeley ($30, cornerstoneberkeley.com); 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz ($28.82, catalystclub.com); and 7 p.m. Saturday at The Ritz in San Jose ($19, theritzsanjose.com).
A welcome reappearance: Augustin Hadelich, a supremely gifted, Grammy-winning violinist of German-Italian heritage now on the Yale School of Music faculty, has made indelible impressions in the Bay Area several times, beginning with his debut performance with the San Francisco Symphony in 2013 with the Beethoven Violin Concerto and including a memorable return in June 2021 to play the orchestra’s first post-pandemic public concert under Esa-Pekka Salonen.
He makes his long overdue recital debut with San Francisco Performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Herbst Theatre, partnering with Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi. Their program opens with the “Recit du Chant” by De Grigny, as arranged by Piemontesi, and includes the pianist’s arrangement of Rameau’s “La Boucon,” the violin sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc and César Franck and Kurtág’s “Tre Pezzi.”
Tickets, $65-$100, are available at sfperformances.org.
The art of resistance: California Symphony music director Donato Cabrera has curated “Northern Lights” concerts he’s leading at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek this weekend, and they’re all about standing up to bullying and brutality in Northern Europe. “Art created in response to political and religious oppression has been, throughout history, a most effective tool and a lasting memorial,” the conductor notes.
He opens with “Stille Musik” by Valentin Silvestrov, a Ukrainian composer who left for Berlin after the Russian invasion, a three-movement work that premiered in 2002 that one critic praised as positively dripping with “fin de siécle world weariness.” Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s masterwork, “Tabula Rasa,” is next up, in honor of its creator’s 90th birthday year. The double concerto for two violins will be played by Jennifer Cho and Sam Weiser, concertmaster and assistant concertmaster respectively with the orchestra. The program concludes with Finland’s greatest composer Jean Sibelius’ Second Symphony, written in 1901-02 and long associated with the country’s struggle to end Russian domination, which ended with its declaration of independence in 1917.
Performances are 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday in the Lesher’s Hofmann Theatre. Find tickets, $25-$110, at californiasymphony.org.
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