Frieze Viewing Room 2020

For the 2020 online edition of Frieze Masters, we are delighted to dedicate our exhibition to a rarely celebrated art form: the eighteenth century baroque town plan.

The town plans of the eighteenth century reveal developments in urban cartography and reflect a new, planned, shape for the world’s great cities. These ‘new’ cities significantly restructured the historic medieval and Renaissance centres and greatly expanded the built-up area.

‘Baroque’ town planning in European cities answered the needs of the grandiosity demanded by the megalomania and triumphalism of the absolutist monarchies of the time, as well as the demographic changes that had to be faced.

The collection comprises massive wall maps of Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Madrid, New York, Paris, Rome, and Venice.