Alina 2018-08-13 14:05:00 painters biographies
French painter Pierre-Paul Prud'hon had a career that spanned over 40 years and was a master in the female form, yet his reputation is limited. He was greatly influenced by Correggio's soft forms and gentle light. He gained the favor of Napoleon and painted both of his wives. He is probably most famous for his painting Crucifixion which now hangs in the Louvre.
Alina 2018-08-12 14:05:00 painters biographies
Sir Henry Raeburn was a Scottish painter and important member of Edinburgh society from the late 18th to early 19th century. In 1771, he apprenticed a goldsmith and in 1775 studied briefly with an Edinburgh protrait painter. He soon began his own work, starting with miniature painting and progressing to full-scale portraits. His earlist known work, a portrait of George Chalmers (1776) suggested his lack of formal training through its incorrect perspective. By the late 1790s his skill had improved immensely and he produced his most famous work, a portrait of Sir John Sinclair, in 1794. In 1812 he was elected president of the Edinburgh Society of Artists and was knighted in 1822.
Alina 2018-08-11 14:05:00 painters biographies
American artist Robert Rauschenberg is best known for paving the way for pop art of the 1960's with fellow artist Jasper John by making use of non-traditional materials and questioning the distinction between art and everyday objects. He worked as a costume and stage designer in New York City before moving to painting, sculpture, music and collage to produce his work.
American artist. Milton Ernst Rauschenberg was born on October 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute (1946–7), the Académie Julien, Paris (1947), and with Josef Albers and John Cage at Black Mountain College, North Carolina (1948–50).
Traveling widely, he was based in New York City from 1950, where he and Jasper Johns paved the way for pop art of the 1960s. He worked with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, New York, as costume and stage designer (1955–64).
An imaginative and eclectic artist, he used a mix of sculpture and paint in works he called ‘combines’, as seen in The Bed (1955). From the late 1950s he incorporated sound and motors in his work, such as Broadcast (1959), and silk-screen transfers, as in Flush (1964).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he experimented with collage and new ways to transfer photographs. In 1997 the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York City, staged a major exhibition of his works, showcasing the breadth and beauty of his work and its influence over the second half of the century.
Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg died on May 12, 2008 in Lee County, Florida.
Alina 2018-08-10 14:05:00 painters biographies
In 1915, Man Ray met French artist Marcel Duchamp, and together they collaborated on many inventions and formed the New York group of Dada artists. In 1921, Ray moved to Paris and became associated with the Parisian Dada and Surrealist circles of artists and writers. His experiments with photography included rediscovering how to make "camera-less" pictures, which he called rayographs.
Born Emmanuel Rudnitzky, visionary artist Man Ray was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father worked as a tailor. The family moved to Brooklyn when Ray was a young child. From an early year, Ray showed great artistic ability. After finishing high school in 1908, he followed his passion for art; he studied drawing with Robert Henri at the Ferrer Center, and frequented Alfred Stieglitz's gallery 291. It later became apparent that Ray had been influenced by Stieglitz's photographs. He utilized a similar style, snapping images that provided an unvarnished look at the subject.
Ray also found inspiration at the Armory Show of 1913, which featured the works of Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and Marcel Duchamp. That same year, he moved to a burgeoning art colony in Ridgefield, New Jersey. His work was also evolving. After experimenting with a Cubist style of painting, he moved toward abstraction.
In 1914, Ray married Belgian poet Adon Lacroix, but their union fell apart after a few years. He made a more lasting friendship around this time, becoming close to fellow artist Marcel Duchamp.
Along with Duchamp and Francis Picabia, Ray became a leading figure in the Dada movement in New York. Dadaism, which takes its name from the French nickname for a rocking horse, challenged existing notions of art and literature, and encouraged spontaneity. One of Ray's famous works from this time was "The Gift," a sculpture that incorporated two found objects. He glued tacks to the work surface of an iron to create the piece.
In 1921, Ray moved to Paris. There, he continued to be a part of the artistic avant garde, rubbing elbows with such famous figures as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. Ray became famous for his portraits of his artistic and literary associates. He also developed a thriving career as a fashion photographer, taking pictures for such magazines as Vogue. These commercial endeavors supported his fine art efforts. A photographic innovator, Ray discovered a new way to create interesting images by accident in his darkroom. Called "Rayographs," these photos were made by placing and manipulating objects on pieces of photosensitive paper.
One of Ray's other famous works from this time period was 1924's "Violin d'Ingres." This modified photograph features the bare back of his lover, a performer named Kiki, styled after a painting by neoclassical French artist Jean August Dominique Ingres. In a humorous twist, Ray added to two black shapes to make her back look like a musical instrument. He also explored the artistic possibilities of film, creating such now classic Surrealistic works as L'Etoile de Mer (1928). Around this time, Ray also experimented with a technique called the Sabatier effect, or solarization, which adds a silvery, ghostly quality to the image.
Ray soon found another muse, Lee Miller, and featured her in his work. A cut-out of her eye is featured on the 1932 found-object sculpture "Object to Be Destroyed," and her lips fill the sky of "Observatory Time" (1936). In 1940, Ray fled the war in Europe and moved to California. He married model and dancer Juliet Browner the following year, in a unique double ceremony with artist Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.
Returning to Paris in 1951, Ray continued to explore different artistic media. He focused much of his energy on painting and sculpture. Branching out in a new direction, Ray began writing his memoir. The project took more than a decade to complete, and his autobiography, Self Portrait, was finally published in 1965.
In his final years, Man Ray continued to exhibit his art, with shows in New York, London, Paris and other cities in the years before his death. He passed away on November 18, 1976, in his beloved Paris. He was 86 years old. His innovative works can be found on display in museums around the world, and he is remembered for his artistic wit and originality. As friend Marcel Duchamp once said, "It was his achievement to treat the camera as he treated the paint brush, as a mere instrument at the service of the mind."
Alina 2018-08-09 14:05:00 painters biographies
Rembrandt was a 17th century painter and etcher whose work came to dominate what has since been named the Dutch Golden Age. One of the most revered artists of all time, Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are seen in his portraits of his contemporaries, illustrations of biblical scenes and self-portraits as well as his innovative etchings and use of shadow and light.
Born in Leiden, Netherlands in 1606, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn attended elementary school from 1612 to 1616 and then attended the Latin School in Leiden, where he partook in biblical studies and lessons on the classics. It is unclear whether Rembrandt completed his studies at the Latin School, but one account claims that he was removed from school early and sent to be trained as a painter at his own request.
From 1620 to either 1624 or 1625, Rembrandt trained as an artist under two masters. His first was painter Jacob van Swanenburgh (1571–1638), with whom he studied for about three years. Under van Swanenburgh, Rembrandt would have learned basic artistic skills. Van Swanenburgh specialized in scenes of hell and the underworld, and his ability to paint fire and the way its light reflects on surrounding objects was likely an influence on Rembrandt’s later work. Rembrandt's second teacher was Amsterdam’s Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), who was a well-known history painter and likely helped Rembrandt master the genre, which included placing figures from biblical, historical and allegorical scenes in complex settings.
In 1625, Rembrandt settled back in Leiden, now a master in his own right, and over the next six years he laid the foundations for his life's work. It was during this time that Lastman's influence was most noticeable, as in several instances Rembrandt deconstructed his former master's compositions and reassembled them into his own, a practice carried on by Rembrandt's own pupils later on. Rembrandt’s paintings created at this time were generally small but rich in detail; religious and allegorical themes were prominent. Rembrandt also worked on his first etchings (1626) in Leiden, and his eventual international fame would rely on the widespread dissemination of these works. Diverging from his contemporaries, Rembrandt endowed his etchings with a painterly quality achieved through suggestive handling of light and dark.
Rembrandt's style soon took an innovative turn involving his use of light. His new style left large areas of his paintings obscured in shadow; through his interpretation, illumination grew rapidly weaker as it extended into the painting, creating spots of brightness and pockets of deep darkness. In this vein, in 1629 Rembrandt completed Judas Repentant and Returning the Pieces of Silver, among others, works that further evidence his interest in the handling of light. Another example is his Peter and Paul Disputing (1628), in which the painting’s lighted elements are clustered together and surrounded by clusters of darker tones, drawing the viewer's eye to a general focal point before moving in to observe the details within.
Starting in 1628, Rembrandt took on students, and over the years his fame attracted many young artists seeking to learn at his side. Only an estimate of the number of his pupils can be made, since official registers of trainees have been lost, but it is believed that over the course of his career he had fifty or so students.
Rembrandt began to do business in 1631 with Hendrick Uylenburgh, an Amsterdam entrepreneur who had a workshop that created portraits and restored paintings, among other activities. Rembrandt either commuted from Leiden to Amsterdam or moved to Amsterdam at this stage. He began to paint dramatic, large-scale biblical and mythological scenes using his high-contrast method of light and dark, such as The Blinding of Samson (1636) and Danaë (1636). (Despite his predilection for biblical imagery, it is unknown if Rembrandt belonged to any religious community.)
In Amsterdam, he also painted numerous commissioned portraits with the help of various assistants in Uylenburgh’s shop. Rembrandt produced much more energetic works than those created by the portrait artists so prevalent in Amsterdam at the time, and he received numerous commissions despite his questionable ability to capture the likeness of his subject. To this point, Constantijn Huygens, a Dutch diplomat, mocked a portrait Rembrandt had done of one of his friends for its lack of verisimilitude, and Rembrandt's self-portraitures contained noticeable physiognomic differences from one image to the next.
In the 10 years following the unveiling of The Night Watch, Rembrandt's overall artistic output diminished drastically and he produced no painted portraits; either he received no portrait commissions or he stopped accepting such commissions. Speculation about what happened after The Night Watch has contributed to the "Rembrandt myth," according to which the artist became largely misunderstood and was ignored. Often blamed for Rembrandt's supposed downfall are the death of his wife and the supposed rejection of The Night Watch by those who commissioned it. But modern research has found no evidence that the painting was rejected or that Rembrandt experienced deep devastation upon his wife's death. There is also no evidence that he was ever "ignored," although he was often the target of his contemporary critics' barbs.
It has been put forth that Rembrandt's crisis may have been an artistic one, that he had seen his methods stretched to their practical limits. And the variations in his few paintings from 1642 to 1652—the period that marks the beginning of what is usually referred to as Rembrandt's "late style"—might be seen as a sign that he was searching for a new way forward.
Alina 2018-08-08 14:05:00 painters biographies
Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), on September 25, 1903, and immigrated to the United States with his family in his youth. In the mid-20th century, he belonged to a circle of New York-based artists (also including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock) who became known as the Abstract Expressionists. His signature works, large-scale paintings of luminous colored rectangles, used simplified means to evoke emotional responses. Rothko committed suicide on February 25, 1970.
Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), on September 25, 1903. He was the fourth child of Jacob Rothkowitz, a pharmacist by trade, and Anna (née Goldin) Rothkowitz. The family immigrated to the United States when Rothko was 10 years old, resettling in Portland, Oregon.
Rothko excelled at academics and graduated from Portland's Lincoln High School in 1921. He attended Yale University, studying both the liberal arts and the sciences until he left without graduating in 1923. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Art Students League. In 1929 Rothko started teaching at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center.
In 1933, Rothko's art was shown in one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Art in Portland and the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York. During the 1930s, Rothko also exhibited with a group of modern artists who called themselves "The Ten," and he worked on federally sponsored arts projects for the Works Progress Administration.
In the 1940s, Rothko's artistic subjects and style began to change. Earlier, he had been painting scenes of urban life with a sense of isolation and mystery; after World War II, he turned to timeless themes of death and survival, and to concepts drawn from ancient myths and religions. Rather than depicting the everyday world, he began to paint "biomorphic" forms that suggested otherworldly plants and creatures. He was also influenced by the art and ideas of Surrealists like Max Ernst and Joan Miró.
In 1943, Rothko and fellow artist Adolph Gottlieb wrote a manifesto of their artistic beliefs, such as "Art is an adventure into an unknown world" and "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought." Rothko and Gottlieb, along with Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman and others, became known as the Abstract Expressionists. Their art was abstract, meaning that it had made no reference to the material world, yet it was highly expressive, conveying strong emotional content.
By the 1950s, Rothko's art was completely abstract. He even preferred to number his canvases, rather than giving them descriptive titles. He had arrived at his signature style: working on a large, vertical canvas, he painted several colored rectangles of color floating against a colored background. Within this formula he found endless variations of color and proportion, resulting in different moods and effects.
Rothko's use of broad, simplified areas of color (rather than gestural splashes and drips of paint) caused his style to be categorized as "Colorfield Painting." He painted in thin, layered washes of color that seemed to glow from within, and his large-scale canvases were intended to be seen at close range, to that the viewer would feel engulfed by them.
In the 1960s, Rothko began to paint in darker colors, especially maroon, brown and black. He received several commissions for large-scale public works during these years. One was a group of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York's Seagram Building, which Rothko never completed since he withdrew from the project; another was a series of paintings for a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas. Rothko consulted with the chapel's architects, and the final product was the ideal space for contemplation of his stark, yet immersive, canvases.
Rothko was diagnosed with heart trouble in 1968 and suffered from depression. He committed suicide in his studio on February 25, 1970. He was survived by his second wife, Mary Alice Beistle, and by his children, Kate and Christopher. His personal holdings of nearly 800 paintings possession became the center of an extended legal battle between his family and the executors of the will. The remaining work was eventually divided between the Rothko family and museums around the world.
Alina 2018-08-07 14:05:00 painters biographies
Georges Rouault was born May 27, 1871 in Paris, France. After apprenticing for the restoration of medieval glass, Rouault became a painter of Expressionist religious subjects. A devout Roman Catholic, he continued to embrace religious topics until late in his career, when he worked on a clown series.
Alina 2018-08-06 14:05:00 painters biographies
Henri Rousseau was born on May 21, 1844, in Laval, France. While working as a toll collector in Paris, he taught himself to paint and exhibited his work almost annually from 1886 until the end of his life. He was given the nickname "Le Douanier" ("the customs officer") by his acquaintances in the Parisian avant-garde. Despite his connections with other artists and dealers, he never profited from his paintings; however, works like "The Dream," "The Sleeping Gypsy" and "Carnival Evening" influenced many artists who came after him. He died in Paris on September 2, 1910.
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was born into a middle-class family in the town of Laval in northwest France on May 21, 1844. Rousseau attended school in Laval until 1860. In his late teens, he worked for a lawyer and then enlisted in the army, although he never saw combat. In 1868, Rousseau left the army and moved to Paris, where he began working as a toll collector at the entrance to the city.
Meanwhile, Rousseau had begun to paint in his spare time. He never had a formal art education; instead, he taught himself by copying paintings in the art museums of Paris and by sketching in the city's botanical gardens and natural history museums.
Perhaps because he had not studied art according to any prescribed method or under any teacher's supervision, Rousseau developed a highly personal style. His portraits and landscapes often had a childlike or "naïve" quality, since he had not learned anatomy or perspective; their vivid colors, ambiguous spaces, non-realistic scale and dramatic intensity gave them a dreamlike quality. Sometimes Rousseau incorporated details inspired by paintings he had viewed at museums or images he had seen in books and magazines, transforming them into elements of his own visions.
Many of Rousseau's signature paintings depicted human figures or wild animals in jungle-like settings. The first of these works was "Tiger in a Tropical Storm" of 1891 (now at the National Gallery in London).
Although Rousseau's art was not understood or accepted by the conservative, official art world of Paris, he was able to show his work in annual exhibitions organized by the Société des Artistes Indépendants. He submitted works to these open, un-juried shows from 1886 until the end of his life. His art was seen and appreciated by established artists such as Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac, who praised his direct, emotional approach to his subject matter.
In 1893, at the age of 49, Rousseau retired from his work as a toll collector and dedicated himself to his art. That year he met the writer Alfred Jarry, who gave him the nickname "Le Douanier" ("the customs officer"). Jarry introduced Rousseau to members of the Parisian artistic and literary avant-garde, including Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Marie Laurencin, all of whom became admirers of his art. Rousseau also formed business relationships with important dealers; however, despite these connections, he made very little money from his art.
Rousseau died on September 2, 1910, in Paris. His work continued to influence other artists, from his friend Picasso to Fernand Léger, Max Ernst and the Surrealists. His paintings are held in museum collections around the world. The Museum of Modern Art in New York owns two of his most famous works, "The Sleeping Gypsy" (1897) and "The Dream" (1910), which depicts a nude woman on a couch magically transported to a lush jungle inhabited by exotic birds and beasts. Other works belong to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; and the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, among many other institutions.
