Paul Nash, Tate Britain, London

Running to March 5

Nash became an official War Artist in 1917, expressing the waste of life through the violation of nature and creating some of the most iconic images of the First World War. On his return, he found being “war artist without a war” difficult. Poison gas had damaged his lungs, and he suffered a nervous collapse. During his recuperation in the early 1920s, his landscape paintings focused on Kent – including Dymchurch, where a series of works such as The Shore 1923 reflected on his war experience and evoked the bleak beauty of our coast. This is the largest exhibition of the artist’s work for a generation, and there’s still time to see his powerful, strange and beautiful work. More details

Robert Rauschenberg, Tate Modern

Running to April 2

Rauschenberg blazed a new trail for art. From his early engagement with pop to his works produced at the dawn of the 21st century, he moved between painting, sculpture, photography, print-making, technology, stage design and performance. Dance and performance were key drivers for Rauschenberg’s approach to art making, and form a central strand of the exhibition. On January 27 and 28, the Trisha Brown Dance Company will re-stage her influential work Set and Reset using the original set and costumes created by Rauschenberg. More details

Vanessa Bell, Dulwich Picture Gallery

February 8 to June 4

Widely acclaimed as a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group, Bell also stands on her own as a pivotal player in 20th century British art, inventing a new language of visual expression.

Her reputation as an artist has often been overshadowed by a preoccupation with her family life and romantic entanglements – in a supporting role to her sister, Virginia Woolf (who had a 10-year affair with Vita Sackville-West, who lived at Sissinghurst Castle), as wife to the art critic Clive Bell, and as muse and confidante to her lovers, friends and fellow artists such as Roger Fry and Duncan Grant.

At her farmhouse at Charleston, East Sussex, home was reimagined by Bell as a place of freedom and unbridled creativity, rather than conformity and constraint.

This exhibition demonstrates her artistic training was both rich and wide-ranging. She studied under teachers including Arthur Cope, Henry Tonks and John Singer Sargent, attending classes at both the Royal Academy and the Slade, and received encouragement from the influential painter Walter Sickert. More details

Revolution: Russian Art 1917 - 1932, Royal Academy of Arts

Running from February 11 to April 17

To commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution, there are several landmark exhibitions to note this year. The RA focuses on a momentous period from 1917, the year of the October Revolution, to 1932 – when Stalin began his violent suppression of the avant-garde. The exhibition comprises 200 works, including paintings, photography, sculpture, film, posters and porcelain by artists such as Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich and Tatlin alongside the socialist realism of Brodsky, Deineka and Samokhvalov. More details

America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, Royal Academy of Arts

Running February 25 to June 4

After the Great Depression, America entered the 1930s in flux – not even art was immune to the challenges facing the nation. Artists sought to capture those changes as urbanisation, industrialisation and immigration propelled the country towards becoming ‘the land of opportunity’. From depictions of Mid-West farmland to life in the city, the exhibition showcases 45 works by Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Pollock, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe and Philip Guston, alongside Grant Wood’s iconic painting American Gothic, which is being exhibited outside North America for the first time. More details

Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends, National Portrait Gallery

Running March 23 to June 18

The first exhibition devoted to the portraits of the British painter Howard Hodgkin. The pieces trace the evolution of the artist’s visual language and his engagement with friends in his circle. Peter Blake, Stephen Buckley, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney and Philip King are among the leading artists portrayed. The exhibition shows the breadth and nature of Hodgkin’s long-standing engagement with portraiture, exploring his contribution to our understanding of what constitutes a portrait, and examining key the themes of colour, memory, emotion, process and imagination. More details

Matisse in the Studio, Royal Academy of Arts

Running August 5 to November 12

The first exhibition to consider how Matisse’s personal collection of treasured objects was both subject matter and point of origin for his work. Drawn from south-east Asia, Africa, China and Europe, the eclectic collection includes a Buddhist statue from Thailand, Bamana figures from Mali and textiles from north Africa. These objects offered Matisse a point of departure for his work, which he continuously returned to throughout his career. More details

Jasper Johns, Royal Academy of Arts

Running September 23 to December 10

Johns has remained central to American contemporary art since his arrival in New York in the 1950s. At the forefront of a generation of artists who were responding to the dominance of abstract expressionism, including Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Rothko, Johns established a new vocabulary in painting. His treatment of iconography and appropriation of objects and symbols, such as his iconic flag and target works, made the familiar unfamiliar. More details

Dali/Duchamp @ Royal Academy of Arts

Running October 7 to January 2018

Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali are usually seen as opposites, yet they shared attitudes to art and life. Taking their friendship as its starting point, this exhibition demonstrates their aesthetic, philosophical and personal links, giving a fresh view of two of the 20th century’s most famous artists. A selection of 60 paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings and films connects the works of these two different, yet equally humorous, creative minds. More details

Cezanne Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Running October 26 to February 2018

Cezanne is one of the 19th century’s most influential artists. Generally categorised as a post-impressionist, his method of building form with colour, and his analytical approach to nature influenced the art of cubists, Fauvists and successive generations of artists. Matisse and Picasso called Cezanne “the father of us all”. The National Portrait Gallery brings together for the first time more than 50 of Cezanne’s portraits from collections across the world, including works never before on public display in the UK. More details