Monday, April 26, 2010

Edouard MANET



Edouard Manet (23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French painter. One of the first nineteenth century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. His early masterworks "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" and "Olympia" engendered great controversy, and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism—today these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Kazimir MALEVICH



Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (23 February 1878 – 15 May 1935) was a painter and art theoretician of Polish descendence, pioneer of geometric abstract art and one of the most important members of the Russian avant-garde and Suprematist movement.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Rene MAGRITTE



René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He is famous for a number of witty and amusing images.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

L S LOWRY



Laurence Stephen Lowry (1 November 1887–23 February 1976) was an English artist born on Barrett Street, Stretford, near Manchester, Lancashire. Many of his drawings and paintings depict Salford and surrounding areas, including Pendlebury where he lived and worked for over forty years at 117 Station Road, opposite St. Mark's RC Church.

Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of northern England during the early 20th century. He had a distinctive style of painting and is best known for urban landscapes peopled with many human figures (matchstick men). He tended to paint these in drab colours. He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits, and the secret 'marionette' works (the latter only found after his death).

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Sol LE WITT

Sol LeWitt (9 September 1928 - 8 April 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements including conceptual art and minimalism. His media were predominantly painting, drawing, and sculpture.



Sol LeWitt’s frequent use of open, modular structures originate from the cube, a form that influenced the artist’s thinking from the time that he first became an artist. Sol LeWitt: Structures includes early Wall Structures and three Serial Projects from the 1960s; four Incomplete Open Cubes from the 1970s; numerous painted white wood pieces from the 1980s: Hexagon, Form Derived from a Cube, Structure with Three Towers, among others as well as Maquettes for Concrete Block Structures from the late 1990s.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Leonardo DA VINCI



Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was a Tuscan polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.

Born at Vinci in the region of Florence, the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan where several of his major works were created. He also worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home given him by King François I.

Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" or universal genius, a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Fernand LEGER



Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (4 February 1881 – 17 August 1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker.

Léger wrote in 1945 that "the object in modern painting must become the main character and overthrow the subject. If, in turn, the human form becomes an object, it can considerably liberate possibilities for the modern artist." As the first painter to take as his idiom the imagery of the machine age, and to make the objects of consumer society the subjects of his paintings, Léger has been called a progenitor of Pop Art.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Paul KLEE

Paul Klee (18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss painter of German nationality. His highly individual style was influenced by many different art trends, including Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.



Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually mastered color theory, and wrote extensively about it. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes child-like perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Wassily KANDINSKY


Wassily Kandinsky (16 December 1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist and arguably one of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Jasper JOHNS



Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia) is an American contemporary artist who primarily works in painting and printmaking.

He is best known for his painting Flag (1954-55), which he painted after having a dream of the American flag. His work is often described as a Neo-Dadaist, as opposed to pop art, even though his subject matter often includes images and objects from popular culture. However, many compilations on pop art include Jasper Johns as a pop artist because of his artistic use of classical iconography.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Jean INGRES



Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he thought of himself as a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was his portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Edward HOPPER



Edward Hopper (22 July 1882 – 15 May 1967) was an American painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Hans HOLBEIN

Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497– before 29 November 1543) was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known for his numerous portraits and his woodcut series of the Dance of Death, and is widely considered one of the finest portraitists of the Early Modern Period.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Hans HOFMANN



Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German abstract expressionist painter. He was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880 the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. In 1932 he immigrated to the United States, where he resided until the end of his life.

Hofmann's work is distinguished by "a rigorous concern with pictorial structure, spatial illusion, and color relationships." Hofmann believed that abstract art was a way to get at what was really important. He famously stated that "the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

David HOCKNEY



David Hockney, CH, RA, (born 9 July 1937) is an English artist, based in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, although he also maintains a base in London. An important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Richard HAMILTON



Richard Hamilton (born February 24, 1922) is an English painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage titled Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the first works of Pop Art. The Tate Gallery now has a comprehensive collection of Hamilton's work from across his career.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Mathias GRUNEWALD

Matthias Grünewald (c. 1470 – 31 August 1528), was an important German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.



Only ten paintings (several consisting of many panels) and thirty-five drawings survive, all religious, although many others were lost at sea in the Baltic on their way to Sweden as war booty.

His reputation was obscured until the late nineteenth century, and many of his paintings attributed to Albrecht Dürer, who is now seen as his stylistic antithesis. His largest and most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, Alsace (now in France).

Friday, April 2, 2010

Juan GRIS



Juan Gris (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life. His works are closely connected to the emergence of an innovative artistic genre — Cubism.

Gris articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925. He delivered his definitive lecture, Des possibilités de la peinture, at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major Gris exhibitions took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923, and at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Francisco GOYA



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Aragonese Spanish painter and printmaker.

Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history. He has been regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns. The subversive and subjective element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso.

Many of Goya's works are on display in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.