JOST A MON

I lived in Islington for years, rambled around Canonbury and Barnsbury, but in all that time didn't venture into the Estorick Collection. Why is that? Well, one answer is that I didn't notice the building. The other is that Italian modern art didn't hold much appeal to me all those years ago. It's only more recently, when I learned about the influence the Futurists had on the Russian avant-garde that I have begun to pay a bit more attention to it.

So the other day I ventured back into those old stomping grounds. The museum is on the northern side of Canonbury Square in a Georgian building that was called Northampton Lodge. It has some of the finest works of the Italian moderne in the UK - di Chirico, Boccioni, Sironi, Modigliani and Severini. I took some pictures. A woman at the front desk said I could do so without flash; another woman sitting next to her laughed when she heard my question. Later, when I was leaving, I asked if the displays were rotated frequently. Surely the Estoricks had more than one di Chirico? (It turns out that some of the paintings are replaced every four months or so. But the Estorick is planning a di Chirico exhibition in 2014, so I should be able to catch more of his oeuvre then.) The woman laughed again.