Alina 2018-08-21 17:05:00 painters biographies
Born on June 8, 1829, in Southampton, England, John Everett Millais was an artistic prodigy who studied in London and went on to co-found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with his peers. Millais became renowned for works like Lorenzo and Isabella and Blind Girl, even while facing critiques over his style. He also specialized in landscape and portraiture work. He died on August 13, 1896.
Alina 2018-08-20 17:05:00 painters biographies
Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy in 1884. He began to study painting at age 14 and displayed immense talent. In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, which was the avant-garde center of Europe at that time. There, amid some of the brightest lights of the artistic community, he began to develop his own unique style, as seen in the sculptures and portraits he created during this period. However, throughout his life, Modigliani was plagued by poor health, made worse by his often self-destructive habits. In 1920, he died in Paris at the age of 35.
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy, on July 12, 1884. His parents were Jewish money-changers who had fallen on hard times and had to raise Modigliani and his three older siblings in impoverished conditions. A sickly child, Modigliani was taught at home primarily by his mother who exposed him to literature, philosophy and art, for which he developed a strong and early passion. In 1898, after he had recovered from one his frequent bouts of poor health, his mother arranged for him to study painting with local master Guglielmo Micheli, who instructed Modigliani in the fundamentals of classical art. His young student displayed such immense talent that Micheli often referred to him admiringly as “Superman.”
Unfortunately, in 1900, Modigliani’s studies were interrupted when he contracted tuberculosis, and his mother took him to recuperate in southern Italy. Though he was frequently too weak to work during this time, Modigliani furthered his artistic education through visits to the many museums of Rome and Naples, and when his health improved the following year, he was able to move to Florence to study figure drawing. In 1903, he moved to Venice, where he was enrolled at the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti. In Venice, Modigliani’s talents as an artist continued to grow, but so did his appetites, and he was soon drinking heavily and smoking hash.
In 1906, Modigliani left Italy for Paris, which was then the thriving hub of the European avant-garde world. He studied at Académie Colarossi and settled in an artist commune in the Montmartre section of the city. He threw himself feverishly into his work, which by this time showed the influence of French painters such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Cézanne. His became associates with other artists, including Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and poet Max Jacob, which morphed what was once a more traditional artistic style into a fusion of many and eventually evolved into something bold and unique. Rejecting more than artistic convention, he also persevered in his self-destructive intake of drugs and alcohol and became involved in numerous love affairs.
But despite his prolific output, neither a 1906 gallery exhibition nor the inclusion of several of his paintings—including The Jewess—in the Salon des Indépendants of 1908 generated any widespread interest in Modigliani’s work, and he was often forced to exchange it for basic necessities. However, he was saved from utter destitution by the steady patronage of a young doctor named Paul Alexandre, who appears in several of Modigliani’s portraits from that period. In 1909, Modigliani’s prospects were further bolstered by his introduction to sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, who introduced him to tribal art. Brâncuși’s revelation can be seen in the African-influenced sculptures that Modigliani would display at the Salon d’Automne in 1912, elongated stone heads that are now considered among his most important work.
The eruption of World War I in 1914 marked the beginning of yet another difficult period for Modigliani, whose perpetually poor health was exacerbated by his continued substance abuse and tumultuous romantic life. However, he produced much of his finest work during this time. Bringing with him the bold lines and geometric abstraction that he had mastered in his sculptures, Modigliani returned to painting portraits, rendering his subjects—which featured the people from his neighborhood, the women who passed through his life and his many friends among the Parisian artistic community—with lines that were bold but simple and masklike faces that were simultaneously flat and evocative.
During the war, Modigliani also drew on his earlier training to create more than 30 female nudes in his new and distinctive style. Berthe Weill featured them in her gallery in late 1917 in what would be the only solo exhibition of Modigliani’s work held during his lifetime. However, Modigliani was given little time to exult in the honor, as the police caught wind of the exhibition and shut it down for “indecency” on the day that it opened.
In 1918, as the German army grew ever closer to Paris and Modigliani’s health continued to decline, he sought refuge in Nice with a young art student named Jeanne Hébuterne, with whom he had become involved the previous year. Their daughter, Jeanne, was born that November. Modigliani’s work from this period—which frequently features Hébuterne—shows a brighter palette and softer lines, perhaps reflecting his more peaceful frame of mind.
But whatever serenity Modigliani might have been experiencing, it would be short-lived. Due to his worsening health, he returned to Paris in 1919 and began a rapid decline. He died of tubercular meningitis on January 24, 1920, while Hébuterne held him in her arms. She in turn was so distraught that, despite being nine months pregnant, she threw herself from a fifth-story window, killing herself and their unborn child.
Modigliani’s embodiment of the self-destructive artist eclipsed his work until after his death; he has since been the focus of several films. With time, his importance and well-deserved place in the history of modern art has come to be recognized, and he is considered among the greatest of his era.
Alina 2018-08-19 17:05:00 painters biographies
László Moholy-Nagy was born July 20, 1895 in Bacsbarsod, Hungary. In 1923 he took charge of the metal workshop of the Bauhaus. As a painter and photographer he worked predominantly with light. His “photograms” were composed directly on film, and his “light modulators” included mobile light effects. In the 1930s he moved to Chicago, where he organized and headed the New Bauhaus.
Alina 2018-08-18 17:05:00 painters biographies
Dutch painter Piet Mondrian began his career firmly rooted in the representational form, favoring naturalistic and impressionistic landscapes. His style was influenced by Picasso and Braque as it morphed into his signature non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. It was through this form that he became an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement.
Alina 2018-08-17 17:05:00 painters biographies
Born in 1863 in Löten, Norway, famed painter Edvard Munch established a free-flowing, psychological-themed style all his own. His painting "The Scream" ("The Cry"; 1893), is one of the most recognizable works in the history of art. His later works proved to be less intense, but his earlier, darker paintings ensured his legacy. A testament to his importance, "The Scream" sold for more than $119 million in 2012—setting a new record.
Edvard Munch was born on December 12, 1863, in Löten, Norway, the second of five children. In 1864, Munch moved with his family to the city of Oslo, where his mother died four years later of tuberculosis—he beginning of a series of familial tragedies in Munch's life: His sister, Sophie, also died of tuberculosis, in 1877 at the age of 15; another of his sisters spent most of her life institutionalized for mental illness; and his only brother died of pneumonia at age 30.
In 1879, Munch began attending a technical college to study engineering, but left only a year later when his passion for art overtook his interest in engineering. In 1881, he enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design. The following year, he rented a studio with six other artists and entered his first show, at the Industries and Art Exhibition.
Three years of study and practice later, Munch received a scholarship and traveled to Paris, France, where he spent three weeks. After returning to Oslo, he began working on new paintings, one of which was "The Sick Child," which he would finish in 1886. In what would be seen as the first work to represent Munch’s break from the realist style, the painting symbolically captures intense emotion on the canvas—specifically depicting his feelings about the death of his sister nearly nine years earlier.
From 1889 (the year his father died) to 1892, Munch lived mainly in France—funded by state scholarships—embarking on the most productive, as well as the most troubled, period of his artistic life. It was during this period that Munch undertook a series of paintings he called the "Frieze of Life," ultimately encompassing 22 works for a 1902 Berlin exhibition. With paintings bearing such titles as "Despair" (1892), "Melancholy" (c. 1892–93), "Anxiety" (1894), "Jealousy" (1894–95) and "The Scream" (also known as "The Cry")—the last of which, painted in 1893, would go on to become one of the most famous paintings ever produced—Munch’s mental state was on full display, and his style varied greatly, depending on which emotion had taken hold of him at the time. The collection was a huge success, and Munch soon became known to the art world. Subsequently, he found brief happiness in a life otherwise colored by excessive drinking, family misfortune and mental distress.
Success wasn't enough to tame Munch's inner demons for long, however, and as the 1900s began, his drinking spun out of control. In 1908, hearing voices and suffering from paralysis on one side, he collapsed and soon checked himself into a private sanitarium, where he drank less and regained some mental composure. In the spring of 1909, he checked out, eager to get back to work, but as history would show, most of his great works were behind him.
Munch moved to a country house in Ekely (near Oslo), Norway, where he lived in isolation and began painting landscapes. He nearly died of influenza in the pandemic of 1918-19, but recovered and would survive for more than two decades thereafter (he died at his country home in Ekley on January 23, 1944). Munch painted right up to his death, often depicting his deteriorating condition and various physical maladies in his work.
In May 2012, Munch's "The Scream" went on the auction block, selling at Sotheby's in New York for more than $119 million—a record-breaking price—sealing its reputation as one of the most famous and important works of art ever produced.
Alina 2018-08-16 17:05:00 painters biographies
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was baptized on January 1, 1618 in Seville, Spain. He became the most popular Baroque religious painter of 17-century Spain, noted for paintings like Immaculate Conception (1652). The softly modeled forms, rich colors, and broad brushwork of his later paintings were influenced by 16-century Flemish painters. Murillo was praised (and copied) throughout the Spanish empire.
Alina 2018-08-15 17:05:00 painters biographies
Maxfield Parrish was born on July 25, 1870 in Philadelphia. Trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Drexel Institute of Art, he was the highest-paid commercial artist and muralist in the U.S. by the 1920s. He is best known for his depictions of fantasy landscapes populated by attractive young women. He died in 1966.
Alina 2018-08-14 17:05:00 painters biographies
American painter Charles Willson Peale was born on April 15, 1741, in Chester, Maryland. His father, a convicted felon, died when Peale was 8 years old, which left the family impoverished. Peale started his own saddler business at age 20, and when he accumulated debt he began painting miniature portraits to earn money. His talent flourished and during the Revolution he painted more than a dozen portraits of George Washington. In his lifetime he devoted himself to the arts, founding the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Peale died February 27, 1827, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
