In parallel with the exhibition J’ADORE LES FEMMES, the MACT/CACT is also paying a tribute to the British artist IVOR GEORGE SEXTON. Class of 1959, Sexton started out on his career in the field of art working as an illustrator, transforming his executive skills into artistic products, then in due course transforming his expressive means into therapeutic practice. It is from his experience in the course of psychiatric convalescence that Sexton developed – and set free – all the issues related to his ego and his existential experience. His portraiture in particular became the cathartic, liberating instrument in which real life and inner truth are woven together in an analytical exchange with the other, and where he thus developed his works, in the course of an intimate narrative process.

From a standpoint of language, the artist employs the stylistic models of Anglo-Saxon painting, whose working base remains the illustrative approach, although without neglecting the traditions of the English visual arts, with evident references to British Pop Art. At the same time, Sexton uses a direct symbolism to involve typically Renaissance mechanisms to insert some strikingly metaphorical elements into his works of painting, giving his narrative that soft touch that sets his image free of its formal constrictions.

Working practically exclusively on painting male nudes and portraits, Sexton upsets his relationship with the masculine world, almost with a hint of fastidiousness, restoring to it that subtle sensitivity that is often found to be lacking in an age that is experiencing an upsurge of machismo. His approach – also here in a perspective of a link to the past – is once again reminiscent of the sensitive softness of the male portraits of a Lotto or a Bronzino or, a little later, of a Greco, as also of many other artists who worked in the era of the Renaissance.

In this sense, the exhibition we are dedicating to Ivor George Sexton pairs very well with the reflections to be sought out in the exhibition J’ADORE LES FEMMES, where the limits between masculine and feminine set out to transcend the sphere of mere sexuality or gender.

All the works on show here come from a private Swiss collection. The exhibition will remain open to the public until August 18th 2024.

Mario Casanova, Tel Aviv, 2024.
Translation from Italian by Pete Kercher

Ivor George Sexton (1959), Boys don’t play with dolls, 2021. Acrylic on board, signed and dated “IS MMXXI” lower left, 35.5 x 28 cm. Private collection, Switzerland.