Alina 2018-06-26 14:05:00 painters biographies
Born in New Jersey but raised in New York City's Harlem, Jacob Lawrence was the most widely acclaimed African-American artist of the 20th century. Known for producing narrative collections like the Migration Series and War Series, he brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught, and spent 15 years as a professor at the University of Washington.
Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 7, 1917, Jacob Lawrence moved with his parents to Easton, Pennsylvania, at the age of 2. When his parents separated in 1924, his mother deposited him and his two younger siblings in foster care in Philadelphia, and went to work in New York City. When he was 13, Lawrence joined his mother in Harlem.
Lawrence was introduced to art shortly after his arrival, when his mother enrolled him in Utopia Children’s Center, which had an after-school art program. He dropped out of school at 16 but took classes at the Harlem Art Workshop with Charles Alston and frequently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1937, Lawrence won a scholarship to the American Artists School in New York. When he graduated in 1939, he received funding from the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. He had already developed his own style of modernism, and began creating narrative series, painting 30 or more paintings on one subject. He completed his best-known series, Migration of the Negro or simply The Migration Series, in 1941. The series was exhibited at Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery in 1942, making Lawrence the first African-American to join the gallery.
At the outbreak of World War II, Lawrence was drafted into the United States Coast Guard. After being briefly stationed in Florida and Massachusetts, he was assigned to be the Coast Guard artist aboard a troopship, documenting the experience of war around the world. He produced 48 paintings during this time, all of which have been lost.
When his tour of duty ended, Lawrence received a Guggenheim Fellowship and painted his War Series. He was also invited by Josef Albers to teach the summer session at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Albers reportedly hired a private train car to transport Lawrence and his wife to the college so they wouldn’t be forced to transfer to the “colored” car when the train crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.
Back in New York after his stint in the south, Lawrence continued to paint. He grew depressed, however, and in 1949, he checked himself into Hillside Hospital in Queens, where he stayed for 11 months. He painted as an inpatient, and the work created during this time differs significantly from his other work, with subdued colors and people who appear resigned or in agony.
After leaving Hillside, Lawrence turned his attention to the theater. In 1951, he painted works based on memories of performances at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He also began teaching again, first at Pratt Institute and later the New School for Social Research and the Art Students League.
In 1971, Lawrence accepted a tenured position as a professor at University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught until he retired in 1986. In addition to teaching, he spent much of the rest of his life painting commissions, producing limited-edition prints to help fund nonprofits like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Children’s Defense Fund and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He also painted murals for the Harold Washington Center in Chicago, the University of Washington and Howard University, as well as a 72-foot mural for New York City’s Times Square subway station.
Lawrence painted until a few weeks before he died, on June 9, 2000.
Lawrence married Gwendolyn Knight, a sculptor and painter, in 1941. She actively supported his work, providing both assistance and criticism, and helped him compose captions for many of his series.
Alina 2018-06-25 14:05:00 painters biographies
Tim Burton was born on August 25, 1958, in Burbank, California. After majoring in animation at the California Institute of Arts, he worked as a Disney animator for less than a year before striking out on his own. He became known for creating visually striking films that blend themes of fantasy and horror, including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Famed director, producer and screenwriter Tim Burton was born Timothy Walter Burton on August 25, 1958, in Burbank, California. As a child, Burton was engrossed with the classic horror films of Roger Corman—many of which featured quintessential screen villain Vincent Price. Burton also developed a penchant for drawing and enrolled at the California Institute of Arts, where he majored in animation. In 1980, upon his graduation, he began working as an apprentice animator for Walt Disney Studios. Within a year, Burton grew tired with his work at Disney and decided to strike out on his own. In 1982, he released the award-winning short Vincent, which paid homage to the enduring work of his childhood idol.
In 1984, Burton created a unique version of the Frankenstein story with the live-action short Frankenweenie. Impressed with Frankenweenie, Paul Reubens commissioned Burton to direct the wildly inventive comedy Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985). The success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure brought about other opportunities, including the 1988 ghost story Beetlejuice starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, and Geena Davis. Often considered the prototypical Burton film, Beetlejuice was recognized for its visual flair and interwoven themes of fantasy and horror.
After forming his own production company, Burton directed the lavish production Batman (1989). With a cast that included Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, and Kim Basinger, the stylized feature became the first film to sell $100 million in the first 10 days of release. The following year, Burton helmed the bizarre but touching film Edward Scissorhands. Featuring notable performances by up-and-coming stars Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder (as well as Price's final feature role as the eccentric inventor), Edward Scissorhands was acclaimed for being both a social satire and a simple tale of love and intolerance.
Directing an ensemble that included Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny DeVito, and Christopher Walken, Burton reteamed with Keaton for the 1992 Batman sequel, Batman Returns. The following year, he produced the animated musical Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Created with the painstaking process of stop-motion animation, the film became a critical and commercial success, while Burton was credited for his technical prowess.
In 1994, Burton cast Johnny Depp as the title character in Ed Wood—a black-and-white portrait of a middling filmmaker and his all-consuming passion to succeed. Although critically praised (Martin Landau won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a drug-addicted Bela Lugosi), the film failed to appeal to mass audiences. After producing the third installment Batman Forever (1995) and the animated feature James and the Giant Peach (1996), Burton directed the sci-fi spoof Mars Attacks! The film flopped at the box office despite an all-star cast that included Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, and Pierce Brosnan.
In 1999, Burton directed a freely adapted film version, Sleepy Hollow, of Washington Irving's haunting tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in which Johhny Depp offered a notable performance as the heroic Ichabod Crane. In 2001, Burton took on an ambitious remake of the 1968 cult classic Planet of the Apes starring Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter. 2003 saw the release of the fantasy drama Big Fish, which stars Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney. The film earned four Golden Globe nominations. In 2005, he released a remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp and a stop-motion animated feature called The Corpse Bride, which received an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature Film.
Continuing with his interest in ghoulish subjects, Burton directed the film adaptation of the popular musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 2007. The film reunited Burton with longtime friend Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. All three received critical praise for their work on the film, including several Golden Globe nominations. In 2010, they reunited again in Tim Burton's adaptation of Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland, wherein Depp played the role of The Mad Hatter and Carter, the Red Queen.
In 2012, Burton worked with Depp on a film adaptation of the cult television series Dark Shadows. Writer Seth Grahame-Smith penned the script for this humorous look at a vampire living among his descendants. Burton also mined his own childhood for the animated film Frankenweenie that same year. The title character—a dog brought back to life after death—was inspired by one of his own pets. Pepe "just had a good spirit, that dog," Burton told Entertainment Weekly. "The Frankenweenie character wasn’t meant to look like him. It was more just the memory and the spirit of him." In 2014, Burton directed the biopic Big Eyes, about the life of artist Margaret Keane, whose paintings of subjects with immense eyes have become iconic. Returning to the fantasy genre, he directed the eerie Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, based on the popular YA novel by Ransom Riggs, in 2016.
In addition to his filmwork, Burton exhibited over 700 drawings, paintings, and other artwork at New York City's Museum of Modern Art in 2009 and 2010 - as well as at renown museums around the world.
Burton has been involved with Apes star Bonham Carter since 2001. The couple has two children, a son, Billy, born in October 2003 and a daughter, Nell, born in December 2007. In 2014, it was reported that the couple had separated after thirteen years together.
Alina 2018-06-24 14:05:00 painters biographies
Born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1904, Willem de Kooning stowed away to the U.S. in 1926 and settled in New York City. While working in the commercial realm, de Kooning also was developing his artistic style, exploring both figure painting and more abstract subjects through the 1930s. By the 1940s, those two main tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly, notably in Pink Angels. De Kooning became known for his depiction of women, and women would dominate his paintings for decades. Later in life, de Kooning explored landscapes and even sculpture, before Alzheimer's disease made it impossible to continue on. He died in 1997 at age 92.
Born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1904, Willem de Kooning embraced the artistic path at a young age, dropping out of school when he was 12 to begin an apprenticeship in commercial design and decorating. During this period, de Kooning took night classes at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques, and in the midst of his education, at age 16, he landed his first job in the industry, working with the art director of a large department store.
In 1926, de Kooning stowed away on a ship bound for the United States, where he jumped from various jobs in the Northeast until he eventually settled in New York City. While he worked for several years in commercial art and was not able to dedicate himself to his creative pursuits, de Kooning did find a like-minded group of artists in New York who encouraged him to paint for himself.
Around 1928, de Kooning began painting still lifes and figures, but it wasn’t long before he was dabbling in more abstract works, clearly influenced by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. As a young artist, he would have an unbeatable opportunity in 1935, when he became an artist for the federal art project for the WPA (Works Progress Administration), through which he created a number of murals and other works.
In 1936, de Kooning’s work was part of a Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) exhibit titled New Horizons in American Art, an early career highlight, but the following year his job with the WPA came to an abrupt end, when he was forced to resign because he was not an American citizen. Soon after, de Kooning began a series of male figures, including Seated Figure (Classic Male) and Two Men Standing. Also during this period, de Kooning hired an apprentice, Elaine Fried, and she would sit as a female subject for such works as Seated Woman (1940). That would be the artist's first major painting of a woman, and he would go on to be chiefly known for his decades-long work in depicting women in his paintings. Married in 1943, de Kooning and Fried would have a fiery, alcohol-soaked life together before separating in the late 1950s for nearly 20 years. In the mid-1970s, they would reunite and remain together until her 1989 death.
Artistically, de Kooning kept on with his figure work while branching out into more abstract work as well, a notable example of which is The Wave. The abstract works began to reveal the presence of human forms within them, and his two artistic approaches merged in 1945’s Pink Angels, one of his first significant contributions to abstract expressionism. He he would quickly become a central figure in the movement.
In 1948, de Kooning would have his first solo show, at the Charles Egan Gallery. Also during this period, he joined academia, briefly teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and at the Yale School of Art.
In the 1950s, de Kooning turned his abstract sights to landscape painting, and the series Abstract Urban Landscapes (1955-58), Abstract Parkway Landscapes (1957-61) and Abstract Pastoral Landscapes (1960-66) would help define an era in his artistic life.
In 1961, de Kooning became an American citizen and settled in East Hampton, New York. He continued working through the 1980s, but the onset of Alzheimer's disease destroyed his memory and impaired his ability to work. After his wife died in 1989, de Kooning’s daughter cared for him until his death in 1997, at age 92.
Alina 2018-06-23 14:05:00 painters biographies
Born in 1862, Austrian painter Gustav Klimt became known for the highly decorative style and erotic nature of his works, which were seen as a rebellion against the traditional academic art of his time. His most famous paintings are The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.
Gustav Klimt was born on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 1862. His father, Ernst, was a struggling gold engraver who had immigrated to Vienna from Bohemia, and his mother, Anna, was musically talented, although she had never realized her dream of becoming a professional musician. Perhaps genetically predisposed to the arts, then, Klimt displayed a notable talent from an early age, and at 14 years old left his normal school to attend the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts on a full scholarship, no small matter considering both his youth and the relative poverty in which he had been raised.
While at the institution, Klimt received a conservative, classical training that he readily accepted, and he focused his studies on architectural painting. His early ambition as an artist was to simply become a drawing teacher. Klimt’s horizons began to broaden, however, when his budding talent earned him various small commissions while he was still in school, and after his graduation in 1883, he opened a studio with his younger brother Ernst and their mutual friend Franz Masch.
Calling themselves the Company of Artists, the trio agreed to focus their work on murals and also to set aside any personal artistic inclinations in favor of the historical style popular among Vienna’s upper class and aristocracy at that time. That decision proved to be a good one, as it not only won them numerous commissions to paint churches, theaters and other public spaces, but also allowed them to work interchangeably on their projects. Their most notable works during this time were the mural at the Vienna Burgtheater and the ceiling above the staircase at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The group was honored for their achievements in 1888 when they received the Golden Order of Merit from Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef I.
In 1890, the Klimt brothers and Masch joined the Vienna Artists’ Association, a conservative art group that controlled the majority of the exhibitions in the city. But although Gustav Klimt continued to align himself with the more traditional factions of the art world, he was soon to experience changes in his personal life that would send him off on a path all his own.
In 1891, Gustav’s brother Ernst married a woman named Helene Flöge, and that same year, Gustav painted a portrait of her sister, Emilie for the first time. This first meeting marked the beginning of what would be a lifelong friendship and one that would have a meaningful impact on the direction of Klimt’s later work. But it was the personal tragedy of the following year that would have the most significant influence on the course of Klimt’s art, when both his father and brother Ernst died. Profoundly affected by their passing, Klimt began to reject the naturalistic trappings of his training in favor of a more personal style, one that relied heavily on symbolism and drew from a wide range of influences. With the passing of Ernst Klimt and the direction in which Gustav’s style was heading, the Company of Artists was growing steadily more difficult to maintain. They were still receiving commissions, however, and in 1894 were chosen to paint murals for the ceiling of the Great Hall auditorium at the University of Vienna.
But continuing his quest for a more meaningful, personal artistic freedom, in 1897 Klimt and a group of like-minded artist resigned their membership in the Vienna Artists’ Association and founded a new organization known as the Vienna Secession. Although primarily rejecting classical, academic art, the group did not focus on any one particular style, instead focusing its efforts on supporting young nontraditional artists, bringing international art to Vienna and exhibiting the works of its members. Klimt was nominated their first president, and he also served as a member of the editorial staff for its periodical, Sacred Spring. The first Vienna Secession exhibition was held the following year and was both well attended and popular. Among its featured works was Klimt’s painting of the group’s symbol, the Greek goddess Pallas Athena. In time it would come to be seen as the first in a series of works from Klimt’s best known and most successful period.
In 1900, Philosophy, one of the three murals Klimt was developing for the University of Vienna, was exhibited for the first time, at the seventh Vienna Secession exhibition. Featuring various nude human forms and rather unsettling and dark symbolic imagery, the work caused a scandal among the university faculty. When the other two pieces, Medicine and Jurisprudence, were exhibited in subsequent exhibitions, they were met with an equally indignant response that ultimately resulted in a petition urging that they not be installed at the school, due to their ambiguous and pornographic nature. When several years later they were still not exhibited anywhere, an incensed Klimt withdrew from the commission and returned the fee in exchange for his paintings.
Yet despite these frustrations, Klimt’s success was reaching its peak during this time. Despite its rejection in Vienna, his Medicine was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and received the Grand Prix, and in 1902 his Beethoven Frieze was exhibited to great public acclaim. But perhaps most significant, in the early 1900s, Klimt was in the midst of what is commonly referred to as his “Golden Phase.” Beginning with his Pallas Athena in 1898, Klimt created a series of paintings that made extensive use of ornamental gold leaf and a flat, two-dimensional perspective reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics to create striking iconic figures. Among the most representative of these works are "Judith" (1901), "Danae" (1907) and "The Kiss" (1908).
Perhaps Klimt’s most famous work from this period, however, is the 1907 "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I." Commissioned in 1903 by Bloch-Bauer’s wealthy industrialist husband, the work remained in the family’s possession until it was seized by the Nazis during World War II. Ultimately displayed in the Austrian State Gallery, the painting remained there until one of Bloch-Bauer’s nieces, Maria Altmann, filed suit against Austria for its return. Altmann won her case in 2006, and the painting was sold at auction in June of that year for $135 million, making it the most money ever paid for a work of art at auction. The work's storied past has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries, and most recently is the focus of the film Woman in Gold, which stars Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann.
Perhaps nothing can sum up Klimt’s later years and work better than his own words: “I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for painting than I am in other people, above all women.” Indeed, the majority of his later work features sketches and painting of women, typically in various states of undress or full nudity. A lifelong bachelor, Klimt had countless affairs during his lifetime, frequently with his models, and fathered some 14 children along the way. His most enduring relationship, however, was with Emilie Flöge. Although the full nature of their friendship is unknown, they remained in each other’s company for the remainder of his life, and the paintings of landscapes that make up the bulk of his later non-portrait works were painted during summers spent with her and her family at Attersee, a lake in the Salzkammergut region of Austria.
In 1905 the Vienna Secession split into two groups, one of which formed around Klimt. That same year, he received a commission for the dining room ceiling of the Palais Stoclet, the Brussels home of a wealthy Belgian industrialist. The work was completed in 1910, and the following year his painting "Death and Life" received first prize at an international exhibition in Rome. Klimt considered the award among his greatest achievements.
In January 1918, Gustav Klimt suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He was subsequently hospitalized, and while there contracted pneumonia, of which he died on February 6, 1918. He is buried at the Hietzing cemetery in Vienna.
Alina 2018-06-22 14:05:00 painters biographies
Born in Moscow in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky took up the study of art in earnest at age 30, moving to Munich to study drawing and painting. A trained musician, Kandinsky approached color with a musician’s sensibility. An obsession with Monet led him to explore his own creative concepts of color on canvas, which were sometimes controversial among his contemporaries and critics, but Kandinsky emerged as a respected leader of the abstract art movement in the early 20th century.
Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow on December 4, 1866 (December 16 by the Gregorian calendar), to musical parents Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant. When Kandinsky was about 5 years old, his parents divorced, and he moved to Odessa to live with an aunt, where he learned to play the piano and cello in grammar school, as well as study drawing with a coach. Even as a boy he had an intimate experience with art; the works of his childhood reveal rather specific color combinations, infused by his perception that "each color lives by its mysterious life."
Although he later wrote, "I remember that drawing and a little bit later painting lifted me out of the reality," he followed his family’s wishes to go into law, entering the University of Moscow in 1886. He graduated with honors, but his ethnographic earned him a fieldwork scholarship that entailed a visit to the Vologda province to study their traditional criminal jurisprudence and religion. The folk art there and the spiritual study seemed to stir latent longings. Still, Kandinsky married his cousin, Anna Chimyakina, in 1892 and took up a position on the Moscow Faculty of Law, managing an art-printing works on the side.
But two events effected his abrupt change of career in 1896: seeing an exhibition of French Impressionists in Moscow the previous year, especially Claude Monet's Haystacks at Giverny, which was his first experience of nonrepresentational art; and then hearing Wagner's Lohengrin at the Bolshoi Theatre. Kandinsky chose to abandon his law career and move to Munich (he had learned German from his maternal grandmother as a child) to devote himself full-time to the study of art.
In Munich, Kandinsky was accepted into a prestigious private painting school, moving on to the Munich Academy of Arts. But much of his study was self-directed. He began with conventional themes and art forms, but all the while he was forming theories derived from devoted spiritual study and informed by an intense relationship between music and color. These theories coalesced through the first decade of the 20th century, leading him toward his ultimate status as the father of abstract art.
Color became more an expression of emotion rather than a faithful description of nature or subject matter. He formed friendships and artist groups with other painters of the time, such as Paul Klee. He frequently exhibited, taught art classes and published his ideas on theories of art.
During this time he met art student Gabriele Münter in 1903 and moved in with her before his divorce from his wife was finalized in 1911. They traveled extensively, settling in Bavaria before the outbreak of World War I.
He had already formed the New Artists Association in Munich; the Blue Rider group was founded with fellow artist Franz Marc, and he was a member of the Bauhaus movement alongside Klee and composer Arnold Schoenberg.
World War I took Kandinsky back to Russia, where his artistic eye was influenced by the constructivist movement, based on hard lines, dots and geometry. While there, the 50-year-old Kandinsky met the decades-younger Nina Andreevskaya, the daughter of a general in the Russian army, and married her. They had a son together, but the boy lived for only three years and the subject of children became taboo. The couple stayed on in Russia after the revolution, with Kandinsky applying his restless and comprehensive energies to the administration of educational and government-run art programs, helping to create Moscow’s Institute of Artistic Culture and Museum of Pictorial Culture.
Back in Germany after clashing theoretically with other artists, he taught at the Bauhaus school in Berlin and wrote plays and poems. In 1933, when the Nazis seized power, storm troopers shut down the Bauhaus school. Although Kandinsky had achieved German citizenship, World War II made it impossible for him to stay there. In July 1937, he and other artists were featured in the “Degenerate Art Exhibition” in Munich. It was widely attended, but 57 of his works were confiscated by the Nazis.
Kandinsky died of cerebrovascular disease in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, on December 13, 1944.
He and Nina had moved to the suburb of Paris in the late 1930s, when Marcel Duchamp had found a little apartment for them. When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Kandinsky fled to the Pyrenees, but returned to Neuilly afterward, where he lived a rather secluded life, depressed that his paintings weren’t selling. Although still considered controversial by many, he had earned prominent supporters such as Solomon Guggenheim and continued to exhibit till his death.
Little of the work Kandinsky produced in Russia has survived, although many of the paintings he created in Germany are still extant. The New York auction houses continue to do him proud today—in recent years, his artwork has sold for well over $20 million. Kandinsky believed that each time period puts its own indelible stamp on artistic expression; his vivid interpretations of color through musical and spiritual sensibilities certainly altered the artistic landscape at the start of the 20th century going forward, precipitating the modern age.
Alina 2018-06-21 14:05:00 painters biographies
Born on March 23, 1887, in Madrid, Spain, Juan Gris began his artistic career as an illustrator. He became influenced by the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque after moving to Paris and was hailed as one of the movement's leaders during World War I. Gris later designed costumes and sets for a ballet company before dying of renal failure at age 40 in Boulogne-sur-Seine, France.
José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez was born on March 23, 1887, in Madrid, Spain. After studying mathematics, physics, engineering and mechanical drafting at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904, he embarked on a career as a professional illustrator under the name Juan Gris. He settled permanently in Paris in September 1906, where he met another gifted Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso.
Gris continued to submit illustrations to publications for several years, but he became heavily influenced by the paintings of Picasso and Georges Braque, the creators of Cubism. Devoting significant energy to his own painting after 1910, Gris initially produced works in the Analytic Cubist style, with his use of linear grids and lucid depictions. His Homage to Picasso was among the paintings exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1912, and that same year he signed a contract that gave German art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler exclusive rights to his work.
Gris's focus soon drifted to Synthetic Cubism, a style marked by a more expansive use of colors and the addition of collage and other materials. The outbreak of World War I disrupted his business relationship with Kahnweiler, but Gris received financial help from writer Gertrude Stein, and he signed a new contract with French dealer Léonce Rosenberg in 1916.
Gris assumed a leading role within the Cubist movement during this time, producing paintings such as The Man from Touraine (1918), which were associated with a sense of classical order. He was awarded his first major solo exhibition at Rosenberg's Galerie l'Effort Moderne in Paris in 1919, but was slowed the following year by an undiagnosed illness that may have been pulmonary tuberculosis.
Along with his painting, Gris designed costumes and sets for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and illustrated texts for Stein and other friends in the 1920s. He enjoyed increased public acclaim and financial security during this period but was unable to bask in his success for long due to declining health. Gris died of renal failure on May 11, 1927, in Boulogne-sur-Seine, France.
"Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought. It is possible to invent a technique or a manner independently, but one cannot invent the whole complexity of a state of mind."
Alina 2018-06-20 14:05:00 painters biographies
Born on November 24, 1864, in Albi, France, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec pursued painting as a youth and went on to create innovations in lithograph drawing. He became highly famed for his posters, influenced by Japanese styles and Impressionist Edgar Degas, and for imbuing marginalized populations with humanity in his art, including sex workers, as seen in his 1896 print series Elles. Other notable works include At the Moulin Rouge and The Streetwalker. Consumed by heavy drinking and suffering from various illnesses, he died on September 9, 1901, at the age of 36.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born into the aristocracy on November 24, 1864, in Albi, France. His parents, Adèle and Alphonse, were first cousins said to be descended from previous instances of family inbreeding, and as such Toulouse-Latrec and his cousins suffered related physical ailments. Both of Toulouse-Lautrec’s femurs were fractured during his teens, a condition believed to have contributed to his later height, with the young man reaching a height just above 4 1/2 feet, having a full-length torso with shortened legs and walking with the use of a cane. (It has been hypothesized he suffered from pycnodysostosis — also known as Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome — though others have questioned this.) He would also endure painful toothaches and facial deformities during his life as well.
Yet Toulouse-Lautrec, like other members of his family, would find solace in the world of art, taking up sketching before reaching his adolescence and honing his craft during his long periods of recuperation from health issues. He attended the Lycée Fontanes in Paris for a time in the early 1870s, and later studied with René Princetau and John Lewis Brown. These artists focused on animal portraiture and thus influenced some of Toulouse-Lautrec’s sensibilities later in his career. In 1882, Toulouse-Lautrec decided to study under Léon Bonnat before working under Fernand Cormon the following year.
Some of Toulouse-Lautrec’s most well-known works include the print The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge and the paintings At the Moulin Rouge (in which the artist depicted himself in a group mix) and Rousse, showing a woman in a café. As opposed to many of his contemporaries, art critics have pointed out that Toulouse-Lautrec was also known for his humanistic, realistic depictions of women, eschewing fantasy to accurately reflect the circumstances of many of the people he came to know.
Many of his pieces also captured sex workers in moments beyond erotic objectification. This idea was seen in Toulouse-Lautrec’s famed 1896 brothel series of prints, Elles, as well as in the 1897 painting Woman Before a Mirror.
“Lautrec presents her neither as a moralizing symbol nor a romantic heroine, but rather as a flesh-and-blood woman . . . as capable of joy or sadness as anyone,” said Cora Michael, curator of prints and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in reference to the latter work. “Indeed, the directness and honesty of the picture testify to Lautrec’s love of women, whether fabulous or fallen, and demonstrates his generosity and sympathy toward them.”
In 1884, Toulouse-Lautrec moved to the Montmartre section of Paris, an area known for its bohemian life, which included live musical performances, bars and brothels. He created art to accompany the music of singer/composer Bruant, who also owned a cabaret where Toulouse-Lautrec was able to showcase his pieces. Over time, Toulouse-Lautrec built a stellar reputation with his depictions of regular Montmartre denizens and celebrities. Some of his most prominent subjects included the stage star Yvette Guilbert, as well as dancers like Jane Avril and Loïe Fuller, with the latter known for her luminous, skirt-swirling dancing.
Toulouse-Lautrec created works on canvas yet also chose to display his work in the more popular medium of posters, thus becoming a highly sought after creative force known for his unique style. He was greatly influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock printmaking as well as by fellow artist and Impressionist Edgar Degas, who lived nearby at one point.
Though presenting himself as a witty, fun man about town, Toulouse-Lautrec suffered greatly due to his physical ailments as well as past family trauma, with his father never accepting his son’s decision to become a professional artist. He had also contracted syphilis, which further impacted his health. As he had for much of his adult life, Toulouse-Lautrec turned to alcohol to deal with his pain and would ultimately drink himself into oblivion. He had a nervous breakdown in 1899 after his mother, whom he was close to, decided to leave Paris, and the artist was committed to a sanitarium for several months.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec died on September 9, 1901, at the Château Malromé in Saint-André-du-Bois at 36 years old, leaving behind more than 700 canvas paintings, 350 prints and posters and 5,000 drawings, among other works. As such, he is seen as a seminal pioneer to a number of movements, including the world of pop art, and is an early forerunner to later icons like Andy Warhol. In 1994, the biography Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life was published, written by scholar Julia Frey, adding prose to an array of art publications on his work.
Alina 2018-06-18 14:05:00 painters biographies
Joseph Mallord William Turner, better known as J.M.W. Turner, was born on April 23, 1775, in Covent Garden, London, England. A sickly child, Turner was sent to live with his uncle in rural England, and it was during this period that he began his artistic career. As a landscape painter, Turner brought luminosity and Romantic imagery to his subjects. His work—initially realistic—became more fluid and poetic, and is now regarded as a predecessor to Impressionism. Turner died on December 19, 1851, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, England.
Joseph Mallord William Turner was born circa April 23, 1775, in Covent Garden, London, England. His father, a wig-maker and barber, supported the family through his wife’s struggles with mental illness, a condition worsened by the death of Turner’s younger sister in 1786.
Turner was sent to live with an uncle in nearby Brentford in 1785 but returned to Covent Garden by the end of the decade. Although he received little formal schooling, Turner was clearly a talented artist, and by age 13 he was selling drawings that were featured at his father's shop. The Royal Academy of Arts admitted Turner in late 1789, and the following year he was given the chance to display his work in the Royal Academy Exhibition.
In 1793, the Royal Society of Arts awarded the 17-year-old the “Great Silver Pallet” for landscape drawing. Turner soon earned a steady income through a variety of artistic endeavors, including selling designs to engravers, coloring sketches and providing private lessons. Among the artists who influenced his works during this period were Thomas Gainsborough, Henry Fuseli, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, Michael Angelo Rooker and Richard Wilson.
Turner began traveling through Europe extensively and was particularly inspired by his visits to Venice. His initial efforts reflected his training as a topographic draftsman and resulted in realistic depictions of landscapes, but over the years he developed his own style. Known as the “Painter of Light,” he created scenes of luminous imagery using brilliant colors. His works -- watercolors, oil paintings and engravings -- are now regarded as a predecessor to Impressionism.
In 1807, Turner accepted a position as professor of perspective at the Royal Academy, where he lectured until 1828. He grew increasingly eccentric and secretive, avoiding contact with virtually everyone except for his father, and was embittered when Queen Victoria passed him over for knighthood. Turner continued to hold exhibitions but begrudgingly sold his paintings, the loss of each one catapulting him into a prolonged state of dejection.
Despite his unusual behavior, Turner continued to produce great works of art. Though he is best known for his oil paints, he is also considered one of the founders of English watercolor landscape painting. His famous works include Dido Building Carthage (1815), The Grand Canal, Venice (1835), Peace - Burial at Sea (1842) and Rain, Steam and Speed (1844).
Turner exhibited his works for the last time in 1850. He produced thousands of pieces over the course of his career; approximately 2,000 paintings became the property of private collectors, while another 19,000 drawings and sketches and nearly 300 finished and unfinished oil paintings were left behind at two studios
Although Turner never married, he fathered two daughters, Eveline and Georgiana. Their mother was assumed to be Mrs. Sarah Danby, the widow of a London composer. However, many believed the children’s mother was actually Mrs. Danby’s niece, Hannah, who was employed by Turner as a housekeeper.
The artist died on December 19, 1851, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, England. His will allocated generous sums to Hannah Danby and to programs to support what he called "decaying artists," although relatives successfully contested the funding of those programs through litigation. Turner also bequeathed a large collection of paintings to his country, and at his request he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
