High spirits

‘The Roundhouse of International Spirits’: Arp, Benazzi, Bissier, Nicholson, Richter, Tobey, Valenti in the Ticino
Kettle’s Yard, Castle Street, Cambridge, until 15 March

‘I turned it into a palace’: Sir Sydney Cockerell and the Fitzwilliam Museum
Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, until 17 March

The Ticino is the Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland, home to Lakes Lugano and Maggiore. In the early 1960s, it played host to a number of artists who were drawn by its natural beauty and the presence of other artists and intellectuals. It is the focus and reason for this immensely enjoyable exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, which is well worth making a trip through the snow to see.

It opens with a large and splendid carved board relief by Ben Nicholson entitled ‘February 1960 (ice-off-blue)’. Composed of brown and blue-white slanting rectangles, it’s perfect for a day of snow and slush (the conditions when I visited) and is all about the organisation of movements, energies and textures, balances and disturbances, and has echoes of landscape in its architecture. Opposite hang a group of four Nicholson drawings and etchings, the familiar jug-and-bottle department varying the architecture, with the expected breathtaking brilliance of line. In between is an organic-looking sculpture by Raffael Benazzi, like a boxing glove or vast seed made of elmwood, containing a miniature iron obelisk.

Then comes a whole group of Italo Valenti collages, which reproduce poorly, so my advance impressions from the substantial catalogue (£10.95 in paperback) had not prepared me for their subtle and smouldering grandeur. The same formal arrangements also work in oil, as can be seen from the delicious little painting ‘Oleggio’ (1967), simply black and grey with a pulse of green. Then the visitor encounters Julius Bissier, a German artist who proves to be the show’s major revelation.