In his short life, Noah Davis made a huge difference with his art. The Seattle-born artist seemed destined to be an artist from a young age; his older brother, the filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, said by the age of 17 Davis had his own studio. He studied for a time at the Cooper Union, but did not graduate and moved to Los Angeles in 2004, where he began working in the MOCA bookstore. He first exhibited his paintings in 2007, quickly gaining a reputation for his elegiac, soft and melancholy-infused portraits, dreamlike and always conveying an immense feeling of dignity and care towards his subjects.

In 2012, Davis was already well-established, and together with his wife, sculptor Karon Davis, founded the Underground Museum, in Arlington Heights. It became a cultural hub and meeting point for many artists, curators, musicians and makers, hosting screenings, events and exhibitions. The final exhibition at the Undeground Museum was dedicated to Davis’ paintings, curated by Helen Molesworth, in 2022, seven years after his death from cancer in 2015 aged just 32.

Davis’ work has had an enormous impact, not only for his emotive, original style of painting but the inventiveness and potency of the scenes he depicted. Merging abstract and realistic modes, he created something unique. Now at last audiences in the UK have the chance to see Davis’ works in this retrospective, which includes more than fifty works, bound by the desire to ‘represent the people around me’, as the artist once put it. Don’t miss it.

This exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts is an unprecedented and ambitious look at Brazilian modern art in the twentieth century, through more than 130 artworks by ten major Brazilian figures. Many of the works, on loan from both private and public collections, have never been shown in the UK before, revealing astonishing new connections and introducing a different perspective of modernism to many audiences.

Starting in the 1910s and winding up in the 1970s, this survey shows how Brazilian artists adapted global contemporary art trends in their own language and for their own purposes, informed by the tropical topographies, indigenous cultures and diverse specificities of Brazil. This plays out through celebrated names – such as Tarsila do Amaral, one of South America’s leading modern artists, known for her unique adaptation of techniques learned from the French painter Fernand Léger (her former teacher), and lucidly coloured urban scenes of cities like Sao Paulo.

There are also less familiar but internationally important figures, including self-taught indigenous artist Rubem Valentim, who hailed from Salvador, Bahia, and initially trained as a dentist. His vibratory works drew on the mythical values of afro-brazilian culture. In a 1976 manifesto he wrote passionately: “the Afro-Amerindian-Northeastern-Brazilian iconology is alive. It is an immense source—as big as Brazil—and we must drink in it with lucidity and great love.” We suggest you to the RA and do the same.