Culture The demimonde at the V&A launch party last month for Fragile Beauty , Sir Elton John’s exhibition of his collection of photographs, was a who’s who of famous faces. Arguably more interesting was who wasn’t there. And so to Denise De La Rue, one of the singer’s favourite artists, who he’s been collecting for years and whose picture of the matador Juan Pablo Sanchez he sold at a Christie’s sale of his private collection in February.
De La Rue was in Madrid launching a show of her own — at the decadent Liria Palace, no less, home of the Duke of Alba. Called a new world, it is the first to have been held inside the palace’s hallowed halls, and now takes pride of place in the garden’s brand-new art annexe until July 31. That is where I meet De La Rue, who shows me around her spectacular show.
Too modest to boast of her famous fans (a quick Google alone reveals them), she prefers instead to speak about more historic patrons and her current hosts: the Albas. Among Spain’s most prolific artistic patrons for centuries, their collection includes works by Goya and Velásquez, and furniture created for Napoleon III. De La Rue is obsessed with history.
Her new show mines inspiration from “new worlds” across history, including the archival letters of Christopher Columbus, which are housed in the Liria library. The artist has transposed marginalia from the explorer’s note- books onto 3D replicas of objects from the Apollo 11 rocket. One of the most strikin.
