El Giorgio Fine Art

2012-02-11T11:49:00.001+02:00

Art Quotes

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things

Henri Matisse

Biography of Paul Cezanne

2012-01-19T18:57:00.001+02:00

Paul Cézanne was a French painter, often called the father of modern art, who strove to develop an ideal synthesis of naturalistic representation, personal expression, and abstract pictorial order.

Cézanne was born in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence, January 19, 1839, the son of a wealthy banker. His boyhood companion was émile Zola, who later gained fame as a novelist and man of letters. As did Zola, Cézanne developed artistic interests at an early age, much to the dismay of his father. In 1862, after a number of bitter family disputes, the aspiring artist was given a small allowance and sent to study art in Paris, where Zola had already gone. From the start he was drawn to the more radical elements of the Parisian art world. He especially admired the romantic painter Eugène Delacroix and, among the younger masters, Gustave Courbet and the notorious Edouard Manet, who exhibited realist paintings that were shocking in both style and subject matter to most of their contemporaries.

Many of Cézanne's early works were painted in dark tones applied with heavy, fluid pigment, suggesting the moody, romantic expressionism of previous generations. Just as Zola pursued his interest in the realist novel, however, Cézanne also gradually developed a commitment to the representation of contemporary life, painting the world he observed without concern for thematic idealization or stylistic affectation.

The most significant influence on the work of his early maturity proved to be Camille Pissarro, an older but as yet unrecognized painter who lived with his large family in a rural area outside Paris. Pissarro not only provided the moral encouragement that the insecure Cézanne required, but he also introduced him to the new impressionist technique for rendering outdoor light.

Along with the painters Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and a few others, Pissarro had developed a painting style that involved working outdoors (en plein air) rapidly and on a reduced scale, employing small touches of pure color, generally without the use of preparatory sketches or linear outlines. In such a manner Pissarro and the others hoped to capture the most transient natural effects as well as their own passing emotional states as the artists stood before nature. Under Pissarro's tutelage, and within a very short time during 1872-73, Cézanne shifted from dark tones to bright hues and began to concentrate on scenes of farmland and rural villages.

Although he seemed less technically accomplished than the other impressionists, Cézanne was accepted by the group and exhibited with them in 1874 and 1877. In general the impressionists did not have much commercial success, and Cézanne's works received the harshest critical commentary. He drifted away from many of his Parisian contacts during the late 1870s and '80s and spent much of his time in his native Aix. After 1882, he did not work closely again with Pissarro. In 1886, Cézanne became embittered over what he took to be thinly disguised references to his own failures in one of Zola's novels. As a result he broke off relations with his oldest supporter. In the same year, he inherited his father's wealth and finally, at the age of 47, became financially independent, but socially he remained quite isolated.

Cézanne's goal was, in his own mind, never fully attained. He left most of his works unfinished and destroyed many others. He complained of his failure at rendering the human figure, and indeed the great figural works of his last years—such as the Large Bathers(circa 1899-1906, Museum of Art, Philadelphia)—reveal curious distortions that seem to have been dictated by the rigor of the system of color modulation he imposed on his own representations. The succeeding generation of painters, however, eventually came to be receptive to nearly all of Cézanne's idiosyncrasies. Cézanne's heirs felt that the naturalistic painting of impressionism had become formularized, and a new and original style, however difficult it might be, was needed to return a sense of sincerity and commitment to modern art.

For many years Cézanne was known only to his old impressionist colleagues and to a few younger radical postimpressionist artists, including the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and the French painter Paul Gauguin. In 1895, however, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious Paris art dealer, arranged a show of Cézanne's works and over the next few years promoted them successfully. By 1904, Cézanne was featured in a major official exhibition, and by the time of his death (in Aix on October 22, 1906) he had attained the status of a legendary figure. During his last years many younger artists traveled to Aix to observe him at work and to receive any words of wisdom he might offer. Both his style and his theory remained mysterious and cryptic; he seemed to some a naive primitive, while to others he was a sophisticated master of technical procedure. The intensity of his color, coupled with the apparent rigor of his compositional organization, signaled to most that, despite the artist's own frequent despair, he had synthesized the basic expressive and representational elements of painting in a highly original manner.

2012-01-03T19:33:00.001+02:00

Art Quotes

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Pablo Picasso

Biography of Edvard Munch

2011-12-12T11:39:00.001+02:00

The Norwegian painter and graphic artist Edvard Munch illustrated man's emotional life in love and death. His art was a major influence of the expressionist movement, in which where artists sought to give rise to emotional responses.

Early life

Born on December 12, 1863, in Loieten, near Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, Edvard Munch was the son of a military doctor. Childhood experiences with death and sickness—both his mother and sister died of tuberculosis (an often-fatal disease that attacks the lungs and bones)—greatly influenced his emotional and intellectual development. This and his father's fanatic Christianity led Munch to view his life as dominated by the "twin black angels of insanity and disease."
After studying engineering, Munch soon turned to art. In 1880 Munch began to study art and joined the realist painters (school of painters who sought to depict their subjects as realistically as possible) and writers of the Kristiania bohemian (fashionable and unconventional) circle. His ideas were strongly influenced at this time by the writer Hans Jaeger (1854–1910), who sought to establish an ideal society based on materialist atheism (not believing in material wealth) and free love. Jaeger's hopeless love affair with the wife of Christian Krohg, leader of the bohemian painters, and Munch's own brief affairs caused him to intensify the connection he saw between women, love, and death.
Munch's paintings during the 1880s were dominated by his desire to use the artistic vocabulary of realism to create subjective content, or content open to interpretation of the viewer. His Sick Child (1885–1886), which used a motif (dominant theme) popular among Norwegian realist artists, created through color a mood of depression that served as a memorial to his dead sister. Because of universal critical rejection, Munch turned briefly to a more mainstream style, and through the large painting Spring (1889), a more academic version of the Sick Child, he obtained state support for study in France.

A change

After studying briefly at a Parisian art school, Munch began to explore the possibilities made available by the French postimpressionists, a movement that looked to push impressionism beyond its limitations. The death of his father in 1889 caused a major spiritual crisis, and he soon rejected Jaeger's philosophy. Munch's Night in St. Cloud (1890) embodied a renewed interest in spiritual content; this painting served as a memorial to his father by presenting the artist's dejected state of mind. He summarized his intentions, saying "I paint not what I see, but what I saw," and identified his paintings as "symbolism: nature viewed through a temperament" (manner of thinking). Both statements accent the transformation of nature as the artist experienced it.

In 1892 the Berlin Artists' Association, an official organization consisting primarily of German academic artists, invited Munch to exhibit in Berlin, Germany. His paintings created a major scandal in Germany's artistic capital, and the exhibition was closed. But Munch used the publicity to arrange other exhibitions and sell paintings; his art prospered and he decided to stay in Germany. He also began work on a series of paintings later entitled the Frieze of Life, which concentrated on the themes of love, anxiety, and death.
To make his work accessible to a larger public, Munch began making prints (works of art that could be easily copied) in 1894. Motifs for his prints were usually derived from his paintings, particularly the Frieze. The Frieze also served as the inspiration for the paintings he made for Max Linde (1904), Max Reinhardt's Kammerspielhaus (1907), and the Freia Chocolate Factory in Oslo (1922).

Later years

Following a nervous breakdown, Munch entered a hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1908. In the lithograph (a type of print) series Alpha and Omega he depicted his love affairs and his relationship to friends and enemies. In 1909 he returned to Norway to lead an isolated life. He sought new artistic motifs in the Norwegian landscape and in the activities of farmers and laborers. A more optimistic view of life briefly replaced his former anxiety, and this new life view attained monumental expression in the murals of the Oslo University Aula (1911–1914).
During World War I (1914–18), when Germany led forces against the forces of much of Europe and the United States, Munch returned to his earlier motifs of love and death. Symbolic paintings and prints appeared side by side with stylized studies of landscapes and nudes during the 1920s. As a major project, never completed, he began to illustrate Henrik Ibsen's (1828–1906) plays. During his last years, plagued by partial blindness, Munch edited the diaries written in his youth and painted harsh self-portraits and memories of his earlier life. He died in Ekely outside Oslo on January 23, 1944.

Biography of Wassily Kandinsky

2011-12-04T11:43:00.001+02:00

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (Born 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866–13 December 1944) was one of the great masters of modern art, as well as the outstanding representative of pure abstract painting (using only colors and forms) that dominated the first half of the twentieth century.

Early years in Russia

Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 4, 1866, in Moscow, Russia. His father was a tea merchant. When he was five years old the family moved to Odessa, Russia. The young Kandinsky drew, wrote poems, and played the piano and the cello. Because his family was fond of traveling, Kandinsky got to see the Italian cities of Venice, Rome, and Florence as a young boy. He was also influenced by the imposing Muscovite (from Moscow) buildings such as the Kremlin.

Between 1886 and 1892 Kandinsky studied law and economics at the University of Moscow. In 1889 he was a member of a team formed to study the life of the people in the Vologda district in northwestern Russia. He was highly impressed by their folk art and the interior decorations of the village houses. The use of forms and colors became an influence in his art. In 1893 he accepted a position on the university's law faculty.

Beginnings as an artist

It was not until 1896, when Kandinsky was thirty years old, that he decided to become an artist. His artistic development was shaped greatly by an exhibition of French impressionist painters that was shown in Moscow in 1895. The impressionists used values of color and light to show their subjects rather than painting in fine detail. The works of Claude Monet (1840–1926) attracted Kandinsky's attention. In Monet's paintings the subject matter played a secondary role to color. It was as though reality and fairy tale were intermixed. That was the secret of Kandinsky's early work, which was based on folk art, and it remained so even as his work became more complex.
The year 1910 was crucial for Kandinsky and for the art world. Kandinsky produced his first abstract watercolor. In that work all elements of representation (the actual look of a subject) seem to have disappeared. In continuing his early abstract works he used strong straight-line strokes combined with powerful patches of color.

Return to Russia

When World War I (1914–18; a war in which Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Japan fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, and the United States) broke out, Kandinsky returned to Russia. In 1917 he married Nina Andreewsky. During the Russian Revolution (1917), which overthrew the czar, the ruler of Russia, the artist held an important post at the Commissariat (government bureau) of Popular Culture and at the Academy in Moscow. He organized twenty-two museums and became the director of the Museum of Pictorial Culture. In 1920 he was appointed professor at the University of Moscow. The following year he founded the Academy of Arts and Sciences and became its vice president. At the end of that year, the Soviet attitude toward art changed, and Kandinsky left Russia.

Years in Germany and France

In 1922 Kandinsky became a professor at the Bauhaus (a school of art, architecture, and design) in Weimar, Germany. His art from about 1920 to 1924 has been called his architectural period because the shapes he used were more precise than before. There are points, straight or broken lines, single or in bunches, and snakelike, radiating segments of circles. The color is cooler, and more subdued (softer, quieter).
Kandinsky became a German citizen in 1928. In 1929 Kandinsky held his first oneman show in Paris, France, and traveled to Belgium and the French Riviera. In 1930 he had another exhibition in Paris. In 1931 he produced wall decorations for a large architectural exhibition that was held in Berlin, Germany. When the Bauhaus closed in 1932, Kandinsky moved to Berlin. A year after that he moved to Paris.
From 1927 to 1933, Kandinsky's paintings were characterized by abundant use of pictorial (like real pictures) signs and softer color. This is called his romantic or concrete period. It led to the last phase of his art, spent in France, which was a synthesis (blending) of his previous periods. The paintings of his Paris period have splendid color, rich invention, and delightful humor. In 1939 Kandinsky became a French citizen. He died on December 13, 1944, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

Kandinsky is still greatly admired today for his own paintings and for being the originator of abstract art. He invented a language of abstract forms with which he replaced the forms of nature. He wanted to mirror the universe in his own visionary world. He felt that painting possessed the same power as music and that sign, line, and color ought to correspond to the vibrations of the human soul.

2011-12-01T13:37:00.001+02:00

Art Quotes

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist

Schumann

Biography of François-Auguste-René Rodin

2011-11-12T13:12:00.002+02:00

The French sculptor, illustrator, graphic artist, and painter François Auguste René Rodin was born on November 12, 1840 in Paris. He is considered to be the founder of Impressionist style in the art of the sculpture. During his studies at the École Impériale Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématiques (called La Petite École) in the years 1854 – 1857, Rodin attended classes by Lecoq de Boisbaudran and Jean-Baptiste Belloc. After he discovered his interest in sculpting, he made three attempts to be accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts, but failed the entrance examination.

In the following years, the artist worked for various decorators and decoration painters. When his sister Maria died in 1862, Auguste Rodin fell into a personal crisis and joined the order of the Pères du Très-Saint Sacrament. However, the abbot soon encouraged him to devote his life to art. Starting in 1864, the artist worked for the sculptor Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1824 – 1887) and was his student. That same year, he met his life companion Rose Beuret, who he did not marry until 1917. In 1870, Rodin followed Carrier-Belleuse to Brussels. However, the paths of the sculptors soon separated again after intense clashes. In the following period, Auguste Rodin accepted public commissions and worked as an assistant to the Belgian sculptor Antoine Joseph van Rasbourg (1831 – 1902). During the years 1875-76, he took a trip to Italy in order to study the works of Michelangelo and Donatello. Rodin succeeded in his breakthrough as a sculptor with "The Age of Bronze" (1876). In order to study the Gothic cathedrals, he traveled through France in 1877 and published the treatise "Les Cathédrales de France", which contains his studies of architectural details and observations about the Gothic style in 1914. From 1879 – December 1882, the artist worked in the porcelain factory in Sèvres. During this time, he received the state commission for "The Gates of Hell", the portal for the Musée des Arts décortaifs in Paris with the theme of "Dante’s Inferno". Although the work on it lasted until Rodin‘s death, it could not be completed.

The figures "The Kiss", "Ugolino", "Adam", "Eve", and "The Thinker" are seen as independent works. In 1883, Auguste Rodin met the French sculptress Camille Claudel (1864 – 1943), who was initially his student and his mistress until 1898. In 1885, he received the commission for the bronze figure group "The Burghers of Calais" (erected in 1895). Another state commission followed in 1889 for the sculpture of Victor Hugo (unfinished) for the Pantheon and the sculpture of Claude Lorraine (erected in 1892 in Nancy). In addition, Rodin received the commission for a monument of Honoré de Balzac (1892 – 97) in 1891 from the Société the Gens de Lettres. In 1894, the artist moved to Meudon. During the following period, he participated in many exhibitions (Prague, Düsseldorf, Paris, Vienna, Leipzig, Tokyo, New York, Lyon, etc.) and received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Glasgow (1906) and Oxford (1907). He also participated in the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 with 171 works. In the years 1905-06, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926) worked as Auguste Rodin’s private secretary and wrote a biography of the artist. In 1907, the sculptor moved into his city studio at the Hôtel Biron, where he lived until his death. Because three of his works were given as gifts to the French state (1916), it was possible to open the Musée Rodin here in 1919. François Auguste René Rodin died on November 17, 1917 in Meudon.

2011-11-01T20:24:00.002+02:00

Art Quotes

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

Biography of Nikos Engonopoulos

2011-10-21T10:54:00.003+03:00

Nikos Engonopoulos (October 21, 1907 – October 31, 1985) was a modernGreek painter and poet. He is one of the most important members of the Greek Generation of the '30s as well as a major representative of the surrealistic movement in Greece. His work as a writer also includes critique and essays.

Biography

Nikos Engonopoulos was born in Athens in 1907 and was the second son of Panaghiotis and Errietti (Henrietta) Engonopoulos. During the summer of 1914 when Nikos Engonopoulos family went on a trip toConstantinople his family was obliged to settle there, due to the outbreak of World War I. In 1923, he was enrolled in a lycée in Paris, where he studied for a period of four years. After his return to Greece, he served as a private in the 1st Infantry Regiment. Later on he worked as a translator in a bank and as a secretary at the University of Athens. In 1930 Engonopoulos was employed as a designer in the Urban Planning Department of the Greek Ministry of Public Works.

In 1932 he joined the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he studied under the supervision of Konstantinos Parthenis. He also attended classes at the art studio of Photios Kontoglou. During that time he met important artists, the poet Andreas Embirikos and painters such as Yannis Tsarouchis,Giorgio de Chirico and Yannis Moralis.

His first paintings, mostly temperas on paper depicting old houses, were presented at an Art of Modern Greek Tradition exhibition, organised in January 1938. Soon after the exhibition, he published translations of poems by Tristan Tzara, which were published in February. A few months later, his first collection of poems (Do Not Distract the Driver) was published, followed by a second one (The Clavicembalos of Silence) the next year. Overall he is considered one of the finest surrealist poets of Greece.

His first individual exhibition was held in 1939. Three years later, he finished his most popular long poem Bolivar, a Greek Poem, inspired by the revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar and published in 1944. The poem was also released in the form of a song, in 1968, with music composed by Nikos Mamangakis.

He died of a heart attack in Athens in 1985.

Biography Nikos Engonopoulos

2011-10-21T10:54:00.000+03:00

Beuys returns to Schloss Moyland

2011-10-11T11:28:00.002+03:00

Museum risks €250,000 copyright fine

By Gareth Harris

The Museum Schloss Moyland in North Rhine-Westphalia, which houses the world’s largest Joseph Beuys collection, unveiled its refurbished interior last month. Photographs capturing a key 1960s performance by Beuys are, however, noticeably absent from the institution’s revamped displays. Eighteen photographs of the late German artist, taken during a performance in 1964 by Manfred Tischer, are not on view following a legal battle last year, though one image from this series will go on public display.

A German court ruled last year in favour of Eva Beuys, Joseph Beuys’ widow, in a trial concerning a 2009 exhibition at the Museum Schloss Moyland that included 19 photographs of Beuys taken by Tischer in 1964 (The Art Newspaper, November 2010). The Düsseldorf regional court ruled on 29 September 2010 that the museum breached the artist’s copyright and may not exhibit the images; the penalty for doing so is a potential fine of up to €250,000. The museum has appealed against the ruling; a decision is expected later this year.

A museum spokeswoman said the institution was able to show “one or two” images, as this constitutes “documentary photography of the action”. She added: “The Beuys estate didn’t want us to show the whole series because this ‘staccato’ could give a false impression of the real action.” The photographs document Beuys during the performance Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp ist ueberbewertet (Marcel Duchamp’s Silence Is Overrated), which he staged during a German television show. Beuys’ performance was not filmed and only Tischer’s photographs exist as a visual record. Beuys had granted Tischer permission to take the photographs but had apparently not authorised their display.

The disputed images are part of the museum’s 6,000-strong Beuys collection. “The Beuys estate gave permission to show other works [as part of the redesign], which are also published in the new museum guide,” said the spokeswoman.

The museum will present focal points of its collection in rotating exhibitions over three floors of the castle building which was redesigned by Hilmer & Sattler and Albrecht of Berlin.

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/

2011-10-04T15:10:00.002+03:00

Art Quotes

It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.

Kojiro Tomita

2011-09-01T10:09:00.002+03:00

Art Quotes

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Stealing the Mona Lisa

2011-08-27T12:18:00.003+03:00

Exactly 100 years later, a documentary film uncovers new insights into the theft of the masterpiece

By David D’Arcy

Some people believe Peruggia smuggled the Mona Lisa out of the Louvre under his smock. Director Joe Medeiros’ daughter Julie--who is approximately the same height as Peruggia, five-foot-three-inches--helps demonstrate why that is impossible

NEW YORK. On 21 August 1911, someone entered the Salon Carre of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, removed the Mona Lisa from the wall, unfastened the clamps holding the panel to its frame, and walked off. A painstaking police investigation followed, as newspapers fumed over such a brazen theft. Police failed to capture the thief until he tried to sell the painting in Florence more than two years later.

Stealing the Mona Lisa is the stuff of lore and legend. The daring theft of the world’s most famous painting was assumed to be the work of a savvy operator. Yet the truth was far different. Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was lifted by an immigrant housepainter, who didn’t know what to do with the painting once it was in his hands. The unglamorous facts of the case didn’t keep the crime from turning into a myth.

It fell to Joe Medeiros, the former head writer for “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”, to readdress the high-profile robbery in a new feature documentary, “The Missing Piece”. A first-time film-maker, Medeiros sets out to unravel the many theories that have fueled books about the crime.

That job also took decades for Medeiros. Learning of the theft years ago, he began a screenplay about it. Failing to complete it, he took other jobs and eventually signed on with Jay Leno and moved with the comedian to Los Angeles. When he retired from writing jokes, Medeiros, now 60, turned his obsession into a documentary. The film was not finished in time to be publicly released on the crime’s 21 August centennial, but copies were given to journalists.

In the first-person style of Michael Moore, Medeiros chases his subject. Unlike Moore, to whom people won’t talk, Medeiros finds people eager to discuss the Vincenzo Peruggia legend—authors of books on the theft, art historians and art cops, Louvre curators, and Peruggia’s 84-year-old daughter, Celestina, who lives in her father’s birthplace, the village of Dumenza, north of Milan near the French border. He died when she was two.

In a film that looks a lot like on-the-job training, familiar facts and new ones emerge. Peruggia wasn’t a suave charmer, but a housepainter of five feet three inches who joined a flood of Italians seeking work in France. His painting trade had already afflicted him with lead poisoning, which doctors said diminished his mental capacities and his judgement. He felt persecuted by anti-Italian sentiment in France at the time, and by the epithet “sale macaroni” (dirty macaroni).

Thanks to documents from the Paris archive, Medeiros reconstructs the theft itself—part plan, part opportunism. Entering the Salle Carre of the Louvre on a Monday, when the closed museum had only 12 guards on duty, Peruggia seems to have decided to steal the Mona Lisa, among other Italian paintings, because of its small size. Medeiros shows that Peruggia could not have hidden the painting under his white worker’s smock, as was assumed, but wrapped it up in the smock and walked out. At the time, signs were posted in French museums asking visitors to wake up guards who had fallen asleep.

One witness, a plumber, saw Peruggia in the gallery. Another saw him walk down the street and throw away a doorknob that fell off the gallery door, locking him inside for a time. His fingerprints were on the glass that covered the painting, but French police made no connection, despite Peruggia’s two prior arrests for minor infractions.

The French suspected German thieves. Some assumed that painting was sold to rich Americans in New York. Picasso, who sketched purloined objects, was questioned. His pal Apollinaire was locked up on suspicion. When Peruggia resurfaced more than two years later, he had teamed up with a Florentine dealer to sell the picture to the Uffizi for 500 thousand lire—more than $2m today. Once Uffizi specialists authenticated the work, Peruggia was arrested. At his trial in 1914, Italians rallied around the notion that a non-descript Everyman had stolen the Mona Lisa to return a pillaged work to Italy. Yet the picture had been bought from Leonardo by King Francis I of France. However, the patriotic Robin Hood myth lives on.

Italy returned the painting to France and a court sentenced Peruggia to one year and 15 days in prison. He would serve a bit more than seven months, far less that the two years that he later spent as an Austrian prisoner in the first world war.

“The Missing Piece” is an American movie, so a happy ending should be somewhere over the horizon. Peruggia’s daughter Celestina is in tears when her father’s letters, seized by police for the trial, reveal that Vincenzo hoped to make a killing on the theft and share the money with his family.

It was about money, and also about fame. Back in Paris, where he spent the rest of his life after the first world war as Pietro Peruggia, he took his young wife to the Louvre. “The shingles on the wall will rot, but my name will remain famous,” he told her. Nobody informed the Parisian gravediggers who removed Peruggia’s remains from his tomb and placed them in a bone locker.

Joe Medeiros, who had hoped his screenplay about the theft would make him rich, feels a kinship with Peruggia, and has arranged for a memorial plaque in Dumenza (undercutting a neighbouring village’s claim that one if its native sons planned the theft). “To me, he wasn’t a criminal. He was tired of a job that was making him physically ill. He hated being looked down on,” says the earnest American. “If the town of Dumenza can remember Mussolini, why not its most infamous son?”

Sentimental and often clumsy, as befitting a first film, “The Missing Piece” nonetheless has unearthed facts that have eluded trained historians. Joe Medeiros promises more of those in an eventual DVD release. So far the documentary has no commercial distribution.

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/

2011-08-04T09:17:00.001+03:00

Art Quotes

Painting is silent poetry.

Plutarch

Biography of Rembrandt

2011-07-15T11:28:00.003+03:00

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)soːn vɑn ˈrɛin], 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important inDutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age.

Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, his later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.

In his paintings and prints he exhibited knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam's Jewish population.Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization."

Life

Self-portrait in a cap, with eyes wide open, etching and burin, 1630

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, nowadays the Netherlands. He was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his mother was a baker's daughter. As a boy he attended Latin school and was enrolled at theUniversity of Leiden, although according to a contemporary he had a greater inclination towards painting; he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh, with whom he spent three years. After a brief but important apprenticeship of six months with the famous painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend and colleague Jan Lievens. In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou.

In 1629 Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, the father of Christiaan Huygens (a famous Dutch mathematician and physicist), who procured for Rembrandt important commissions from the court of The Hague. As a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrikcontinued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646.

At the end of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, then rapidly expanding as the new business capital of the Netherlands, and began to practice as a professional portraitist for the first time, with great success. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburg, and in 1634, married Hendrick's cousin, Saskia van Uylenburg.Saskia came from a good family: her father had been lawyer and burgemeester (mayor) of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, she lived with an older sister in Het Bildt. Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandt's relatives.In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and a member of the local guild of painters. He also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck.

Portrait of Saskia van Uylenburg, ca. 1635

In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat. In 1639 they moved to a prominent house (now the Rembrandt House Museum) in the Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter; the mortgage to finance the 13,000guilder purchase would be a primary cause for later financial difficulties.Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his large income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income, and he may have made some unsuccessful investments.It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testamentscenes.Although they were by now affluent, the couple suffered several personal setbacks; their son Rumbartus died two months after his birth in 1635 and their daughter Cornelia died at just three weeks of age in 1638. In 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month. Only their fourth child, Titus, who was born in 1641, survived into adulthood. Saskia died in 1642 soon after Titus's birth, probably from tuberculosis. Rembrandt's drawings of her on her sick and death bed are among his most moving works.

During Saskia's illness, Geertje Dircx was hired as Titus' caretaker and nurse and also became Rembrandt's lover. She would later charge Rembrandt with breach of promise and was awarded alimony of 200 guilders a year.Rembrandt worked to have her committed for twelve years to an asylum or poorhouse (called a "bridewell") at Gouda, after learning Geertje had pawned jewelry that had once belonged to Saskia, and which he had given her.

In the late 1640s Rembrandt began a relationship with the much younger Hendrickje Stoffels, who had initially been his maid. In 1654 they had a daughter, Cornelia, bringing Hendrickje a summons from the Reformed Church to answer the charge "that she had committed the acts of a whore with Rembrandt the painter". She admitted this and was banned from receiving communion. Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council because he was not a member of the Reformed Church.The two were considered legally wed under common law, but Rembrandt had not married Henrickje, so as not to lose access to a trust set up for Titus in the son's mother's will.

Rembrandt's son Titus, as a monk, 1660

Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art (including bidding up his own work), prints (often used in his paintings), and rarities, which probably caused a court arrangement to avoid hisbankruptcy in 1656, by selling most of his paintings and large collection of antiquities. The sale list survives and gives us a good insight into Rembrandt's collections, which apart from Old Masterpaintings and drawings included busts of the Roman Emperors, suits of Japanese armor among many objects from Asia, and collections of natural history and minerals; the prices realized in the sales in 1657 and 1658 were disappointing.Rembrandt was forced to sell his house and his printing-press and move to more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht in 1660.The authorities and his creditors were generally accommodating to him, except for the Amsterdampainters' guild, who introduced a new rule that no one in Rembrandt's circumstances could trade as a painter. To get round this, Hendrickje and Titus set up a business as art-dealers in 1660, with Rembrandt as an employee.

In 1661 Rembrandt (or rather the new business) was contracted to complete work for the newly built city hall, but only after Govert Flinck, the artist previously commissioned, died without beginning to paint. The resulting work, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was rejected and returned to the painter; the surviving fragment is only a fraction of the whole work.It was around this time that Rembrandt took on his last apprentice, Aert de Gelder. In 1662 he was still fulfilling major commissions for portraits and other works.When Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany came to Amsterdam in 1667, he visited Rembrandt at his house.

Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje, who died in 1663, and Titus, who died in 1668, leaving a baby daughter. He died within a year of his son, on October 4, 1669 in Amsterdam, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Westerkerk.

Works

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, 1633. The painting is still missing after robbery from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museumin 1990.

In a letter to Huyghens, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art: the greatest and most natural movement, translated from de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid. The word "beweechgelickhijt" is also argued to mean "emotion" or "motive." Whether this refers to objectives, material or otherwise is open to interpretation; either way, Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual as has no other painter in Western art.

Earlier 20th century connoisseurs claimed Rembrandt had produced over 600 paintings, nearly 400etchings and 2,000 drawings.More recent scholarship, from the 1960s to the present day (led by the Rembrandt Research Project), often controversially, has winnowed his oeuvre to nearer 300 paintings.His prints, traditionally all called etchings, although many are produced in whole or part by engraving and sometimes drypoint, have a much more stable total of slightly under 300.It is likely Rembrandt made many more drawings in his lifetime than 2,000, but those extant are more rare than presumed.Two experts claim that the number of drawings whose autograph status can be regarded as effectively "certain" is no higher than about 75, although this is disputed. The list was to be unveiled at a scholarly meeting in February 2010.

At one time about ninety paintings were counted as Rembrandt self-portraits, but it is now known that he had his students copy his own self-portraits as part of their training. Modern scholarship has reduced the autograph count to over forty paintings, as well as a few drawings and thirty-one etchings, which include many of the most remarkable images of the group.Some show him posing in quasi-historical fancy dress, or pulling faces at himself. His oil paintings trace the progress from an uncertain young man, through the dapper and very successful portrait-painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his appearance and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly weathered face.

In a number of biblical works, including The Raising of the Cross, Joseph Telling His Dreams and The Stoning of Saint Stephen, Rembrandt painted himself as a character in the crowd. Durham suggests that this was because the Bible was for Rembrandt, "a kind of diary, an account of moments in his own life."

Among the more prominent characteristics of Rembrandt's work are his use of chiaroscuro, the theatrical employment of light and shadow derived from Caravaggio, or, more likely, from the Dutch Caravaggisti, but adapted for very personal means.Also notable are his dramatic and lively presentation of subjects, devoid of the rigid formality that his contemporaries often displayed, and a deeply felt compassion for mankind, irrespective of wealth and age. His immediate family—his wife Saskia, his son Titus and his common-law wife Hendrickje—often figured prominently in his paintings, many of which had mythical, biblical or historical themes.

Periods, themes and styles

The Abduction of Europa, 1632. Oil on panel. The work is considered to be "...a shining example of the 'golden age' ofbaroque painting."

Throughout his career Rembrandt took as his primary subjects the themes of portraiture, landscape and narrative painting. For the last, he was especially praised by his contemporaries, who extolled him as a masterful interpreter of biblical stories for his skill in representing emotions and attention to detail.Stylistically, his paintings progressed from the early 'smooth' manner, characterized by fine technique in the portrayal of illusionistic form, to the late 'rough' treatment of richly variegated paint surfaces, which allowed for an illusionism of form suggested by the tactile quality of the paint itself.

A parallel development may be seen in Rembrandt's skill as a printmaker. In the etchings of his maturity, particularly from the late 1640s onward, the freedom and breadth of his drawings and paintings found expression in the print medium as well. The works encompass a wide range of subject matter and technique, sometimes leaving large areas of white paper to suggest space, at other times employing complex webs of line to produce rich dark tones.

It was during Rembrandt's Leiden period (1625–1631) that Lastman's influence was most prominent. It is also likely that at this time Lievens had a strong impact on his work as well.Paintings were rather small, but rich in details (for example, in costumes and jewelry). Religious and allegorical themes were favored, as weretronies.In 1626 Rembrandt produced his first etchings, the wide dissemination of which would largely account for his international fame.In 1629 he completed Judas Repentant, Returning the Pieces of Silver and The Artist in His Studio, works that evidence his interest in the handling of light and variety of paint application, and constitute the first major progress in his development as a painter.

A typical portrait from 1634, when Rembrandt was enjoying great commercial success

During his early years in Amsterdam (1632–1636), Rembrandt began to paint dramatic biblical and mythological scenes in high contrast and of large format (The Blinding of Samson, 1636,Belshazzar's Feast, c. 1635 Danaë, 1636), seeking to emulate the baroque style of Rubens.With the occasional help of assistants in Uylenburgh's workshop, he painted numerous portrait commissions both small (Jacob de Gheyn III) and large (Portrait of the Shipbuilder Jan Rijcksen and his Wife, 1633, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632).

By the late 1630s Rembrandt had produced a few paintings and many etchings of landscapes. Often these landscapes highlighted natural drama, featuring uprooted trees and ominous skies (Cottages before a Stormy Sky, c. 1641, The Three Trees, 1643). From 1640 his work became less exuberant and more sober in tone, possibly reflecting personal tragedy. Biblical scenes were now derived more often from the New Testament than the Old Testament, as had been the case before. In 1642 he painted The Night Watch, the most notable of the important group portrait commissions which he received in this period, and through which he sought to find solutions to compositional and narrative problems that had been attempted in previous works.

In the decade following the Night Watch, Rembrandt's paintings varied greatly in size, subject, and style. The previous tendency to create dramatic effects primarily by strong contrasts of light and shadow gave way to the use of frontal lighting and larger and more saturated areas of color. Simultaneously, figures came to be placed parallel to the picture plane. These changes can be seen as a move toward a classical mode of composition and, considering the more expressive use of brushwork as well, may indicate a familiarity with Venetian art (Susanna and the Elders, 1637–47).At the same time, there was a marked decrease in painted works in favor of etchings and drawings of landscapes.In these graphic works natural drama eventually made way for quiet Dutch rural scenes.

Self Portrait, 1658, a masterpiece of the final style, "the calmest and grandest of all his portraits"

In the 1650s, Rembrandt's style changed again. Colors became richer and brush strokes more pronounced. With these changes, Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which increasingly inclined toward fine, detailed works. His singular approach to paint application may have been suggested in part by familiarity with the work of Titian, and could be seen in the context of the then current discussion of 'finish' and surface quality of paintings. Contemporary accounts sometimes remark disapprovingly of the coarseness of Rembrandt's brushwork, and the artist himself was said to have dissuaded visitors from looking too closely at his paintings.The tactile manipulation of paint may hearken to medieval procedures, when mimetic effects of rendering informed a painting's surface. The end result is a richly varied handling of paint, deeply layered and often apparently haphazard, which suggests form and space in both an illusionistic and highly individual manner.

In later years biblical themes were still depicted often, but emphasis shifted from dramatic group scenes to intimate portrait-like figures (James the Apostle, 1661). In his last years, Rembrandt painted his most deeply reflective self-portraits (from 1652 to 1669 he painted fifteen), and several moving images of both men and women (The Jewish Bride, c. 1666)—in love, in life, and before God.

Night Watch

The Night Watch or The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, 1642. Oil on canvas; on display at the Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam

Rembrandt painted The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq between 1640 and 1642. This picture was called the Nachtwacht by the Dutch and the Night Watch by Sir Joshua Reynoldsbecause by the 18th century the picture was so dimmed and defaced by time that it was almost indistinguishable and it looked quite like a night scene. After it was cleaned, it was discovered to represent broad day—a party of musketeers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding sunlight.

The piece was commissioned for the new hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the musketeer branch of the civic militia. Rembrandt departed from convention, which ordered that such genre pieces should be stately and formal, rather a line-up than an action scene. Instead he showed the militia readying themselves to embark on a mission (what kind of mission, an ordinary patrol or some special event, is a matter of debate).

Contrary to what is often said the work was hailed as a success from the beginning. Parts of the canvas were cut off (approximately 20% from the left hand side was removed) to make the painting fit its new position when it was moved to Amsterdam town hall in 1715; the Rijksmuseum has a smaller copy of what is thought to be the full original composition; the four figures in the front are at the centre of the canvas. The painting is now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Etchings

The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1647-1649, etching

Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and virtually abandoned etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced no dated work.He took easily to etching and, though he also learned to use a burin and partly engraved many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work. He was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing, but soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings with the acid to achieve different strengths of line. Towards the end of the 1630s, he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings.He worked on the so-called Hundred Guilder Print in stages throughout the 1640s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge.Although the print only survives in two states, the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print and many drawings survive for elements of it.

The Three Crosses, etching by Rembrandt, 1653, State III of V

In the mature works of the 1650s, Rembrandt was more ready to improvise on the plate and large prints typically survive in several states, up to eleven, often radically changed. He now useshatching to create his dark areas, which often take up much of the plate. He also experimented with the effects of printing on different kinds of paper, including Japanese paper, which he used frequently, and on vellum. He began to use "surface tone," leaving a thin film of ink on parts of the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression. He made more use ofdrypoint, exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that this technique gives to the first few impressions.

His prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the twenty-seven self-portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so. There are forty-six landscapes, mostly small, which largely set the course for the graphic treatment of landscape until the end of the 19th century. One third of his etchings are of religious subjects, many treated with a homely simplicity, whilst others are his most monumental prints. A few erotic, or just obscene, compositions have no equivalent in his paintings.He owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent collection of prints by other artists, and many borrowings and influences in his work can be traced to artists as diverse as Mantegna,Raphael, Hercules Segers, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

Biography of Rembrandt

2011-07-15T11:28:00.000+03:00

Biography of Amedeo Modigliani

2011-07-12T12:00:00.002+03:00

Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno (Leghorn) on 12 July 1884 into a rich merchant family. Versed in literature and art at an early age, Modigliani took his first lessons in drawing and painting between 1898 and 1900 at Guglielmo Micheli's studio. Amedeo Modigliani was particularly fond of the Italian Early Renaissance.
In 1902 Modigliani shared a studio in Florence with Oscar Ghilia and became a pupil at the free school for drawing from the nude. A year later Modigliani transferred to the Venice Academy, where he spent a great deal of time studying the works of the Old Masters and became familiar with international movements in art.

Amedeo Modigliani went to Paris in 1906 to study at the private Colarossi Academy. In 1907 he met a young physician, Paul Alexandre, who was the first person to promote his work. Alexandre not only bought paintings and drawings of Modigliani's; he also helped to arrange the artist's first commissions.
That same year Modigliani showed work at the Salon d'Automne and a year later at the Salon des Indépendents. The few pictures by Amedeo Modigliani to have survived from that period reveal the influence of the Fauves, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and Cézanne.

Paul Alexandre introduced Modigliani to the sculptor Constantin Brancusi and Modigliani began to sculpt under his influence but he gave up sculpture in 1914-15 to devote himself to painting.
The same salient features are common to both Modigliani's sculpture and his painting: despite mask-like stylization, a poignant grace and spirituality inform Modigliani's heads. His lasting fame rests on the portraits of artists he did after 1914.

On the outbreak of the First World War, Amedeo Modigliani volunteered for service but was exempted for health reasons: two severe attacks of tuberculosis had left him weakened for the rest of his life. Modigliani began to work with the art dealer Paul Guillaume and was also supported by the Polish poet Léopold Zborovski and his wife, doing many portraits of both.
Modigliani's first one-man show was opened by the Galerie Berthe Weill on 3 December 1917 but was closed after only a few hours because his nudes caused a public scandal. Modigliani left Paris while it was under German siege in 1918 and went to Nice with his mistress, Jeanne Hébuterne. There he did some of his best known pictures and some of his few landscapes. A daughter was born to him in Nice. In May 1919 Modigliani returned to Paris and went to England several times, thus ensuring the successful sale of his work there.
Early in 1920, however, Amedeo Modigliani again fell ill of tuberculosis and died in Paris on 24 January.

Biography of Giorgio De Chirico

2011-07-10T11:57:00.002+03:00

Giorgio de Chirico (July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978) was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement. His surname is traditionally written De Chirico (capitalized De) when it stands alone.

Life and works

Love Song 1914

After studying art in Athens and Florence, De Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he read the writings of the philosophers Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauerand Otto Weininger and studied the works of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger.

He returned to Italy in the summer of 1909 and spent six months in Milan. At the beginning of 1910, he moved to Florence where he painted the first of his 'Metaphysical Town Square' series, The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, after the revelation he felt inPiazza Santa Croce. He also painted The Enigma of the Oracle while in Florence. In July 1911 he spent a few days in Turin on his way to Paris. De Chirico was profoundly moved by what he called the 'metaphysical aspect' of Turin: the architecture of its archways and piazzas. It was the city of Nietzsche. De Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea. Through his brother he met Pierre Laprade, a member of the jury at the Salon d'Automne, where he exhibited three of his works Enigma of the Oracle, Enigma of an Afternoon and Self-Portrait. During 1913 he exhibited his work at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne, his work was noticed by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, he also sold his first painting, The Red Tower. In 1914, through Guillaume Apollinaire, he met the art dealer Paul Guillaume, with whom he signed a contract for his artistic output.

At the outbreak of the First World War, he returned to Italy. Upon his arrival in May 1915, he enlisted in the Italian army, but he was considered unfit for work and assigned to the hospital at Ferrara. He continued to paint, and in 1918, he transferred to Rome. From 1918 his work was exhibited extensively in Europe.

De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were still cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like hybrid figures.

In autumn, 1919, De Chirico published an article in Valori Plastici entitled "The Return of Craftsmanship", in which he advocated a return to traditional methods and iconography. This article heralded an abrupt change in his artistic orientation, as he adopted a classicizing manner inspired by such old masters as Raphael and Signorelli, and became an outspoken opponent of modern art.

De Chirico met and married his first wife, the Russian Ballerina Raissa Gurievich in 1924, and together they moved to Paris. In 1928 he held his first exhibition in New York City and shortly afterwards, London. He wrote essays on art and other subjects, and in 1929 published a novel entitled Hebdomeros, the Metaphysician.

In 1930, De Chirico met his second wife, Isabella Pakszwer Far, a Russian, with whom he would remain for the rest of his life. Together they moved to Italy in 1932, finally settling in Rome in 1944 - in 1948 he bought a house near the Spanish Steps which is now a museum dedicated to his work.

In 1939, he adopted a neo-Baroque style influenced by Rubens. De Chirico's later paintings never received the same critical praise as did those from his metaphysical period. He resented this, as he thought his later work was better and more mature. He nevertheless produced backdated "self-forgeries" both to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of revenge—retribution for the critical preference for his early work. He also denounced many paintings attributed to him in public and private collections as forgeries.

He remained extremely prolific even as he approached his 90th year. In 1974 he was elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. He died in Rome on November 20, 1978.

His brother, Andrea de Chirico, who became famous as Alberto Savinio, was also a writer and a painter.

Legacy

De Chirico won praise for his work almost immediately from writer Guillaume Apollinaire, who helped to introduce his work to the laterSurrealists.

Yves Tanguy wrote how one day in 1922 he saw one of De Chirico's paintings in an art dealer's window, and was so impressed by it he resolved on the spot to become an artist — although he had never even held a brush. Other artists who acknowledged De Chirico's influence include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio Morandi, Carlo Carrà, René Magritte, and Philip Guston. De Chirico strongly influenced theSurrealist movement.

'That de Chirico was a poet, and a great one, is not in dispute. He could condense voluminous feeling through metaphor and association. One can try to dissect these magical nodes of experience, yet not find what makes them cohere... Early de Chiricos are full of such effects. Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est? ("What shall I love if not the enigma?")—this question, inscribed by the young artist on his self-portrait in 1911, is their subtext.' (In this, he resembles his more representational American contemporary, Edward Hopper: their pictures' low sunlight, their deep and often irrational shadows, their empty walkways and portentous silences creating an enigmatic visual poetry.)

The visual style of Valerio Zurlini's film The Desert of the Tartars (1976) was influenced by De Chirico's work. Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian film director, also claimed to be influenced by De Chirico. Some comparison can be made to the long takes in Antonioni's films from the 1960s, in which the camera continues to linger on desolate cityscapes populated by a few distant figures, or none at all, in the absence of the film's protagonists.

Modern photographer Duane Michals was also influenced by De Chirico.

Writers who have apreciated De Chirico include John Ashbery, who has called Hebdomeros "probably...the finest [major work of Surrealist fiction]."Several of Sylvia Plath's poems are influenced by De Chirico. In his book Blizzard of One Mark Strand included a poetic diptych called "Two de Chiricos:" "The Philosopher's Conquest" and "The Disquieting Muses."

Fumito Ueda's critically acclaimed PlayStation 2 game Ico (and also its sequel, Shadow of the Colossus, in a less direct way) was strongly influenced by De Chirico. Ico features children wandering though huge, ancient and otherwise uninhabited buildings, are predominately yellow and green in colour and use music only for cut-scenes, enhancing the feeling of space and sparseness. The box art for Ico used in Japan and Europe is particularly imitative of De Chirico's Melancholy and Mystery of a Street and The Nostalgia of the Infinite (both 1914).

Selected works

The Red Tower (1913).

Flight of the Centauri, Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon and Enigma of the Oracle (1909)
Ritratto di Andrea de Chirico (Alias Alberto Savinio) (1909–1910)
Enigma of the Hour (1911)
Melanconia, The Enigma of the Arrival and La Matinèe Angoissante (1912)
The Red Tower, Ariadne, The Awakening of Ariadne, The Uncertainty of the Poet, La Statua Silenziosa, The Anxious Journey, Melancholy of a Beautiful Day, Le Rêve Transformé, andSelf-Portrait (1913)
The Anguish of Departure (begun in 1913), Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire, The Nostalgia of the Poet, L'Énigme de la fatalité, Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure), Love Song, The Enigma of a Day, The Philosopher’s Conquest, The Child’s Brain, The Philosopher and the Poet, Still Life: Turin in Spring, Piazza d’Italia (Autumn Melancholy), The Nostalgia of the Infinite and Melancholy and Mystery of a Street (1914)
The Evil Genius of a King (begun in 1914), The Seer (or The Prophet), Piazza d’Italia, The Double Dream of Spring, The Purity of a Dream, Two Sisters (The Jewish Angel) and The Duo (1915)
Andromache, The Melancholy of Departure, The Disquieting Muses, Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits (1916)
Metaphysical Interior with Large Factory and The Faithful Servitor (both began in 1916), The Great Metaphysician, Ettore e Andromaca,Metaphysical Interior, Geometric Composition with Landscape and Factory and Great Metaphysical Interior (1917)
Metaphysical Muses and Hermetic Melancholy (1918)
Still Life with Salami and The Sacred Fish (1919)
Self-portrait (1920)

The Disquieting Muses (1916).

Italian Piazza, Maschere and Departure of the Argonauts (1921)
The Prodigal Son (1922)
Florentine Still Life (c. 1923)
The House with the Green Shutters (1924)
The Great Machine (1925) Honolulu Academy of Arts
Au Bord de la Mer, Le Grand Automate, The Terrible Games, Mannequins on the Seashoreand The Painter (1925)
La Commedia e la Tragedia (Commedia Romana), The Painter’s Family and Cupboards in a Valley (1926)
L’Esprit de Domination, The Eventuality of Destiny (Monumental Figures), Mobili nella valle andThe Archaeologists (1927)
Temple et Forêt dans la Chambre (1928)
Gladiatori (began in 1927), The Archaeologists IV (from the series Metamorphosis), The return of the Prodigal son I (from the series Metamorphosis) and Bagnante (Ritratto di Raissa) (1929)
Illustrations from the book Calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire (1930)
I Gladiatori (Combattimento) (1931)
Cavalos a Beira-Mar (1932–1933)
Cavalli in Riva al Mare (1934)
La Vasca di Bagni Misteriosi (1936)
The Vexations of The Thinker (1937)
Self-portrait (1935–1937)
Archeologi (1940)
Illustrations from the book L’Apocalisse (1941)
Portrait of Clarice Lispector (1945)
Villa Medici - Temple and Statue (1945)

Ettore e Andromaca (1973)

Minerva (1947)
Metaphysical Interior with Workshop (1948)
Fiat (1950)
Piazza d’Italia (1952)
The Fall - Via Crucis (1947–54)
Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio (1955)
Salambò su un cavallo impennato (1956)
Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits (1958)
Piazza d’Italia (1962)
Cornipedes, (1963)
Manichino (1964)
Ettore e Andromaca (1966)
The Return of Ulysses, Interno Metafisico con Nudo Anatomico and Mysterious Baths - Flight Toward the Sea (1968)
Il rimorso di Oreste, La Biga Invincibile and Solitudine della Gente di Circo (1969)
Orfeo Trovatore Stanco, Intero Metafisico and Muse with Broken Column (1970)
Metaphysical Interior with Setting Sun (1971)
Sole sul cavalletto (1972)
Mobili e rocce in una stanza, La Mattina ai Bagni misteriosi, Piazza d'Italia con Statua Equestre, La mattina ai bagni misteriosi and Ettore e Andoromaca (1973)
Pianto d’amore - Ettore e Andromaca and The Sailors’ Barracks (1974)

wikipedia

Biography of Frida Kahlo

2011-07-06T10:35:00.002+03:00

Frida Kahlo Biography - Biography.com

Depicted in the blockbuster film Frida, Frida Kahlo is portrayed as an artist with a past involvement in the Mexican Revolution. Her own physical sufferings, political views, and obsession with painter Diego Rivera greatly influenced her surrealist painting style.

Destined to become one of Mexico’s most famous artists, Frida Kahlo always did whatever she wanted, no matter the societal repercussions or possible future regret. Her father, a German who had immigrated to Mexico, showed her how to fend for herself. It has been revealed that he even taught her how to box and play other sports. But, at the age of six, she had complications with Polio, which left her self-conscious of a slight disability in her right leg.

Frida fell in love and joined a gang while attending art school. At the age of 18, she was involved in an accident that left her with several broken bones, including a broken spinal column that would plague her body with pain for the rest of her life. While rehabilitating, she began painting images that helped her deal with her pain – some quite gory, showing detailed accounts of the many operations she had undergone.

Then she met Mexican artist Diego Rivera, she fell head over heels in love. He was fascinated with her art and introduced her to other members of the high society, which he was a part of. Her later works give way to some of Frida’s personal beliefs. She was an open bisexual, had affairs with many men, and depicted her sexual frustrations in her works. Classes that focus upon women’s contemporary art always include her as a part of their canon. With her open political beliefs and support of communism, she and Rivera had to hide out in Mexico for a time for fear of their own lives. Throughout it all, Frida Kahlo has become not only one of Mexico’s most prominent artists, but a world icon for art that depicts true emotion, pain, and suffering that she shared through her masterpieces.

2011-07-01T11:03:00.000+03:00

Art Quotes

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.

Stella Adler

Anish Kapoor rejects China show in support of Ai Weiwei

2011-06-22T23:50:00.003+03:00

British Council had asked the artist to consider a show in Tiananmen Square

LONDON. Anish Kapoor has cancelled plans to present his sculptures at the National Museum of China in Beijing, in protest against the continuing detention of Ai Weiwei. He had been asked by the British Council to consider a show at the newly renovated museum in Tiananmen Square as part the “UK Now” festival in China late next year.

Kapoor’s spokeswoman confirmed to The Art Newspaper that he had been invited to China, but “he is not going to proceed in view of the detention of Ai Weiwei.” Ai, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was arrested in Beijing in early April for alleged “economic crimes”.

Discussions began about a potential exhibition at the National Museum of China last October, when two directors of London’s Lisson Gallery (which represents Kapoor, stand 2.1/K12 at Art Basel) were in Beijing. Provisional plans were subsequently made for Kapoor to travel to Beijing this month to view the space and talk with the museum. The idea would have been to mount an exhibition with a major new work.

Kapoor has been outspoken in his criticism of the Chinese government’s treatment of Ai Weiwei, since his detention on 3 April. On 10 May, when he opened his Leviathan installation at the Grand Palais in Paris, he dedicated it to the Chinese artist, describing his detention as “barbaric”. Once Kapoor had spoken out, it was realised that his participation in the “UK Now” festival would be difficult. A British Council spokeswoman stressed that the exhibition proposal had been at “a very early stage, and until he had seen the space we could not have proceeded”.

British Council chief executive Martin Davidson believes in “freedom of cultural expression”, but is keen for the programme to go ahead. He commented: “It is through cultural exchange that we best demonstrate the benefits of free artistic expression and build supportive links between people in the UK and China.”

The Life and Death of Marina Abramović

2011-06-22T23:36:00.001+03:00

Robert Wilson, Marina Abramović, Antony, Willem Dafoe

Manchester International Festival and Teatro Real Madrid present the world premiere of a startling new piece for the stage: The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, a biography of the godmother of performance art, re-imagined by visionary director Robert Wilson.

The show features scenes from Abramović’s life and career, from her Serbian childhood to her work as a performance artist. Featuring original and traditional music, including songs written and performed by the incomparable Antony (Antony & The Johnsons), this ground-breaking show brings together the worlds of theatre, art and music to thrilling effect.

The Life and Death of Marina Abramović is a once in a generation cultural event, starring Marina Abramović, Willem Dafoe and an international cast of actors and performance artists.

This is the first Robert Wilson production to be seen in the UK since The Temptation of St. Anthony in 2005.

We are pleased to welcome Robert Wilson to the Festival for his first UK show in five years, and to bring Marina and Antony back to Manchester following their appearances here in 2009. 'The Life and Death of Marina Abramović’ is a good expression of what MIF was created for – new work made by some of the world’s leading artists.’ Alex Poots, Festival Director

The opera art form needs to develop new ways forward for the future. This could mean, of course, new composers but also projects developed by great visual artists, actors or singers who do not necessarily need to be opera singers. For sure, Antony, for example, brings a lyricism that in conjunction with Bob Wilson and Marina Abramović will make this production a real opera, just as Monteverdi would have loved.Gerard Mortier, Artistic Director, Teatro Real Madrid

MORE INFORMATION

Life and Death follows the sell-out success of Marina Abramović Presents at MIF 09, which saw the artist leading audiences through an exhilarating four hours of live art at The Whitworth and her recent show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. Her first UK retrospective opens at London’s Lisson Gallery on 13 October. Several of the artists featured in Marina Abramović Presents also return as performers in Life and Death.

The creative team and cast have been in workshop in Teatro Real’s rehearsal space over the last few weeks. Following the dates in Manchester in 2011 the show will run in Madrid in April 2012.

2011-06-11T09:45:00.001+03:00

Art Quotes

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Pablo Picasso

Biography of Salvador Dali

2011-05-11T12:18:00.007+03:00

Short Biography of Salvador Dali

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), commonly known as Salvador Dalí, was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres.

Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealistwork. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to a self-styled "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem and to the irritation of his critics.

Salvador Dali is considered as the greatest artist of the surrealist art movement and one of the greatest masters of art of the twentieth century. During his lifetime the public got a picture of an bizarre paranoid. His personality caused a lot of controversy. After his death in 1989 his name remained in the headlines. But this time it was not funny at all. The art market was shaken by reports of great numbers of fraudulent Dali prints. What's all behind it?

Dali - the Prodigy Child without an Exam

Salvador Dali was born as the son of a prestigious notary in the small town of Figueras in Northern Spain. His talent as an artist showed at an early age and Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali received his first drawing lessons when he was ten years old. His art teachers were a then well known Spanish impressionist painter, Ramon Pichot and later an art professor at the Municipal Drawing School. In 1923 his father bought his son his first printing press.

Dali began to study art at the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid. He was expelled twice and never took the final examinations. His opinion was that he was more qualified than those who should have examined him.

Surreal Art

In 1928 Dali went to Paris where he met the Spanish painters Picasso and Joan Miro. He established himself as the principal figure of a group of surrealist artists grouped around Andre Breton, who was something like the theoretical "schoolmaster" of surrealism. Years later Breton turned away from Dali accusing him of support of fascism, excessive self-presentation and financial greediness.

By 1929 Dali had found his personal style that should make him famous - the world of the unconscious that is recalled during our dreams. The surrealist theory is based on the theories of the psychologist Dr. Sigmund Freud. Recurring images of burning giraffes and melting watches became the artist's surrealist trademarks. His great craftsmanship allowed him to execute his paintings in a nearly photo-realistic style. No wonder that the artist was a great admirer of the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael.

Salvador Dali and Gala

Meeting Gala was the most important event in the artist's life and decisive for his future career. She was a Russian immigrant and ten years older than Dali. When he met her, she was married to Paul Eluard.

Gala decided to stay with Dali. She became his companion, his muse, his sexual partner, his model in numerous art works and his business manager. For him she was everything. Most of all Gala was a stabilizing factor in his life. And she managed his success in the 1930s with exhibitions in Europe and the United States.

Gala was legally divorced from her husband in 1932. In 1934 Dali and Gala were married in a civil ceremony in Paris and in 1958 in church after Gala's former husband had died in 1952. However from around 1965 on, the couple was seen less frequently together. But Gala continued to manage Dali's business affairs.

In the U.S.A.

In 1933 Salvador Dali had his first one-man show in New York. One year later he visited the U.S. for the first time supported by a loan of US$500 from Pablo Picasso. To evade World War II, Dali chose the U.S.A. as his permanent residence in 1940. He had a series of spectacular exhibitions, among others a great retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Besides creating a number of great paintings, Dali caused the attention of the media by playing the role of a surrealist clown. He made a lot of money and was contemptuously nicknamed Avida Dollars (greedy for dollars) by Andre Breton.

Dali became the darling of the American High Society. Celebrities like Jack Warner or Helena Rubinstein gave him commissions for portraits. His art works became a popular trademark and besides painting he pursued other activities - jewelry and clothing designs for Coco Chanel or film making with Alfred Hitchcock.

The Classic Period After World War II

In 1948 Dali and Gala returned to Europe, spending most of their time either in their residence in Lligat/Spain or in Paris/France or in New York. Dali developed a lively interest in science, religion and history. He integrated things into his art that he had picked up from popular science magazines. Another source of inspiration were the great classical masters of painting like Raphael, Velasquez or the French painter Ingres. The artist commented his shift in style with the words: "To be a surrealist forever is like spending your life painting nothing but eyes and noses."

In 1958 the artist began his series of large sized history paintings. He painted one monumental painting every year during the summer months in Lligat. The most famous one, The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, can be seen at the Dali Museum in St.Petersburg in Florida. It is breath-taking. The artist's late art works combine more than ever his perfect and meticulous painting technique with his fantastic and limitless imaginations.

Salvador Dali's Death in His Own Museum

Salvador Dali is the only known artist who had two museums dedicated exclusively to his works at lifetime.

Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida

The The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg in Florida/U.S.A. was founded in 1971 by the Dali collector A. Reynolds Morse and his wife Eleanor. The collection was first exhibited in a building adjacent to their home in Cleveland/Ohio. In 1982, the museum was moved to St. Petersburg in Florida. It hosts 95 oil paintings including six of Dali's eighteen large-sized historical paintings.

Dali Museum-Theater in Figueres, Spain

The Dali Museum-Theater in Figueres, Spain was the former Municipal Theater of Figueres. In 1918, when Salvador Dali was only fourteen years old, it had shown his first public exhibition.

Since 1970 the artist had dedicated his energy to transform the former Municipal Theater into a museum and art gallery. In 1974 the Theatro Museo Dali was officially opened.

Forced Retirement of Salvador Dali

In 1980 Dali was forced to retire due to palsy, a motor disorder, that caused a permanent trembling and weakness of his hands. He was not able to hold a brush any more. The fact that he could not follow his vocation and passion of painting and the news of Gala's death in 1982 left him with deep depressions.

After Gala's death he moved to Pubol, a castle, he had bought and decorated for Gala. In 1984, when he was lying in bed, a fire broke out and he suffered sever burns. Two years later, a pacemaker had to be implanted.

Towards the end of his life, Dali lived in the tower of his own museum where he died on January 23, 1989 from heart failure.

Dieter Wanczura
(May 2001, updated October 2009)

2011-05-01T13:42:00.000+03:00

Art Quotes

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

William Faulkner

Biography of Leonardo da Vinci

2011-04-15T10:58:00.003+03:00

Short Biography of Leonardo da Vinci

Known to have carried the Mona Lisa painting with him everywhere he went until it was finished, Leonardo da Vinci was to become one of the world’s most renowned painters, sculptors, inventors, philosophers, architects and brilliant thinkers of his time. While his sketches and notebooks reveal a great about his own life, a self-portrait entitled Portrait in Red Chalk and a biography written by Giorgio Vasari are all that remain of this man who was most definitely ahead of his time.

Born near Vinci, Leonardo grew up in Florence where he began sketching, drawing, and eventually painting. At age fourteen, Leonardo began an apprenticeship with Andrea del Verrocchio. However, his work was so admired that he was soon employed by the Duke of Milan from circa 1480 to 1500. Under the duke, Leonardo was to construct a huge bronze horse statue called Gran Cavallo. But, as the French soon attacked the city, the bronze had to be used for weaponry. However, his drawings and sketches of how the horse would look and be built still exist.

For a few years starting in 1513, Leonardo lived in Rome and was in rank with the greatest artists of the time, Michelangelo and Rafael. There, he was commissioned for various artistic endeavors and lived comfortable on his earnings. His wrangles with Michelangelo meant fierce artistic onslaughts and criticisms of each other’s artistic abilities. Leonardo even had Michelangelo’s Statue of David moved from its original location.

Leonardo da Vinci, according to his biography, was a man of strict moral character. Feeling at one with animals, he was an outspoken vegetarian, or by today’s standards, a vegan. He believed that animals were divine and should not be used callously by man. He thought that one day Nature would have its revenge upon man.

Although his first early work of genius was Madonna and Child, which led to his later work known worldwide as The Last Supper, Leonardo also designed court festival arenas for the Duke. He also pursued his engineering sketches and was given several apprentices to aid him in his work.

Included in his artwork are his nearly 15,000 pages of sketches and engineering notes. He was also left-handed and mastered writing backwards then using a mirror since the use of a quill pen was difficult to ‘push’ rather than to ‘pull’. It has been stated that this also helped him to keep his works from being easily read by others who might use his inventions for malice – such as his invention of the modern tank. Designs of a robot called “Leonardo’s Robot” were not discovered until the 1950s. These sketches included drawings on how the heart would pump the blood to the muscles of the ‘created’ being. He also produced drawings and sketches of how humans could fly. By studying birds, he invented the glider, parachute, a machine that would later allow humans to fly – the helicopter.

Biography of Victor Vasarely

2011-04-09T10:45:00.003+03:00

Victor Vasarely born Vásárhelyi Győző, 9 April 1906,Pécs - 15 March 1997, Paris) was a Hungarian French artist whose work is generally seen aligned with Op-art. His work entitledZebra, created by Vasarely in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op-art. Vasarely died in Paris in 1997.

Life and work

Vasarely was born in Pécs and grew up in Piešťany (then Pöstyén) and Budapest where in 1925 he took up medical studies at Budapest University. In 1927 he abandoned medicine to learn traditional academic painting at the private Podolini-Volkmann Academy. In 1928/1929, he enrolled at Sándor Bortnyik's műhely (lit. "workshop", in existence until 1938), then widely recognized as the center of Bauhaus studies in Budapest. Cash-strapped, the műhely could not offer all that the Bauhaus offered. Instead it concentrated on applied graphic art and typographical design.

In 1929 he painted his Blue Study and Green Study. In 1930 he married his fellow student Claire Spinner (1908–1990). Together they had two sons, Andre and Jean-Pierre. In Budapest, he worked for a ball-bearings company in accounting and designing advertising posters. Victor Vasarely became a graphics designer and a poster artist during the 1930s who combined patterns and organic images with each other.

Outdoor Vasarely artwork at the church of Pálos in Pécs

Vasarely left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930 working as a graphic artist and as a creative consultant at the advertising agencies Havas, Draeger and Devambez (1930–1935). His interactions with other artists during this time were limited. He played with the idea of opening up an institution modeled after Sándor Bortnyik's műhely and developed some teaching material for it. Having lived mostly in cheap hotels, he settled in 1942/1944 in Saint-Céré in the Lot département. After the Second World War, he opened an atelier in Arcueil, a suburb some 10 kilometers from the center of Paris (in the Val-de-Marne département of theÎle-de-France). In 1961 he finally settled in Annet-sur-Marne (in the Seine-et-Marnedépartement).

Vasarely eventually went on to produce art and sculpture mainly focused around the area ofoptical illusion. Over the next three decades, Vasarely developed his style of geometric abstract art, working in various materials but using a minimal number of forms and colours:

1929-1944: Early graphics: Vasarely experimented with textural effects, perspective, shadow and light. His early graphic period results in works such as Zebras (1937), Chess Board (1935), and Girl-power (1934).
1944-1947: Les Fausses Routes - On the wrong track: During this period, Vasarely experimented with cubistic, futuristic, expressionistic,symbolistic and surrealistic paintings without developing a unique style. Afterwards, he said he was on the wrong track. He exhibited his works in the gallery of Denise René (1946) and the gallery René Breteau (1947). Writing the introduction to the catalogue, Jacques Prévertplaced Vasarely among the surrealists. Prévert creates the term imaginoires (images + noir, black) to describe the paintings. Self Portrait(1941) and The Blind Man (1946) are associated with this period.
1947-1951: Developing geometric abstract art (optical art): Finally, Vasarely found his own style. The overlapping development are named after their geographical heritage. Denfert refers to the works influenced by the white tiled walls of the Paris Denfert - Rochereau metro station. Ellipsoid pebbles and shells found during a vacation in 1947 at the Breton coast at Belle Île inspired him to the Belles-Isles works. Since 1948, Vasarely usually spent his summer months in Gordes in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. There, the cubic houses led him to the composition of the group of works labelled Gordes/Cristal. He worked on the problem of empty and filled spaces on a flat surface as well as the stereoscopic view.

1951-1955: Kinetic images, black-white photographies: From his Gordes works he developed his kinematic images, superimposed acrylic glass panes create dynamic, moving impressions depending on the viewpoint. In the black-white period he combined the frames into a single pane by transposing photographies in two colours. Tribute to Malevitch, a ceramic wall picture of 100 m² adorns theUniversity of Caracas, Venezuela which he co-designed in 1954 with the architectCarlos Raúl Villanueva, is a major work of this period. Kinetic art flourished and works by Vasarely, Calder, Duchamp, Man Ray, Soto, Tinguely were exhibited at the Denise René gallery under the title Le Mouvement (the motion). Vasarely published his Yellow Manifest. Building on the research of constructivist andBauhaus pioneers, he postulated that visual kinetics (plastique cinétique) relied on the perception of the viewer who is considered the sole creator, playing withoptical illusions.
1955-1965: Folklore planétaire, permutations and serial art: On 2 March 1959, Vasarely patented his method of unités plastiques. Permutations of geometric forms are cut out of a coloured square and rearranged. He worked with a strictly defined palette of colours and forms (three reds, three greens, three blues, two violets, two yellows, black, white, gray; three circles, two squares, two rhomboids, two long rectangles, one triangle, two dissected circles, six ellipses) which he later enlarged and numbered. Out of this plastic alphabet, he started serial art, an endless permutation of forms and colours worked out by his assistants. (The creative process is produced by standardized tools and impersonal actors which questions the uniqueness of a work of art.) In 1963, Vasarely presented his palette to the public under the name of Folklore planetaire.
1965-: Hommage à l'hexagone, Vega: The Tribute to the hexagon series consists of endless transformations of indentations and relief adding color variations, creating a perpetual mobile of optical illusion. In 1965 Vasarely was included in the Museum of Modern Artexhibition "The Responsive Eye," created under the direction of William C. Seitz. His Vega series plays with spherical swelling grids creating an optical illusion of volume. In October 1967, designer Will Burtin invited Vasarely to make a presentation to Burtin's Vision ’67 conference, held at New York University.

On 5 June 1970, Vasarely opened his first dedicated museum with over 500 works in a renaissance palace in Gordes (closed in 1996). A second major undertaking was the Foundation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence, a museum housed in a distinct structure specially designed by Vasarely. It was inaugurated in 1976 by French president Georges Pompidou. Sadly the museum is now in a state of disrepair, several of the pieces on display have been damaged by water leaking from the ceiling. Also, in 1976 his large kinematic object Georges Pompidou was installed in the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Vasarely Museum located at his birth place in Pécs, Hungary, was established with a large donation of works by Vasarely. In the same decade, he took a stab at industrial design with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Vasarely decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's Studio Linie.^[2] In 1982 154 specially createdserigraphs were taken into space by the cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chrétien on board the French-Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7 and later sold for the benefit of UNESCO. In 1987, the second Hungarian Vasarely museum was established in Zichy Palace in Budapest with more than 400 works.

He died in Paris on 15 March 1997.

Biography of Raphael

2011-04-06T10:43:00.002+03:00

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was born either on April 6 or March 28 of 1483 and died on April 6, 1520. Today he is known simply as Raphael. He was an architect and Italian painter of the High Renaissance. He was celebrated for the grace and the perfection of his drawings and of his paintings. Along with the other greats, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Raphael was one member of the trinity of the great masters of the Renaissance.

Even though Raphael died at the age of only thirty-seven, he was able to be very productive with his art in his lifetime. In fact, much of his work remains. A number of his art works can be found in the Apostolic Palace of The Vatican, and here you can see the frescoed Raphael Rooms, which were the largest and the central work of his career. Following his time spent in Rome in his early years, Raphael mainly designed work and it was executed by his workshop. This led to a loss in the quality of the work. During his lifetime, he was very influential. However, outside Rome, he is mainly known for his collaborative printmaking. Following his death, the influence of his rival Michelangelo's was more widespread until the more harmonious and serene qualities of Raphael became appreciated as the highest models of art in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Raphael's career fell into three main phases and artistic styles, and they are known as the early years in Umbria, the artistic traditions of Florence, and the hectic and triumphant years in Rome.

Early Life of Raphael

Raphael was born in Urbino, the Italian city in the Marche region. His father, Giovanni Santi, was the court painter to the Duke. When Raphael was eight years old, his mother, Magia, died. Then his father died on August 1, 1494. His father had already been remarried. At age eleven years old, Raphael was an orphan. His formal guardian became his only paternal uncle, and he was a priest named Bartolomeo. He was then in litigation with his stepmother. It is likely that he continued to live with his stepmother when not apprenticed to a master. He was already a talent, and had been a big help to his father. The workshop of his father continued, and likely with the help of his stepmother, he continued to play a role in managing it even from a young age. While living in Urbino, Raphael was in contact with the work of Paulo Uccello and Luca Signorelli.

Raphael's Art

Raphael's father had first placed him in a workshop as an apprentice to the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino. In 1501, Raphael was considered a master. His first work that has been documented is the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, located in Citta di Castello. This piece was commissioned in 1500 and was finished in 1501. To this day, only some cut sections and a preparatory drawings are left. He continued paintingworks for churches there, which include Mond Crucifixion and the Wedding of the Virgin. Raphael additionally also painted a number of exquisite small cabinet paintings during this time, probably for the connoisseurs in the Urbino court. He also began to paint Madonnas as well as portraits. In 1502, Raphael went to Siena due to the invitation of another pupil of Perugino, Pinturicchio. Here he helped with a fresco series located in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. Even at such a young age, Raphael was staying busy with plenty of work.

Raphael lived a sort of nomadic life and lived and worked in a number of places in Italy, but he also spent much time in the city of Florence. Raphael was able to be influenced by Florentine art, yet still maintain his own style that was continuing to be developed. He was clearly deeply influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, and as a result, his figures began to become more dynamic and complex in their positions. He also began to make drawings of male nudes, which was common in Florence at the time.

By the conclusion of 1508, Raphael had moved on to Rome, and he lived here for the remainder of his life. He was was summoned by Pope Julius II and was commissioned immediately to fresco the Pope's private library at the Vatican Palace. This was a huge commission for Raphael. In fact, he had only painted one altarpiece in Florence all together. This first Raphael Room was to have a big impact on Roman Art. It is usually regarded as the greatest masterpiece of Raphael. It contained The School of Athens, The Parnassus, and the Disputa. Raphael had also been given additional rooms to paint, putting other artists out in the process. He completed three rooms, and each has paintings on the walls and frequently the ceilings as well. He often would leave the work of painting from his drawings to his skilled workshop team. When Pope Julius died in 1513, this did not disturb Michelangelo's work. He was succeeded by Raphael's last Pope, the Medici Pope Leo X, and Raphael had even a closer relationship with him, so he continued with a commission.

In the course of his painting, Raphael was influenced by the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo. It is said that Raphael was allowed in secret to view it. The influence of The Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo's work was evident in later work by Raphael, but he was still able to keep his own influence on his paintings. Despite that, Michelangelo accused him of plagiarism and complained after his death that he learned everything he knew from him.

Most of Raphael's time was taken by the Vatican projects. Yet he still managed to paint some portraits, which included Popes Julius II and Leo X. The portrait of Julius II is considered one of his finest pieces of art. One of Raphael's most important papal commissions was the Raphael Cartoons, which was a group of ten cartoons for tapestries that had scenes from the lives of Saint Peter and Saint Paul for the Sistine Chapel. Raphael also was able to create a number of important altarpieces, and these included Sistine Madonna and The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia. His last work that he was working on at the time of his death was a large Transfiguration, which showed that his art was moving in a more proto-Baroque manner rather than Mannerist.

Raphael likely had a workshop of about fifty assistants and pupils. Many of his workshop members became successful artists independently in their own time. This was likely the largest workshop team that had been created under a single old master painter. For certain it was much greater than the norm. The most important of the workshop members were probably Giulio Romano, who was a young student from Rome and Gianfrancesco Penni, who was a master from Florentine. Many of the possessions and drawings of Raphael were left to thest two students. Additionally, to some extent, they continued the workshop after the death of Raphael. It appears that Raphael led a very harmonious and efficient workshop. He seemed to have a terrific ability to smooth troubles and arguments that would occur between his assistants and also with patrons. This was in contrast to Michelangelo's difficult relationships with both.

Raphael's Architecture

Raphael was named the architect of the new St. Peter's after the death of Bramante in 1514. The majority of his work there had been demolished following his death, but a few drawings have made it. It seems that if he had lived, his designs would have probably made the church seem a bit gloomier. Michelangelo also designed other buildings, and he was a very important architect in the city of Rome for some time. He designed the Chigi Chapel for Agostino Chigi, the Papal Treasure. He was never able to finish The Villa Madama, which was a spectacular hillside retreat for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, who later became Pope Clement VII. He produced the design, and his construction plans were completed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. It was a very sophisticated villa design in Italy, and did influence later buildings.

Only a few of the floor plans are still in existence for the grand palace he had planned for himself in the Borgo, where he had been accumulating land.

Raphael's Drawings

Raphael is still considered one of the finest draftsmen in the history of Western art. His drawings have been utilized to plan the compositions he made. When he would prepare a composition, he would begin by laying out a number of stock drawings of his on the floor and then draw rapidly, as he borrowed figures from different places. There have been forty sketches found that still exist for the Disputa in the Stanze. Raphael utilized different drawings in order to refine his compositions and poses to a grander extent than the majority of other painters of the time. Unfortunately in later works that were executed by the workshop of Raphael, his drawings looked better than the finished paintings. Most of his drawings were exceedingly precise. The drawings included attention to detail and shading and highlights in white too. He was one of the final artists to utilize metalpoint.

Raphael and Printmaking

Raphael did not make any prints himself. However, he did work with Marcantonio Raimondi in order to create engravings of the designs of Raphael. This process gave rise to the reproductive print. There was a total of around fifty prints made, and some were copies of his paintings, but others were created by Raphael with the purpose of being transformed into prints. Raphael would make the preparatory drawings and then Raimondi would translate them into engravings. The most famous of his prints would be Lucretia, the Judgment of Paris, and The Massacre of the Innocents.

Private Life of Raphael

Raphael lived in a rather grand way in a palace in Borgo that had been designed by Bramante. He did not marry, but he did become engaged to a lady named Maria Bibbiena in 1514. She was the niece of Cardinal Medici Bibbiena. He seemed to not be so enthusiastic of the marriage so that by the time he died six years later in 1520, he still did not marry his fiance. He was said to have had many relationships with women, but most permanent was with "La Fornarina," Margherita Luti, who was the daughter of a baker. Raphael died on April 6, 1520. He had been with his mistress, Luti, that night, and he had fallen into a fever. He was given an improper cure, apparently, and then he died. His illness lasted for fifteen days. He was, however, still able to receive his last rites and put his affairs in order prior to his death. He left sufficient funds for his mistress and left the majority of his studio contents to Giulio Romano and Penni. Based on his request, Raphael was buried in the Pantheon. His funeral was huge and was well attended.

Legacy of Raphael

Raphael was very much admired by his contemporary artists, but his influence was less than that of Michelangelo. After his death, classic art, or the High Renaissance, began to subside. He continues to be remembered in the same class as the other masters, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo.

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Twyla Tharp

Biography of Vincent van Gogh

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Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853 - July 29, 1890) is generally considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt, though he had little success during his lifetime. Van Gogh produced all of his work (some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings) during a period of only 10 years before he succumbed to mental illness (possibly bipolar disorder) and committed suicide. His fame grew rapidly after his death especially following a showing of 71 of van Gogh's paintings in Paris on March 17, 1901 (11 years after his death).

(Properly the name rhymes with loch, but it is also pronounced 'goph', 'go' and 'goe'.)

Van Gogh's influence on expressionism, fauvism and early abstraction was enormous, and can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is dedicated to Van Gogh's work and that of his contemporaries.

Several paintings by Van Gogh rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. On March 30, 1987 Van Gogh's painting Irises was sold for a record $53.9 million at Southeby's, New York. On May 15, 1990 his Portrait of Doctor Gachet was sold for $82.5 million at Christie's, thus establishing a new price record (see also List of most expensive paintings).

Life and Work

Vincent was born in Zundert, The Netherlands; his father was a protestant minister, a profession that Vincent found appealing and to which he would be drawn to a certain extent later in his life. His sister described him as a serious and introspective child.

At age 16 Vincent started to work for the art dealer Goupil & Co. in The Hague. His four years younger brother Theo, with whom Vincent cherished a life long friendship, would join the company later. This friendship is amply documented in a vast amount of letters they sent each other. These letters have been preserved and were published in 1914. They provide a lot of insight into the life of the painter, and show him to be a talented writer with a keen mind. Theo would support Vincent financially throughout his life.

In 1873, his firm transferred him to London, then to Paris. He became increasingly interested in religion; in 1876 Goupil dismissed him for lack of motivation. He became a teaching assistant in Ramsgate near London, then returned to Amsterdam to study theology in 1877.

After dropping out in 1878, he became a layman preacher in Belgium in a poor mining region known as the Borinage. He even preached down in the mines and was extremely concerned with the lot of the workers. He was dismissed after 6 months and continued without pay. During this period he started to produce charcoal sketches.

In 1880, Vincent van Gogh followed the suggestion of his brother Theo and took up painting in earnest. For a brief period Vincent took painting lessons from Anton Mauve at The Hague. Although Vicent and Anton soon split over divergence of artistic views, influences of the Hague School of painting would remain in Vincents work, notably in the way he played with light and in the looseness of his brush strokes. However his usage of colours, favouring dark tones, set him apart from his teacher.

In 1881 he declared his love to his widowed cousin Kee Vos, who rejected him. Later he would move in with the prostitute Sien Hoornik and her children and considered marrying her; his father was strictly against this relationship and even his brother Theo advised against it. They later separated.

Impressed and influenced by Jean-Francois Millet, van Gogh focussed on painting peasants and rural scenes. He moved to the Dutch province Drenthe, later to Nuenen, North Brabant, also in The Netherlands. Here he painted in 1885.

In the winter of 1885-1886 Van Gogh attended the art academy of Antwerp, Belgium. This proved a disappointment as he was dismissed after a few months by his Professor. Van Gogh did however get in touch with Japanese art during this period, which he started to collect eagerly. He admired its bright colors, use of canvas space and the role lines played in the picture. These impressions would influence him strongly. Van Gogh made some painting in Japanese style. Also some of the portraits he painted are set against a background which shows Japanese art.

In spring 1886 Vincent van Gogh went to Paris, where he moved in with his brother Theo; they shared a house on Montmartre. Here he met the painters met Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Bernard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. He discovered impressionism and liked its use of light and color, more than its lack of social engagement (as he saw it). Especially the technique known as pointillism (where many small dots are applied to the canvas that blend into rich colors only in the eye of the beholder, seeing it from a distance) made its mark on Van Goghs own style. It should be noted that Van Gogh is regarded as a post-impressionist, rather than an impressionist.

In 1888, when city life and living with his brothers proved too much, Van Gogh left Paris and went to Arles, Bouches-du-Rh, France. He was impressed with the local landscape and hoped to found an art colony. He decorated a "yellow house" and created a celebrated series of yellow sunflower paintings for this purpose. Only Paul Gauguin, whose simplified colour schemes and forms (known as synthetism) attracted van Gogh, followed his invitation. The admiration was mutual, and Gauguin painted van Gogh painting sunflowers. However their encounter ended in a quarrel. Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown and cut off part of his left ear, which he gave to a startled prostitute friend. Gauguin left in December 1888.

The only painting he sold during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, was created in 1888. It is now on display in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.

Vincent van Gogh now exchanged painting dots for small stripes. He suffered from depression, and in 1889 on his own request Van Gogh was admitted to the psychiatric center at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence, Bouches-du-Rh, France. During his stay here the clinic and its garden became his main subject. Pencil strokes changed again, now into spiral curves.

In May 1890 Vincent van Gogh left the clinic and went to the physician Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo, who had recently married. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro; he had treated several artists before. Here van Gogh created his only etching: a portrait of the melancholic doctor Gachet. His depression aggravated. On July 27 of the same year, at the age of 37, after a fit of painting activity, van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later, with Theo at his side, who reported his last words as "La tristesse durera toujours" (French: "The sadness will last forever"). He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise; Theo unable to come to terms with his brother's death died 6 months later and was buried next to him. It would not take long before his fame grew higher and higher. Large exhibitions were organized soon: Paris 1901, Amsterdam 1905, Cologne 1912, New York 1913 and Berlin 1914.

Vincent van Gogh's mother threw away quite a number of his paintings during Vincent's life and even after his death. But she would live long enough to see her son become a world famous painter.