Ten stars - that is the Globe verdict on two intimate exhibitions which welcome back art lovers to the Tate Gallery in Liverpool after its enforced closure due to the pandemic.
Five stars goes to Lucian Freud: Real Lives, the first major presentation of the artist's work in the North West in three decades.
It covers a career spanning 60 years and is a rare opportunity to see all of the Freud works in the Tate collection together.
The artist's sitters are the focus as on display are a concentrated series of portraits of those he regularly captured over time, including his first wife Kitty Garman and performance artist Leigh Bowery.
Berlin-born Freud was deeply private and it is through his portraits of the people closest to him that we attempt to get to know him.
In this way, Lucian Freud: Real Lives illuminates the artist's stylistic development into a master of modern portraiture, through paintings, etchings, and photographs.
Quotes from this controversial artist - who died at the age of 88 - adorn the walls and give lucid insights into the stories, inspirations and history behind this much-awaited, must-see collection curated by Tate's assistant curator Laura Brunu.
One signiftcant quote from Freud reveals: ''I wanted to create drama in my pictues which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning.
''The simplest human gestures tell stories.''
And Freud clearly was a storyteller.
Louise Bourgeois in Focus also recieves a five star rating becaue it is full of beautiful, powerful ánd poignant surprises. Bourgeois is one of the most important figures in modern and contemporary art.
This free display - also on the gallery's second floor - brings together works from the Paris-born artist's seventy-year career. She died at the age of 98 leaving a remarkable legacy of art.
Bourgeois' work is highly biographical and ranges from large-scale sculpture and installation to painting and printmaking focusing on themes of childhood, birth, loss , motherhood and gender identity.
Oustanding pieces include a giant spider and a dual-meanng sculpture about childbirth called Nature Study.
The colour red recurs throughout her wide ranging, deeply personal work where she would use red to refer to the conditions of human emotion - especially her own. We see the visual poetry in her work and explorations of her almost obsessive attention to expressive pairs of hands.
A large piece called Cell XIV consists of a cage-like structure containg a red fabric sculpture of three faces that are stitched together. Fear and pain - physical and emotional - are represented. It is striking, disturbing and - like so much of her diverse work - utterly unforgettable.
Glove Verdict
Two Enigmatic Iconic Artists - Two Stunning Intimate Exhbitions
5 Stars - Lucian Freud (£10)
5 Stars - Louis Bourgeois in The Artist Room (Free)
Until January 16, 2022
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