In
1996, the British Council - a government-funded body
whose principal purpose is to promote British art and
culture abroad - agreed to organise a touring exhibition
of the work of Madame Yevonde. This consisted of no
fewer than 63 colour images covering every aspect of
her work, printed straight from the original VIVEX colour
separation plates in the archive. The exhibition first
toured the Continent of South America, visiting numerous
cities in Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico
and Brazil. It was greeted everywhere with the utmost
enthusiasm, nowhere more so than in Brazil, where over
75,000 people flocked to see it in the five cities which
played host to the show.
On
its return from South America, the exhibition spent
three months in Munich, where the reception was no less
enthusiastic than it had been in Brazil. This venue
was then followed by a tour of Spain, taking in Santiago
de Compostela, Jerez, Seville, Teneriffe and Madrid,
where the tour ended in late February of this year.
The next scheduled venue is Venice, where it is due
to open in the first week of May and remain for ten
weeks, before moving on to Innsbruck in Austria. In
November of this year, it starts a six-month tour of
Poland, followed shortly after by a tour of Slovakia.
Negotiations are currently under way for a tour of Scandinavia
and the Baltic States, and a request has also been received
from Russia. This exhibition has been a resounding success
from the very beginning, and it still has plenty of
life left in it, with the whole of the Far East and
Australasia still to be explored. However, it will not
be touring the United States, as the British Council
has no offices whatsoever there. It is therefore left
to the Yevonde Portrait Archive to bring Madame Yevonde's
work to the people of America.
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