Alina 2018-07-21 17:05:00 painters biographies
Grant Wood was born on a farm in Iowa in 1891. After high school he studied in the United States and Europe and developed an interest in Impressionism. But while working on a commission in Germany in 1928, Wood had a chance to see paintings by early German and Flemish masters, sending his own work into a new, more realistic and more American direction. One of his first paintings in this new style was American Gothic, which he exhibited in 1930 to much acclaim. Among the most iconic and recognizable images in American art, it helped propel Wood to fame and launch the Regionalist movement, of which Wood became the de facto spokesperson. Wood spent the rest of his life working on his own art as well as teaching others. He died in 1942.
Grant Wood was born on his parents’ farm outside of Anamosa, Iowa, on February 13, 1891. These idyllic settings would leave a lasting impression on Wood and profoundly influence his later thinking and work, though he would spend much of his life after the age of 10 in the relatively more urban settings of Cedar Rapids, where his mother moved Wood and his younger sister Nan after their father died.
Wood developed his interest in art while still in grammar school and showed promise. He continued to nurture his talents in high school—where he also designed sets for plays and illustrated student publications—and after graduation in 1910 attended the Minneapolis School of Design and Handicraft. Over the next few years Wood further expanded his creative repertoire by learning to work with metal and jewelry as well as build furniture. When he moved to Chicago in 1913, he used these skills to make a living.
In Chicago, Wood spent his days at his jewelry and metalworking shop and his evenings developing his talents through correspondence courses and classes at the Art Institute. However, when his mother fell ill in 1916, Wood left Chicago for Cedar Rapids, where he took a job as a grammar school teacher to support her and his sister. However, his familial obligations did not stop Wood from continuing to make progress as an artist. As such, several years later a local department store held an exhibition that included several of his paintings and led to further commissions.
During the 1920s, Wood was also able to find a way to travel to Europe, visiting the museums of France and Italy, studying at the Académie Julian and exhibiting his work in Paris. He returned from these trips profoundly inspired by the Impressionists, whose pastoral subject matter spoke to his own sensibilities.
However, it would be on a 1928 trip to Munich, Germany—where he was overseeing the production of a stained glass window he had designed for the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids—that Wood had the revelation that ultimately changed the direction of his art and propelled him to fame. After seeing the works of 15th- and 16th-century German and Flemish masters, whose realism and attention to detail bowled him over, Wood returned to the United States determined to integrate their approach into his own work.
Abandoning his earlier Impressionistic leanings, Wood began to formulate a more realistic style through which to convey the rural subject matter he'd held dear since his youth. One of his first paintings from this period is also his most famous: American Gothic. Showing a farmer (modeled after Wood’s dentist) and a woman who is either his wife or daughter (modeled after Wood’s sister) standing stoically in front of a white farmhouse, American Gothic was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930 and won immediate acclaim. It has since become one of the most recognizable images in the history of U.S. art. At times interpreted as parody, according to Wood the work is in fact intended as an affirmation of its distinctly Midwestern subject matter and implied values, standing apart from those of large American cities and, even more so, European culture.
With his paintings of small-town life, Midwestern landscapes and historical scenes, Wood became the de facto spokesperson for the American Regionalist movement. His paintings were much in demand. Besides American Gothic, other representative works include Woman With Plants (1929), The Appraisal (1931) and Daughters of Revolution (1932).
In 1932, Wood used his newly won fame to co-found the Stone City Colony and Art School, where he could spread the message of Regionalism to aspiring artists. Two years later, however, he accepted a position with the art department at the University of Iowa, where he believed he could have an even greater impact. That same year, Wood was also named director of the Public Works of Art Project in Iowa and was featured in a Time magazine cover story about Regionalism. In 1935 he published the essay “Revolt Against the City,” in which he laid out the tenets of the movement.
Despite these successes, Wood was about to enter the most trying period in his life. In 1935, he rather suddenly married a woman named Sara Maxon, with whom he would maintain a difficult relationship for the next few years in part because of his latent homosexuality. Wood and Maxon ultimately divorced in 1939, at a time when he was also in trouble with the IRS for tax evasion.
Meanwhile, Wood’s professional world was coming apart as well. With the rise of abstract movements in American art, Wood’s Regionalism was falling out of favor and put him at odds with many of the faculty at the university. Frustrated, in 1940 Wood took a leave of absence.
Throughout this trying time, however, Wood had continued to work. Paintings such as Death on Ridge Road (1935), Parson Weems’ Fable (1939) and Iowa Cornfield (1941) all show his faithful adherence to the American art movement he was primarily responsible for founding. He died of cancer on February 12, 1942, at age 50, and was buried on his family’s plot in Anamosa.
Alina 2018-07-20 17:05:00 painters biographies
Born on July 12, 1917, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Andrew Wyeth received tutelage from his artist father and garnered fame for his own works, taking to egg tempera techniques. He became an internationally exhibited, award-winning artist with pieces like "Christina's World," "A Crow Flew By" and "The Clearing," as well as the portrait series "The Helga Pictures." Wyeth died in Chadds Ford on January 16, 2009.
Andrew Newell Wyeth III was born on July 12, 1917, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five siblings had by mother Carolyn and father N.C. Wyeth, the famed illustrator. N.C. was a major, sometimes frightening presence in the household who guided his son's artistic talents and skill.
Andrew, who would do earlier work submitted under his father's name, took to painting using regular watercolor and dry-brush watercolor techniques, eventually adopting the tempera method. In 1936, Anrdew Wyeth had his first showing at the Art Alliance of Philadelphia; the following year, he had his debut one-man show at New York City's Macbeth Galley, where all of the pieces were immediately sold.
Wyeth wed Betsey James at the start of the new decade. Fusing personal and professional worlds, she would become his business manager and take an active interest in shaping his public image.
Wyeth garnered major acclaim with his 1948 piece, "Christina's World," showcasing a friend of Betsey's who had been stricken with polio making her way across a field without a wheelchair. He became known for both vivid landscapes and portraiture, sometimes fusing the two. Other works among scores included "Trodden Weed" (1951), "Up in the Studio" (1965; featuring his sister Carolyn), "French Twist" (1967), "The Clearing" (1979) and "The Carry" (2003).
Many of Wyeth's subjects were neighbors and locales in his surrounding area, as he generally kept close to home. Wyeth became famed for the quality of realism and detail found in his art, often creating moody pastorals, while also being blasted by some critics for his lack of avant-garde cred.
Nonetheless, exhibitions of his art, which were shown internationally, often brought in record numbers of museum visitors. Wyeth also went on to receive many honors. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and later received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990 from President George H.W. Bush, the first artist to receive the award.
In 1986, it was revealed that Wyeth had been painting more than 200 clothed and nude portraits of German neighbor Helga Testorff over the past decade and a half. The works were the subject of a Time magazine cover and would be shown in Washington, D.C., at the National Gallery of Art, eventually being sold for millions to an art aficionado from Japan.
Wyeth died on January 16, 2009, at the age of 91, in the town of his birth. Among the legion of books on his life and work are The Helga Pictures (1987), Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography (1995) and Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic (2005).
Alina 2018-07-19 17:05:00 painters biographies
Born on October 22, 1882, in Needham, Massachusetts, N.C. Wyeth studied under Howard Pyle to develop his craft as a painter/illustrator. He earned acclaim for the art he provided for Scribner’s Illustrated Classics book series, with titles like The Boy’s King Arthur and Drums. He lived for an extensive time in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where he was killed in a train crash on October 19, 1945.
Newell Convers Wyeth was born in Needham, Massachusetts, on October 22, 1882. His artistic interests were inspired by his mother, and he eventually eschewed a more traditional education for art training. He received tutelage from neighborhood artist Cora Livingston and attended art schools before studying at the Howard Pyle School of Art in Delaware with Pyle himself.
By his early 20s, Wyeth had begun to do magazine illustration work, and in 1904 explored U.S. Western horizons, residing with Native American communities, connecting with nature and finding deep inspiration for his art. He later wed Carolyn Brenneman Bockius in 1906. The couple went on to have five children, settling in the village of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
At the start of the 1910s, N.C. Wyeth was hired to provide illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island for book publishing house Charles Scribner's Sons. Wyeth went on to continue his work with the company, developing a line that would come to be known as Scribner's Illustrated Classics, including titles like The Boy's King Arthur, The Last of the Mohicans, Drums and The Yearling. Wyeth won acclaim for his style of textured, moody paintings on the page, featuring personal vantage points with landscape work and giving the genre of children's storytelling distinctive realism.
Wyeth provided art for other books like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish and Vandemark's Folly by Herbert Quick, and was also known for his mural and canvas works.
Described as a strapping, engaging man, N.C. Wyeth was also said to have suffered from depression and questioned the direction of his life and career. He died on October 19, 1945, in Chadds Ford, when the car he was driving was hit by a train; the automobile also contained Wyeth's young grandson, who perished as well.
Wyeth's children, most of whom continued to live in the area of their birth, went into the fields of the arts and engineering, with son Andrew Wyeth becoming a noted realist painter as well. Published retrospectives on Wyeth's work include Great Illustrations (2011) and Legendary Illustration Art of N.C. Wyeth (2014) along with the Scribner series, which continues to be in print. A 1998 biography on Wyeth's life was written by David Michaelis.
Alina 2018-07-18 17:05:00 painters biographies
Simmie Knox was born in 1935 in Aliceville, Alabama. After grad school, he exhibited abstract works and taught at various universities and public schools. Since 1981, he has specialized in oil portraiture, and has been commissioned by everyone from U.S. Supreme Court Justices to celebrities. In 2004, Knox unveiled official portraits of President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton at the White House—becoming the first black artist to paint an official presidential portrait.
Born on August 18, 1935, in Aliceville, Alabama, leading African American portrait artist Simmie Knox has created vivid, lifelike renderings of such luminaries as President Bill Clinton and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He is the son of a carpenter and mechanic. But he spent many of his childhood years in the care of other family members after his parents divorced. Knox grew up poor with most of his family working as sharecroppers, and he himself took to the fields when he was old enough. "We worked literally from sunup till sundown ... whatever there was to be done," he told ABC News, adding, "You didn't go to school; you worked on the farm."
Later Knox went to live with his father and stepmother in Mobile, Alabama. There he loved to make little sketches and to play baseball. One of his childhood friends was baseball legend Hank Aaron. At the age of 13, Knox was struck in the eye with a baseball. With encouragement from his teachers at his Catholic school, he started drawing as a way to help his eye recover from the injury. The nuns who educated him recognized his talent and arranged for him to have lessons from a local postal worker. No formal art education was available at his segregated school.
After graduating from Central High School in Mobile, Alabama, in 1956, Knox spent several years serving in the military. He then attended Delaware State College as a biology major. While he didn't excel at science, Knox did some wonderful sketches of microorganisms. One of his professors recommended that he take some art classes. While at Delaware State, Knox completed a full-sized self-portrait, one of his notable early art works.
After completing his studies at the University of Delaware in 1967, Knox enrolled at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. There, he earned a bachelor degree in fine arts in 1970 and a master's degree in fine arts two years later. At the time, abstract art was all the rage. Knox painted in this style for a time and even got the chance to display his works at a prominent Washington, D.C. gallery. His paintings hung alongside Roy Lichtenstein and other leading artists in this show.
Still Knox wasn't completely satisfied with his abstract work. He painted a portrait of freed slave and prominent abolitionist Frederick Douglass in 1976, which now part of the collection at the Smithsonian Institution. In addition to painting, Knox worked extensively in art education. He held many teaching positions, including being an instructor at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts from 1975 to 1980.
By the early 1980s, Knox had devoted himself to realistic portrait work. He explained to The New York Times, "With abstract painting, I didn't feel the challenge. The face is the most complicated thing there is. The challenge is finding that thing, that makes it different from another face." Knox found a famous patron in 1986 when he met comedian Bill Cosby. Cosby became an ardent supporter of Knox's work, hiring for portraits of himself and his family. He also encouraged friends to commission Knox for paintings as well.
Knox soon landed an important assignment: to capture the image of legendary U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall "could tell I was nervous," Knox told American Artist magazine, adding, "But he told jokes; he told stories about his life. I came away feeling so good about the man." He completed Marshall's portrait in 1989 and continued to receive new commissions. Over the years, Knox painted the likeness of baseball great Hank Aaron, former New York City mayor David Dinkins, historian John Hope Franklin and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg among other famous names.
In 2000, Knox received his most famous assignment to date. He was selected to paint the official White House portraits of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. With this commission, Knox made history. "I realize there has never been an African American to paint a portrait of a president and, being the first, that's quite an honor and quite a challenge," he told ABC News. Knox and Bill Clinton bonded over a shared love of jazz.
Knox's paintings of the Clintons were revealed to the public in a special ceremony at the White House in 2004. According to People magazine, Bill Clinton enjoyed his portrait. Knox told the magazine that Clinton "smiled and yelled, 'I like it!'—four times—I guess to make sure I got the point." He hopes to someday paint a portrait of another famous world leader: Nelson Mandela.
Knox works out of his studio—a former garage—at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. He and his wife Roberta have two children together, Amelia and Zachary. Knox also has a daughter, Sheri, from his first marriage.
Alina 2018-07-17 17:05:00 painters biographies
Frédéric Bazille was born December 6, 1841, in Montpellier, France. He soon left school to pursue art. It was during these formative years that he met fellow painters Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, who joined him in founding the Impressionist movement of the late 19th century. In 1870 he joined the infantry after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and died in battle.
Born Jean-Frédéric Bazille on December 6, 1841, in Montpellier, France. Frédéric Bazille was raised in a wealthy family in the South of France and left home in the early 1860s to study medicine in Paris. But his passion for painting overcame the obligation he felt to pursue a proper vocation and, much to his parents' chagrin, he soon left school to pursue art. It was during these formative years that he met fellow painters Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, who would join Bazille in founding the revolutionary Impressionist movement of the late 19th century.
Thanks to his family's wealth, Frédéric Bazille had a more spacious apartment and studio than most of his artist friends and even supported some of them early in their careers, including Monet and Renoir. His home in the Batignolles neighborhood in Paris became a headquarters for the Impressionists; hence the movement was first called the "Batignolles School." Bazille's 1870 work The Artist's Studio in the Rue de la Condamine showing Renoir, journalist and critic mile Zola, Monet, douard Manet, Bazille, and Edmond Maitre in Bazille's studio exemplifies this period.
Frédéric Bazille's best-known work, Family Reunion (1867), was a leading example of what is now known as outdoor figural art. The painting was exhibited at the Salon, France's exclusive state-run art show, in 1869. Family Reunion showed Bazille's extended family at their country estate, Méric, and exemplified the artist's use of color and adept depiction of human figures, both hallmarks of the Realist-Impressionist style. The painting was an example of the challenge that faced all Impressionists: how to reconcile traditional figure painting with an outdoor practice.
Frédéric Bazille's Summer Scene (Bathers) (1869) transported figure drawings created in his Paris studio to an outdoor setting that included trees, grass and water. The painting depicted young men dressed in swimsuits having a leisurely day along the banks of a river near Méric. Like Family Reunion, Summer Scene captured friends and family members in the outdoors and was exhibited at the Salon in 1870.
In 1870, Frédéric Bazille joined the infantry after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He was almost immediately sent to Algeria for combat training and by the end of the year, he was battling in the frontlines. Frédéric Bazille was tragically killed in action in his first battle, on November 28, 1870, at age 29.
Frédéric Bazille never married, and his many intimate relationships with men prompted claims that he was gay. At the time, homosexuality was considered deviant and was almost universally repressed, particularly among the social elite in which his family was firmly rooted. His close friendships included the most celebrated Impressionist artists of all time, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Berthe Morisot. Were it not for his untimely death, Frédéric Bazille was almost certainly destined to become one of the leaders of the Impressionist revolution.
Alina 2018-07-16 17:05:00 painters biographies
An innovative artist, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on February 25, 1841, in Limoges, France. He started out as an apprentice to a porcelain painter and studied drawing in his free time. After years as a struggling painter, Renoir helped launch an artistic movement called Impressionism in 1870s. He eventually became one of the most highly regarded artists of his time. He died in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, in 1919.
The son of a tailor and a seamstress, Pierre-Auguste Renoir came from humble beginnings. He was the couple's sixth child, but two of his older siblings died as infants. The family moved to Paris sometime between 1844 and 1846, living near the Louvre, a world-renowned art museum. He attended a local Catholic school.
As a teenager, Renoir became an apprentice to a porcelain painter. He learned to copy designs to decorate plates and other dishware. Before long, Renoir started doing other types of decorative painting to make a living. He also took free drawing classes at a city-sponsored art school, which was run by sculptor Louis-Denis Caillouette.
Using imitation as a learning tool, a nineteen-year-old Renoir started studying and copying some of the great works hanging at the Louvre. He then entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, a famous art school, in 1862. Renoir also became a student of Charles Gleyre. At Gleyre's studio, Renoir soon befriended three other young artists: Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Alfred Sisley. And through Monet, he met such emerging talents as Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne.
In 1864, Renoir won acceptance into the annual Paris Salon exhibit. There he showed the painting, "La Esmeralda," which was inspired by a character from Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris. The following year, Renoir again showed at the prestigious Salon, this time displaying a portrait of William Sisley, the wealthy father of artist Alfred Sisley.
While his Salon works helped raise his profile in the art world, Renoir had to struggle to make a living. He sought out commissions for portraits and often depended on the kindness of his friends, mentors, and patrons. The artist Jules Le Coeur and his family served as strong supporters of Renoir's for many years. Renoir also remained close to Monet, Bazille, and Sisley, sometimes staying at their homes or sharing their studios. According to many biographies, he seemed to have no fixed address during his early career.
Around 1867, Renoir met Lise Tréhot, a seamstress who became his model. She served as the model for such works as "Diana" (1867) and "Lise" (1867). The two also reportedly became romantically involved. According to some reports, she gave birth to his first child, a daughter named Jeanne, in 1870. Renoir never publicly acknowledged his daughter during his lifetime.
Renoir had to take a break from his work in 1870 when he was drafted into the army to serve in France's war against Germany. He was assigned to a cavalry unit, but he soon fell ill with dysentery. Renoir never saw any action during the war, unlike his friend Bazille who was killed that November.
After the war ended in 1871, Renoir eventually made his way back to Paris. He and some of his friends, including Pissarro, Monet, Cézanne and Edgar Degas, decided to show their works on their own in Paris in 1874, which became known as the first Impressionist exhibition. The group's name is derived from a critical review of their show, in which the works were called "impressions" rather than finished paintings done using traditional methods. Renoir, like other Impressionists, embraced a brighter palette for his paintings, which gave them a warmer and sunnier feel. He also used different types of brushstrokes to capture his artistic vision on the canvas.
While the first Impressionist exhibition was not a success, Renoir soon found other supportive patrons to propel his career. The wealthy publisher Georges Charpentier and his wife Marguérite took a great interest in the artist and invited him to numerous social gatherings at their Paris home. Through the Charpentiers, Renoir met such famous writers as Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola. He also received portrait commissions from the couple's friends. His 1878 painting, "Madame Charpentier and her Children," was featured in the official Salon of the following year and brought him much critical admiration.
Funded with the money from his commissions, Renoir made several inspirational journeys in the early 1880s. He visited Algeria and Italy and spent time in the south of France. While in Naples, Italy, Renoir worked on a portrait of famed composer Richard Wagner. He also painted three of his masterworks, "Dance in the Country," "Dance in the City" and "Dance at Bougival" around this time.
As his fame grew, Renoir began to settle down. He finally married his longtime girlfriend Aline Charigot in 1890. The couple already had a son, Pierre, who was born in 1885. Aline served as a model for many of his works, including "Mother Nursing Her Child" (1886). His growing family, with the additions of sons Jean in 1894 and Claude in 1901, also provided inspiration for a number of paintings.
As he aged, Renoir continued to use his trademark feathery brushstrokes to depict primarily rural and domestic scenes. His work, however, proved to be more and more physically challenging for the artist. Renoir first battled with rheumatism in the mid-1890s and the disease plagued him for the rest of his life.
In 1907, Renoir bought some land in Cagnes-sur-Mer where he built a stately home for his family. He continued to work, painting whenever he could. The rheumatism had disfigured his hands, leaving his fingers permanently curled. Renoir also had a stroke in 1912, which left him in a wheelchair. Around this time, he tried his hand at sculpture. He worked with assistants to create works based on some of his paintings.
The world-renowned Renoir continued to paint until his death. He lived long enough to see one of his works bought by the Louvre in 1919, a tremendous honor for any artist. Renoir died that December at his home in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France. He was buried next to his wife, Aline (who died in 1915), in her hometown of Essoyes, France.
Besides leaving behind over two hundred works of art, Renoir served as an inspiration to so many other artists—Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso are just a few who benefitted from Renoir's artistic style and methods.
Alina 2018-07-15 17:05:00 painters biographies
Born in 1955 in London, England, Paul Simonon, along with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, formed the backbone for the pioneering English punk rock band The Clash. After the group's breakup in 1986, Simonon continued to record music and make his mark as a noted painter. The Clash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.
Musician, painter. Bass player for the groundbreaking English punk rock band The Clash, Paul Simonon was born December 15, 1955, in London, England. Raised middle-class, Simonon, who attended predominantly black schools as a child, developed an early appreciation for soul and Jamaican music that would later influence his work with The Clash.
His love for art, and his obvious talent for it, eventually earned him a scholarship to a local art school. But his passion for music never subsided, and in the early 1970s he cut his teeth as a bass player in a punk band called London SS.
Through it he formed a lasting friendship with the group's guitarist, Mick Jones. In 1976 the pair took in a performance of a band called the 101ers. Headed up by singer Joe Strummer, the group had earned some early notoriety for playing a couple of gigs with up-and-coming British punk band the Sex Pistols.
Later in 1976, Jones, Simonon and Strummer were formally introduced by their common friend and eventual manager, Bernie Rhodes. From that introduction, The Clash was formed. The group's name came from Simonon, who had noticed how often the term "clash" was used in an edition of the London Standard newspaper. Drummer Terry Chimes joined the group a short time later.
In January 1977, The Clash signed with CBS Records for £100,000. The group's self-titled debut album, which was recorded in just three weekends, came out that April.
The record, with future punk-rock anthems like "White Riot," "I'm So Bored with the USA" and "London's Burning," quickly propelled The Clash, who would spend the next decade largely singing about revolution and the working class, into stardom.
The group's follow-up album, Give 'Em Enough Rope, hit British record stores in 1978. About a year later, the band delivered what many rock critics and fans consider The Clash's best album, London Calling, a double-record effort that meshed the best of the 1970s punk rock sound with a refined level of lyrics and smarts that would help usher in the new decade.
The recording also featured the band's first American hit, "Train in Vain," as well as Simonon's best-known composition, "The Guns of Brixton," which he sang. Rolling Stone magazine later voted London Calling the best album of the 1980s.
For his part, Simonon's art school background played no small role in the band's success. Much of the band's look emanated from Simonon, from its early Jackson Pollock–like paint-splattered graphics and style to its later military-inspired dress.
Simonon's personal style and natural good looks also helped anchor the appearance of the band. "He was just there, looking fantastic...the bastard," Jones later recalled.
But stardom and the wear and tear of maintaining the band's energy and commitment to its craft took its toll on The Clash. Tensions mounted between Jones and Strummer, leading to the former's departure. Added to the complications was an increasingly rocky relationship with CBS Records. After six albums and many hit singles, The Clash officially broke up in 1986.
But the group's music never really faded into the background. Nine years after the band's final album was released, one of its singles, "Should I Stay or Should I Go," was re-released in England and shot to the top of the charts, giving The Clash its only number one hit. In 2003, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Following the demise of The Clash, Simonon continued to maintain a heavy involvement in the music scene. He started a new group called Havana 3am, which put out just one album before breaking up. Later, he stepped into the recording studio with Bob Dylan for what became Dylan's album Down in the Groove (1988). He also came on board as the bass player for Jones' post-Clash band, Big Audio Dynamite.
For years, rumors swirled about a possible reunion of The Clash. That speculation came to a tragic end with the death of Strummer in 2002.In 2010, Simonon and Jones started work on a new biopic based on the album London Calling.
The years since The Clash's end have also seen Simonon return to his earlier artistic roots as a painter. His work is regularly exhibited.
Simonon has also remained politically active. In early 2011 he was arrested while working as a cook on board a Greenpeace ship that was part of a contingent protesting an oil rig off the coast of Greenland.
"We stormed the oil rig," Simonon recounted. "They said if you don't get off...we're going to phone the authorities in Greenland and say you've hijacked the oil rig, and the police will come and arrest you. And that's pretty much what happened."
Alina 2018-07-14 17:05:00 painters biographies
Artist William H. Johnson was born in 1901 in Florence, South Carolina. After deciding to pursue his dreams as an artist, he attended the National Academy of Design in New York and met his mentor, Charles Webster Hawthorne. After graduating, Johnson moved to Paris, traveled throughout Europe and was exposed to new kinds of artistic creations and artists. Upon his return to the United States, Johnson used a primitive style of painting in conjunction with what was considered a "folk" style, using of bright colors and two-dimensional figures. He spent his final 23 years of life in a mental hospital in Central Islip, New York, where he died in 1970.
Artist William Henry Johnson was born on March 18, 1901, in the small town of Florence, South Carolina, to parents Henry Johnson and Alice Smoot, who were both laborers. Johnson realized his dreams of becoming an artist at a young age, copying cartoons from the paper as a child. However, as the oldest of the family's five children, who lived in a poor, segregated town in the South, Johnson tucked away his aspirations of becoming an artist, deeming them unrealistic.
But Johnson finally left South Carolina in 1918, at the age of 17, to pursue his dreams in New York City. There, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design and met Charles Webster Hawthorne, a well-known artist who took Johnson under his wing. While Hawthorne recognized Johnson's talent, he knew that Johnson would have a difficult time excelling as an African-American artist in the United States, and thus raised enough money to send the young artist to Paris, France, upon his graduation in 1926.
After arriving in Paris, William H. Johnson was exposed to a greater variety of art and culture. Renting a studio on the French Riviera, Johnson met other artists who influenced his style of artwork, including German expressionist sculptor Christoph Voll. Through Voll, Johnson met textile artist Holcha Krake, whom he would eventually marry.
After several years in Paris, in 1930, Johnson ventured back to the United States with a newfound desire to establish himself in the art scene of his home country. While his unique form of artwork was appreciated when he returned to the United States, he was shocked by prejudice that he encountered in his hometown. There, he was arrested for painting on a local building that had become a brothel. Not long after the incident, a frustrated Johnson left South Carolina for Europe once again.
In late 1930, Johnson moved to Denmark and married Krake. When the two weren't traveling to foreign areas such as North Africa, Scandinavia, Tunisia and other parts of Europe for artistic inspiration, they stayed in their quiet neighborhood of Kerteminde, Denmark. The peace didn't last long, however; the increasing threat of World War II and growing Nazism led the interracial couple to move to New York in 1938.
Though they had moved to avoid any conflict with the Nazis, William and Holcha still faced racism and discrimination as an interracial couple living in the United States. The artistic community of Harlem, New York, which had become more enlightened and experimental following the Harlem Renaissance, embraced the couple, however.
Around this time, Johnson took a job as an art teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center, also continuing to create art in his spare time. Transitioning from expressionism to a primitive style of artwork, or primitivism, Johnson's work during this time displayed brighter colors and two-dimensional objects, and often included portrayals of African-American life in Harlem, the South and the military. Some of these works, including paintings depicting black soldiers fighting on the front lines as well as the segregation that took place there, served as commentaries on the treatment of African Americans in the U.S. Army during World War II.
While his paintings of African Americans in the United States began to gain attention after they were showcased in exhibitions during the early 1940s, the break of the new decade marked the beginning of a downward spiral for the artist. In 1941, a solo exhibition was held for Johnson at Alma Reed Galleries. The following year, a fire destroyed Johnson's studio, leaving his artwork and supplies reduced to ashes. Two years later, in 1944, Johnson's beloved wife of 14 years, Krake, died of breast cancer.
Following Krake's death, the already unhinged artist became mentally and physically unstable. Though his mind was begging to slip, Johnson still created artwork that would go on to be appreciated for years, including his "Fighters for Freedom" series, featuring paintings of famous American leaders such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Johnson went from one location to the next in an attempt to find comfort and stability after losing his wife, first traveling to his hometown of Florence, South Carolina, then to Harlem, and finally to Denmark in 1946. The following year, however, Johnson was hospitalized in Norway due to his growing mental illness, caused by syphilis. He was transferred to the Central Islip State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Central Islip, Long Island, New York, where he would spend the next 23 years of his life, away from the attention that he'd garnered for his artwork. He died there in 1970, during his extended stay at the hospital.
