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Bernice Abbott Born: Died: Gender: Female Nationality: Unknown "If it is to be utterly honest and direct, it should be related to the pulse of the times, the pulse of today." Berenice Abbott. Berenice Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio. She studied at Ohio State University in Columbus and initially intended to become a journalist. On a brief visit to New York she was inspired by the bohemian living she witnessed in Greenwich Village and, dropping her studies, moved there soon after. It was while in New York that she met Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray and soon became the latter's assistant. By 1928 she had her own photographs exhibited at the first Independent Salon of Photography and her work was highly acclaimed. Her photographs documented the changing face of New York City. It took her a long time to secure funding for this project but in 1939 her book, Changing New York was eventually published. The photographer moved to Maine in 1966 and devoted much of her time to inventing photographic equipment and teaching photographic techniques. She spent many years championing the cause of the Parisian photographer Eugene Atget who Abbott described as one of her greatest influences. Abbott's work received enormous acclaim and stand today as an invaluable document of New York in the 1920s and 1930s. "At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been visionary in his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both on film and on earth." Jimmy Carter presenting Ansel Adams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco. He hated the regimentation of his education and was taken out of school and given a season pass by his father to visit the Panama-Pacific Exposition. In1916 he visited the Yosemite National Park for the first time and took his first photographs there using his father's box Brownie camera. He was to visit the park every year for the rest of his life. He initially wanted to become a concert pianist but opted to follow a career in photography instead. The first photograph that captured the attention of critics and public alike was 'Monolith, the Face of Half Dome' (1927). He travelled through New Mexico and California taking photographs throughout his life. In 1930 he met Paul Strand in Taos Pueblo and was inspired to devote his life to photography. In 1932 he was of the founding members of Group f/64and took part in a one-man exhibition at the De Young Museum. By 1937 his landscape photographs were being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As well as travelling extensively, he also taught photography. In the 1940s he developed his Zone System technique of exposure and development control while teaching at the Art Centre School in Los Angeles. Throughout his lifetime Adams took an active role in environmental issues, including standing as Director of the Sierra Club in California from 1934to 1971 and President of the Trustees for Conservation from 1956 to 1957.His photographs were exhibited in almost every major museum in the United States. He won many awards during his career and wrote over thirty books on photography. "A marbellous artist." Punch magazine. Lawrence Alma-Tadema was born in Holland but settled in London in 1869 and became a naturalised Englishman only four years later. He was trained in Antwerp and, like many of his Dutch contemporaries, began by mastering the art of genre painting, specialising in historical genre scenes. His early influences included the famous Egyptologist George Ebers. After a trip to Pompeii in the late 1860s, Alma-Tadema was keen to recreate Rome and Greece by painting beautiful men and women reposing within marble settings of archaeological exactitude. Arguably the most successful painter of the Victorian era, he was also perhaps one of the most prolific, producing more than 400 known paintings during his 60 year career as well as finding time to design a number of musical instruments. Alma-Tadema was knighted and received an order of merit for his highly acclaimed works. After his death, however, in 1912, his work declined in popularity. He is buried in the crypt in St. Paul's Cathedral, London along with both Leighton and Millais. Alma-Tadema is the archetypal Classicist painter and at his peak his reputation rivalled that of Leighton. The unquestionable strength of his technical skill is most notable in the details bestowed on the many marble artefacts that characterise his work. Milton Clark Avery Born: 1893 Died: 1965 Gender: Male Nationality: American "Avery was one of the first American painters, perhaps the first, to insist that a painting should be flat and on one plane, without 'photographic' depth..." Robert Hughes. Born in Altmar, New York, this American painter spent most of his early life in Connecticut before settling in New York City in 1925. He studied briefly at the Connecticut League of Art Students and in his early years supported himself through a variety of night jobs so he could paint in the daytime. After his marriage to Sally Michel in 1926 he was able to concentrate on painting full-time, living on his wife's earnings as an illustrator. While most of Avery's contemporaries were working in sober, naturalistic styles, he decided to follow the example of Matisse in his joining of pure colour planes within flowing outlines. Favourite subjects included landscapes and beach scenes, although his work became increasingly more abstract. In works such as 'Mother and Child' (1944), for example, in the way Avery organises areas of pure colour, he clearly anticipates the "Abstract Expressionists". Avery's rich colourings were highly distinctive and proved to be influential on younger artists such as Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Rothko in particular was a real admirer of the 'sheer loveliness' of Avery's work. Favourite subjects included landscapes and beach scenes, although to look at some of his later works, the style could almost be mistaken for abstract. Milton Avery was an independent artist described by Robert Hughes as "a man of absolute dedication and conviction, a painter who did almost nothing but paint". His use of colour was the most remarkable aspect of his work, developing flat colour planes with virtually no internal texture. It is the juxtaposition of these planes that so impresses the younger artists. Jean-Michel Basquiat Born: 1960 Died: 1988 Gender: Male Nationality: American "The only thing the [Eighties'] market liked better than a hot young artist was a dead hot young artist, and it got one in Jean-Michel Basquiat. "Robert Hughes. Born to upper middle-class parents in Brooklyn, Jean-Michel Basquiat achieved almost instantaneous success with his Graffiti Art in 1980s New York. With no formal training, Basquiat appropriated signs and symbols from a wide variety of cultural sources, from the art of African bushmen to quotations from Leonardo or Gray's Anatomy. He then positioned these in an urban context by using the bright colours and scribblings generally associated with the spray can vandalism commonplace in New York City at the time, particularly on the subway system. Recognisable through his brash and bold imagery, Basquiat quickly established a reputation as an artist who could not be ignored. Along with Keith Haring who also suffered an abrupt end to his career, the two artists set the increasingly decadent New York art scene ablaze. With paintings such as 'Hollywood Africans' (1983) and 'Worthy Consultants' (1986), Basquiat seemed to be challenging the art world bourgeoisie through his use of African American iconography communicated through the rough-and-ready style, inspired by his predecessors Cy Twombly and Jean Duboffet, that was rarely seen inside prestigious art galleries. Embracing the riches that he reaped through the sale of his work, however, it seemed as though Basquiat wanted to be both inside and outside of the art world at the same time. During his brief career, tragically cut short by a drugs overdose, Basquiat had been described in some quarters as an 'urban noble savage', yet this clearly belied his privileged background. Edward Lucie-Smith described his work as possessing "immense energy and a vast range of cultural reference," while other critics were wholly dismissive of the entire Graffiti Art movement. Romare Bearden Born: 1914 Died: 1988 Gender: Male Nationality: American Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina but was brought up in New York at the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Great jazz figures such as Duke Ellington and Fats Waller were regular visitors to the Bearden household. He studied mathematics at New York University from 1932 to 1935 then joined the Art Students' League in 1936 where he studied under George Grosz for a year. He enlisted in the US Army and fought in the Second World War. Then for four years from 1950 he lived and studied abroad. Upon returning to the United States in 1964 his interest and depiction of the black experience became more focused, particularly in reaction to the Civil Rights Movement and his new found interest in black Caribbean culture. He produced abstract collages which he called 'projections' using newspaper and photographic images laid flat on masonite boards with various media such as inks, temperas and paper scraps surrounding them. The method is similar to that of Stuart Davis whose work was often seen as a pictorial equivalent of jazz music. Bearden's work is colourful and often immensely powerful. He was capable of producing works both full of life such as 'Wrapping it up at The Lafayette', and also works infused with a great sense of tenderness in 'The Piano Lesson' for example. As well as painting, Bearden lectured in Afro-American Art and wrote a number of articles and co-authored two books on the subject, namely The Painter's Mind (1969) with Carl Holby and Six Black Masters of American Art (1972) with Harry Henderson. Charles Belle Born: 1956 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: French "When I start a picture, I always imagine that I'll be inside it forever. But then, I always find myself starting over again on another one... Painting is 100% emotion. So yes, without a doubt, and in the philosophical sense, I am a 'romantic' painter." Charles Belle. Charles Belle was born in the Franche-Comte in 1956 and still lives and works there today. His paintings show a great interest in nature from his spring-themed works to his still-lifes of flowers. He always uses strong vibrant colours for example the blues and yellows in 'Promise of Every Springtime'. Albert Bierstadt Born: 1830 Died: 1902 Gender: Male Nationality: American Albert Bierstadt was born in Germany and, after his family moved to America, was raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1853 he returned to Germany to study in Dusseldorf where he produced a number of paintings of the Alpine landscape. Returning to the United States in 1857, Bierstadt joined a survey expedition travelling West. It was on this trip, through taking numerous photographs and many sketches, when he fell in love with the American landscape. Upon his return to New York these notes were transformed into giant canvases. With paintings such as 'Mountain of the Mist' and 'The Sierra Nevada in California', Bierstadt created epic and highly romanticised paintings of the American landscape. The detail and his use of dramatic lighting led to him becoming one of the most renowned landscape artists of his generation. James Blakeway Born: Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American James Blakeway was born in Fargo, North Dakota and studied marketing at the University of North Dakota. He worked in marketing at Procter and Gamble for five years before starting his own business, Blakeway Worldwide Panoramas. He first came to prominence as a photographer in 1988 and is most famous for his panoramic cityscapes. He has photographed many of the major cities in the world but is also known for his spectacular shots of special occasions such as the 'Indianapolis Motor Speedway'. Hieronymus Bosch (van Aeken) Born: c.1450 Died: 1516 Gender: Male Nationality: Dutch "For the first and perhaps for the only time an artist had succeeded in giving concrete and tangible shape to the fears which had haunted the minds of man in the Middle Ages." Sir Ernest Gombrich, from Story of Art. Bosch is presumed to have come from Aachen and for this reason was also known as van Aeken. He travelled a lot during his early years. His father was a painter so he was bound to have picked up some lessons on technique from him, but as for influences it is hard to say, but his closest predecessors were Rogier and Bonts. Documentary evidence connects him at various periods between 1480 and 1516 to the Brotherhood of the Holy Virgin. He designed the stained-glass windows and a crucifix for the Chapel of the Brotherhood (1511-12) and was presumably a highly respected member of the community. Bosch was a religious painter with a strong bent towards satire and pessimistic comment. His work represents one of the last profound expressions of the medieval world view. The work of Bosch is startling and disturbing. His paintings contain strange creatures, demons and animals set amongst ordinary humans. They depict scenes out of biblical texts or proverbs on a huge scale. The paintings foreground the depths that humans can sink to and the consequences they must pay for their depravity. For example 'The Haywain' and 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'. The colours he uses are often garish, adding to the grotesque nature of the works. Yet they are immaculately conceived with Bosch showing a remarkable eye for detail. The fact of the matter is that Bosch's paintings were unique and the often grotesque subject matter was unconventional to say the least, indeed at the time his bizarre images led to the charge of heresy being levelled against him. Bosch achieved fame and notoriety during his lifetime, but his paintings didn't gain a wide audience until after his death. The Surrealists regarded Bosch as a forerunner to their movement in the way he expressed primal concerns in his paintings by combining fantasy with the familiar. Fernando Botero Born: 1932 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: Columbian "Latin America is one of the few places left in the world which can be transformed into myths." Fernando Botero. Fernando Botero was born in Medellin, Colombia. By the age of 16 he was contributing illustrations to the local newspaper, El Colombiano. In 1951 he moved to Bogota where he had his first international show at the Leo Matiz Gallery. A year later he left for Madrid to study fresco technique and art history in Florence. Returning to Colombia, he exhibited at the Biblioteca Nacional in Bogota and began teaching at the School of Fine Arts at the National University. Botero's early work was influenced by various styles such as Abstract Expressionism, but it was the Italian Renaissance which provided his primary inspiration. Botero moved to the United States in 1960, settling in New York where he remained for ten years. During this period he began to experiment with creating volume in his paintings by expanding the figures and compressing the space around them. Whether painting imaginary group portraits or parodies on the work of the Old Masters, this technique has endured throughout his career. For his subject matter he takes characters that must have populated the towns of his childhood: parents with their children, priests, nuns, bishops and soldiers. Each is depicted on a larger than life scale frequently with a mythical air surrounding them. His reputation is indisputable, being widely exhibited in Europe and North and South America and having received numerous awards including the First Intercol at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota. At first glance, Botero's paintings seem to be humorous in nature, however, more often than not, his portraits appear to offer bitter social comment with frequent political overtones. As well as his paintings, he has made several public monuments in bronze, notably 'Broadgate Venus' (1990) erected in Exchange Square in London. Sandro Botticelli Born: c.1445 Died: 1510 Gender: Male Nationality: Italian "His world is a strange one - a world not of hills and fields and flowers and men of flesh and blood, but one where people are embodied ecstasies, the colour tints from evening clouds or apocalyptic jewels, the scenery a flood of light or a background of illuminated gold." John Addington Symonds. Alessandro Filipepi, later known as Botticelli was born in the Ognissanti region of Florence. He learnt his craft from Filippo Lippi, who was to be the most important influence on his work. By 1472 Botticelli had found an assistant in Lippi's son, Filippino. Many of his earliest works such as 'Madonna and Child in an Archway' (c.1470) and 'Madonna and Child with Two Angels' (c.1470) show traits picked up from Filippo Lippi, most noticeably the innocent visages of the women. Yet as well as Lippi, the Pollaiuolo brothers and Verruchio also made a strong impression on the artist. As Botticelli's work became more assured, the de Medici family in Florence took notice and were to become one of his most consistent patrons, commissioning many family portraits, many of which have been lost. Amongst the three paintings that did survive, however, 'Primavera' (1478) and 'The Birth of Venus' (c.1481) are often regarded as Botticelli's most accomplished works. Botticelli spent a considerable amount of time working for the Church. For example he produced 'The Adoration of the Magi' (c.1481). Heavily detailed with elaborate architectural representations and also featuring highly expressive figures set in a religious context, this painting contains many of the themes that were to recur in much of Botticelli's work. He built up a great reputation for his religious work and he was invited to work on the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, painting alongside Perugino, Rosselli and Ghirlandaio in 1481 to 1482. Back in Florence he painted 'The Bardi Altarpiece' (1485) in the Santo Spirito church. In it one can see the decorative quality that Botticelli mastered so completely, with the artist focusing on the ornamentation as much as the actual content of the painting. Botticelli produced a great number of decorative frescoes, for example 'Venus and Mars' (1487). In 1491 he was commissioned to decorate the vault of the Chapel of St. Zenobius in Santa Maria del Fiore and four years later painted a fresco of St. Francis in the dormitory of Santa Maria di Monticelli. By the turn-of-the-century Botticelli had returned to the Gothic principle in that the most important character of the composition was largest in scale, and he also abandoned modern architecture in favour of rural elements used to frame the subjects. Thus 'The Mystic Nativity' (1500) is non-realistic and, although bringing together various stylistic themes from earlier works, the painting is unusual in that it was painted in oil on canvas rather than tempera on panel. It is seen as one of his most personal works, indeed it bears a cryptic inscription that implies Botticelli felt the apocalypse was close. Botticelli's output was enormous for a painter of his time. As well as his large-scale paintings and frescoes he also produced many drawings, for example a manuscript of Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. He seemed to have a considerable reputation during his lifetime, but was largely forgotten until the Pre-Raphaelites rediscovered his technique, particularly his depiction of women. William Adolphe Bouguereau Born: 1825 Died: 1905 Gender: Male Nationality: French "In painting, I'm an idealist. I see only the beautiful in art and, for me, art is the beautiful. Why reproduce what is ugly in nature? I don't see why it should be necessary." William Bouguereau. William Bouguereau was born in the Rue du Duc in La Rochelle. He showed talent in drawing from an early age and studied under Louis Sage who himself had trained under Ingres. In 1846, after winning first prize in a figure painting competition in Bordeaux, Bouguereau travelled to Paris and entered the atelier of François Picot. He greatly respected Picot calling himself 'élève de Picot' for his entire career. His early work mainly consisted of the production of académies (cast drawings and pencil life studies) and to studies of anatomy and perspective. In 1848 Bouguereau joined the National Guard to fight on the side of the monarchy. His painting, 'Equality' (1848) refers specifically to the revolution, yet no other painting deals with troubled times as in this work, Bouguereau preferring more settled times in which to work. In 1850 with the painting 'Zenobia Found by Shepherds on the Shore of the Araxes' (1850) Bouguereau won a three year fellowship at the Villa Medici. He travelled widely around Italy painting many landscapes which were to inform many of his later genre paintings. After completing his 'Triumph of the Martyr: The Body of Saint Cecilia Brought into the Catacombs' (1854), Bouguereau returned to Bordeaux. He soon received a number of commissions, including 'Napoleon III visiting the Flood Victims of Tarascon' (1856). Three years later after getting married and becoming a father, Bouguereau began the production of genre paintings to be marketed firstly by the Durand-Ruel Gallery and later on by Goupil. Bouguereau's paintings at this point became more naturalistic, though retaining their tone of idealism. Bouguereau took part in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and, upon returning to his artistic pursuits was elected to the Académie des Beaux Arts de l'Institute de France in 1876. In 1888 he was named Professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and became one of the most influential teachers at the school. Bouguereau was an admirer of traditional art and had no time for anything resembling innovation or the avant-garde. His sense of idealism was his guiding principle, regarding the ugly as worthless for representation. His views angered many, for example, J.K. Huysmans who called Bouguereau 'a master in the hierarchy of mediocrity'. He has left a large body of work and he is undoubtedly a key figure in 19th century French art. Georges Braque Born: 1882 Died: 1963 Gender: Male Nationality: French "I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence - what I can only describe as a state of peace - which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry." George Braque. George Braque was born in Argenteuil, a Seine-side village near Paris. Both his father and grandfather were skilled artists. In 1890 the family moved to Le Havre where Braque led quite a solitary childhood. He went to the local Ecole des Beaux-Arts but failed his exams in 1899, leaving his parents to apprentice their son to a local painter-decorator. In Paris Braque gained a craftsman's diploma and through a friendship with Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz became involved in the Fauvist movement. In 1907 he first saw the work of Cézanne and in the same year met Picasso who had just completed 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' (1907). Although not immediately impressed, Braque began experimenting with a fragmented style, eventually completing 'Nude' (1907-1908) which can be seen as one of the earliest works in Cubism. Returning to the Mediterranean, and to painting landscapes, Braque was rapidly developing his own distinctive vision, imposing his own take on the landscape rather than replicating exactly what he saw. For the next few years Braque worked closely with Picasso particularly between 1910 and 1912, experimenting with Cubism and this new technique in which to represent form and space. Musical instruments were frequently depicted such as in 'Man with a Guitar' (1911) and a number of still-lifes for example, 'Still-Life with Pipe and Glass' (1912). In 1912, realising that he was succumbing to the notion of art for art's sake, he abandoned Cubism. Braque and Picasso began experimenting with colour and collage and achieved some impressive results. In 1914, however, Braque enlisted in the French army and fought in the Second World War before being wounded in the head. Returning to the studio in 1917 his work began to change as he adopted a more graceful style, using curves and muted colours. In 1922 an exhibition of his work at the Salon d'Antomne was acclaimed and by the 1930s his reputation was international. He continued to paint still-lifes and interiors, with the 'Studio' series, begun in 1947, proving one of his most accomplished. The work that Braque produced in collaboration with Picasso is varied in quality though impressive in the radical experiments with technique. Despite working closely together, their approaches were quite different with Braque proving more considered and Picasso more spontaneous. Braque was also concerned with representing a subject in his own way, conveying more than just the image before him. He constantly struggled with the use of colour in regard to form, and it was only after designing a series of stained-glass windows in 1953 that he finally reconciled the two as can be seen in 'The Studio VIII' (1954-1955). He was a quiet man but his reputation was such that he received many accolades during his lifetime and was accorded the greatest honour of all in a state funeral. Pieter Bruegel (The Elder) Born: c.1525 Died: 1569 Gender: Male Nationality: Dutch "Historically speaking, Bruegel is one of the greats; and to place him by the side of Jan van Eyck and of Rembrandt is to emphasize the essentials of Netherlandish painting." Max J. Friedländer, art historian. Generally known as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, he was the first in a great line of Flemish artists. He studied under the leading artist Pieter Coecke van Aelst and was accepted as a master in the Antwerp Painter's Guild in 1551. Around this time, Bruegel travelled to Italy where he completed a number of paintings, mostly landscapes. He returned home in 1553 and settled in Antwerp. Over the next few years, Bruegel designed a series of landscapes engraved and published by Hieronymous Cock. Bruegel produced a number of drawings for Cock including parables such as 'The Big Fish Eat Little Fish' (1557). In 1563 he moved to Brussels and married van Aelst's daughter Mayken. Breugel's association with the van Aelst family drew him to the artistic traditions of the Mechelen (now Malines) region, in which allegorical and peasant themes are widespread. Bruegel's paintings of this period depicted landscapes and scenes of peasant life, such as the famous painting 'Peasant Wedding Feast' (1567). Bruegel chose so regularly the subject of peasant life that he is sometimes referred to as 'Peasant Bruegel'. Towards the end of his life, his figures became bigger and bolder such as in 'The Blind Leading the Blind' (1568). Throughout his life Bruegel used everyday sayings and proverbs to draw personal and highly sophisticated moral commentaries on the condition of man. Bruegel was well-known during his lifetime but it wasn't until the 20th century when his talent was truly recognised. He was influenced by Hieronymous Bosch yet forged his own distinctive style within the tradition of religious painting. The spirituality in his work is evident as he conveys a deep sense of understanding with his fellow man. Edward Burne-Jones Born: 1833 Died: 1898 Gender: Male Nationality: British "I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no one can define or remember, only desire - and the forms divinely beautiful." Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham and studied divinity at Exeter College in Oxford in 1853. It was here that he discovered the Aesthetic Movement. He was inspired by Pre-Raphaelite painters such as John Everett Millais and Holman Hunt, and by 1855 on a tour of North France with William Morris, he decided to become a painter. A year later he left Oxford without a degree and moved to London where he studied under Dante Gabriel Rossetti who was to be the prime influence over his career. Between 1857 and 1877, Burne-Jones worked on many commissioned paintings. He enjoyed regular trips to Italy and in 1861 co-founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Burne-Jones designed stained glass, tapestries and tiles, objects which were to play important decorative roles in his paintings. The company closed down in 1875 and two years later with an exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, Burne-Jones's work caused a sensation. Working in a style inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, Burne-Jones's paintings depicted medieval and mythical subjects. Ethereally beautiful women and knights in shining armour often featured in his work alongside many Renaissance features. Recurring themes of romance, chivalry, courtly love, the pursuit of beauty and the battle between good and evil grace his work and are evident in pieces such as 'Temperantia' and 'An Angel'. Burne-Jones produced a vast amount of work throughout his career. He achieved great success in his day and was influential on a number of movements such as the French Symbolists. His classical style, highly conscious of aesthetic values, however, was seen as outmoded by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Victorian values represented in his paintings were seen as sentimental and the heroines with their submissive postures were seen as lacking the toughness of the modern emancipated woman. Burne-Jones though was an idealist, he was in pursuit of perfection and this quest led him to the days of knights and maidens. There is a sensuous beauty in his finest works, and it is this which ensures his work continues to be popular. Abbott, Bernice Adams, Ansel Albers, Joseph Alinder, Jim Allo, Charles Alma-Tadema, Lawrence Anderson, Abraham Anjelico Anonymous Anthony, Carol Arthur Avery, Milton Bacon, Francis Bailey Bailey, Baldaccini, Cesar Basquiat, Jean-Michel Baumann, Baumeister, Willi Bearden, Romare Becher, Bernd & Hilla Beckmann, Max Bell, Vanessa Belle, Charles Bellenger, Georges Benigni, Benoit, Pierre Benson, Frank Bettmann, Corbis Beuys, Joseph Bierstadt, Albert Blake, William Blake, Peter Blakeway, James Bleckner, Ross Bliss, Bobo, Charlie Boccasile Bonacini Bonestell, Bonnard, Pierre Bosch, Hieronymus Botero, Fernando Botticelli, Sandro Boucher, Francois Bouchet Bouguereau, William Bouillon Braque, Georges Brassai Brice, Jennette Broders Bronzino, Agnolo Bruegel, Pieter Brunhof Burn, Rodney Burne-Jones, Edward Burra, Edward Burri, Rene Butler, Linda Calder, Alexander Cameron, David Camoin, Charles Canaletto, Giovanni Cappiello, Leonetto Carrera Cassandre, Adolphe Cassatt, Mary Caulfield, Patrick Cauty, James Cezanne, Paul Chabas, Paul Chagall, Marc Champseix, Chardin, Jean Baptiste Chen, Rene Cheret, Jules Choucard, Christo, Claude Colin, Colin, Collier Constable, John Corcos Corot, Jean Corr Cortier, Amedee Cot, Pierre Craig-Martin, Michael Cranach the Elder Crivelli, Carlo Curran Adolphe Cassandre Born: 1901 Died: 1968 Gender: Male Nationality: Ukranian "A poster, unlike a painting, is not, and is not meant to be, a work easily distinguished by its 'manner' - a unique specimen conceived to satisfy the demanding tastes of a single more or less enlightened art lover. It is meant to be a mass-produced object existing in thousands of copies - like a fountain-pen or automobile. Like them, it is designed to answer certain strictly material needs. It must have a commercial fashion." Adolphe Mouron Cassandre. Cassandre was born in Kharkov, Ukraine to French parents. He settled in Paris in 1915 and after a brief stint at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he enrolled in Lucien Simon's independent studio followed by the Académie Julian. He worked at the Hachard printing house at the Place de la Madelaine in Paris up until 1922, eventually saving enough money for a studio. 'Au Bûcheron' (1923) was one of his first works in his distinctive style. It won the first prize at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in 1925 and it secured his reputation. In 1927 Cassandre received orders for posters from the French railways as well as English and Dutch companies. By the end of the Twenties he had designed his first advertising typeface, Bifur, followed by the black and grey sanserif, Acier in 1930. In 1937 he completed his first all-purpose font, Peignot, exhibited at the World's Fair in Paris and which is still in use today. In 1930 Cassandre founded the Alliance Graphique with Loupot and Moyrand and, during its five years, produced a large number of widely acclaimed posters. In 1936, following a successful retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Cassandre began designing covers for Harper's Bazaar. After a brief spell in the French army, he continued his easel painting, begun while in New York. His work was exhibited at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris in 1942 and up until the mid-Fifties he neglected his poster art almost completely, continuing to work on his painting and spending a great deal of time on set and costume designs for the theatre. Cassandre died in poverty and depression, but his achievements are considerable. Many of his posters remain highly distinctive, perhaps his most famous being, 'Watch the Fords Go By' (1937). His logo for Yves Saint Laurent, designed in 1963 is still one of the most recognisable images in contemporary society. He was concerned with precision and strong images. Many of his posters were in the figurative vein, but there is a definite Surrealist influence. He has had his work exhibited all over the world. Mary Cassatt Born: 1844 Died: 1926 Gender: Female Nationality: American Mary Cassatt was born to a wealthy family in Allegheny City in Pennsylvania. From 1860 to 1862 she studied antiques at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, then with the outbreak of the American Civil War she moved with her family to France. She began her painting career based in Paris painting in an Impressionist style. In 1868 'The Mandolin Player' was accepted for exhibition at the Salon under the name Mary Stevenson. Having returned to the United States in 1870 she met Emily Sartain a year later and together they travelled to Parma followed by Seville. Meeting Edgar Degas in Paris in 1877 she was invited to join the Indépendents and was to exhibit at the very last exhibition in 1886. From 1890, Cassatt moved away from the Impressionist style and her depictions of mothers and children were rendered in more solid forms. Her work in pastels and printmaking established her reputation. She used bold colours and a variety of techniques such as drypoint and etching. Her inspiration came from the Japanese style of printmaking. She was a highly versatile artist, however, and among other works she was commissioned to produce a mural representing Modern Woman for the Women's Building at the World's Exhibition in Chicago. Due to poor eyesight Cassatt was forced to stop working in 1914. James Cauty Born: 1956 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: British "My ambition is to become a multi-national global propaganda machine" Born in Liverpool in 1956, James Cauty is one of the most uncompromising artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries. His career has encompassed performance art, publishing, graphic art, graffiti, painting, finance, film, television, acoustics, popular music, mechanics and massive scale pranksterism. He began young. As a 17 year old he drew a print inspired by Tolkiens ‘Lord of the Rings’. It became a best seller, with some 6 million copies circulated worldwide. It is still available today. Then music captured him. He teamed up with Bill Drummond and together the pair formed one of the most successful art-music collaborations of all time, KLF. They released 7 consecutive top 10 singles and 5 albums. In 1993 Cauty and Drummond launched The K Foundation and caused a media storm when they created The Other Turner Prize and awarded £40,000 to Rachel Whitehead, for the worst new British artist. Rachel had coincidently also won that years Turner Prize and awarded £20,000. In the summer of 1994 inside an abandoned boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura, The K foundation burnt £1 million as a deliberate act. Much has been written about this event and it still generates a wide range of reactions today. Cauty then moved to Brighton, England and in 2003 he launched ‘Blacksmoke’, an occasional art collective and musical group focusing on issues of global environmental concern. Cauty has planned a series of artworks for release, the first of which is the limited edition ‘Black Smoke, Stamps of Mass Destruction’ available on this site. This release has received wide media coverage, including the front page of The Times on 4th June, 2003. Each print is produced using a high quality Giclée printing process and each is hand signed by Cauty. For further information about James Cauty click here Paul Cezanne Born: 1839 Died: 1906 Gender: Male Nationality: French "All things, particularly in art, are theory developed and applied in contact with nature. Painting is not only to copy the object, it is to seize a harmony between numerous relations." Paul Cézanne. Paul Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, the son of a wealthy banker. He was a talented student and among his school friends was Emile Zola who introduced him to Manet and Courbet and persuaded him to move to Paris to study art. Destined by his father to study law, he was eventually, at the age of 22, allowed to devote himself entirely to painting. A yearly allowance from his father enabled him to work without distraction for the next 23 years. The 1860s were to see the beginnings of Impressionism and Cézanne met many of the key figures such as Pissarro, Monet and Renoir. His early work was unaccomplished, however, and it wasn't until 1873 that his skill became apparent in 'The House of the Hanged Man', which was exhibited at the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. Cézanne exhibited again with the Impressionists in 1877 but refused to identify himself with the movement. Instead he was searching for a new way to approach the representation of nature. He talked of humanising a landscape through the exercise of an artist's feelings. From 1880 onwards Cézanne spent less time in Paris preferring the landscape of Provence. Upon his father's death in 1886, Cézanne's inheritance gave him financial independence. He continued to concentrate on his favourite themes such as portraits of his wife, Hortense and studies of the Provence landscape such as 'Mont Ste Victoire' (c.1886-1888) and 'Aix: Rocky Landscape' (c.1887). In 1895 the dealer Ambroise Vollard mounted Cézanne's first one-man exhibition and this was to bring the artist out of the shadow of obscurity and by the end of the century he was referred to as 'Sage' by many of the avant-garde. Cézanne was fascinated with structure and the way painting can tackle nature. His work can summon up a broad range of sensations for the viewer. Through his use of colour and space Cézanne achieved an extraordinary degree of expressiveness. Since his death his work has been enormously influential, most notably on the Cubist movement. Marc Chagall Born: 1887 Died: 1985 Gender: Male Nationality: Russian "Ever since my earliest youth, I have been fascinated by the Bible. I have always believed...that it is the greatest source of poetry of all time...I have sought its reflection in life and art. The Bible is like an echo of nature, and this is the secret I have endeavoured to transmit." Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall, the eldest of nine children was born in the Russian city of Vitebsk. He was trained in St. Petersburg from 1906 to 1909, where he also worked as a sign-writer, then in 1910 he moved to Paris. It was there that he met such members of the avant-garde as Apollinaire, Delaunay, Léger, Modigliani and Soutine, and his work began to show Cubist influences. Chagall had his first one-man show in Berlin in 1914 but upon visiting Russia was forced to stay due to the outbreak of war. His marriage resulted in a series of exuberant paintings of lovers, such as 'Birthday’ (1915-23). Following the Russian Revolution Chagall was appointed Fine Arts Commissar for Vitebsk and founded an art academy. After suffering difficulties with two of his fellow teachers, Lissitsky and Malevich, he resigned, moved to Moscow in 1920 and designed for the newly founded Jewish Chamber Theatre. In 1923 he returned to Paris on the invitation of Ambroise Vollard who commissioned Chagall to produce the illustrations 'Dead Souls'. Over the next few years Vollard was to remain Chagall's main benefactor. Based in France, though travelling widely, Chagall was granted French citizenship in 1937. Four years later due to the occupation, Chagall was forced to leave his adopted homeland and headed for the USA. After major retrospectives there he finally returned to France in 1948 and settled in a house near Nice. Chagall's work was wide and varied, ranging from set and costume designs to very strong distinctive paintings and stained glass windows. He was inspired by the Hasidic tradition and the Bible and developed his style from elements of Cubism and Orphism. His pictures convey a dreamlike quality, and he is often cited as one of the precursors to the Surrealist movement. All his pictures display a striking use of colour and feature very strong imagery, for example 'The Dream' (1927). At times his pieces tended towards the sentimental, yet the vitality and originality in his work has ensured his position as one of the most admired artists of the 20th century. Jules Cheret Born: 1836 Died: 1932 Gender: Male Nationality: French "He creates posters which, assembled together, form the most interesting monument there can be to the Parisian chronicle against a backdrop of industrial activity." A writer known only as 'un Bourgeois de Paris' from Figaro Illustré. Jules Chéret was born to a family of artisans in Paris. He attended school in the St. Jacques district before being placed on a three year apprenticeship to a lithographer for whom he lettered brochures, flyers and posters. By the age of 18 Chéret had sold some sketches for covers to various music publishers then decided to move to London to begin a job drawing pictures for the Maple Furniture Company catalogue. After six months he was back in Paris having earnt very little money. However, in 1858 he sold his first poster design for 'Orphée aux Enfers' for 100 francs. Then a year later he met the perfume manufacturer Eugène Rimmel. It was Rimmel who financed Chéret's lithography studio and his first success was the poster 'La Biche au Bois' (1866). His posters became known for their strong colours and hopeful scenes. In 1879 he won a silver medal at the Universal Exposition of 1879 and a gold medal at the Exposition of 1889. In the same year, the Théâtre d'Application ('La Bodinière') held an exhibition of over 100 of his posters, pastels, lithographs, drawings and sketches. By 1890 he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and was described as 'the creator of an art industry', in turning commercial art into a recognised art form. It was not until 1912, however, that his paintings were seen by the public, for his work had previously only been sold directly to clients. The Louvre held a large exhibition of his works and his talent not only as a popular poster artist but also as a painter became clear. Chéret produced an enormous amount of work in his lifetime. He pioneered the art of colour lithography, managing to produce delicate and bright colours where only sombre, heavy ones had been used before. He created the technical means to produce posters of all shades in the spectrum using only three to four lithographic stones. His posters capture the 'laissez-faire' attitude of turn-of-the-century Paris. His posters for everything from hat shops to the Moulin Rouge to cosmetics to beverages capture the atmosphere of 'la belle époque' perfectly. John Constable Born: 1837 Died: 1876 Gender: Male Nationality: British John Constable was born at East Bergholt in Suffolk, the fourth of six children. In 1796 he went to London on an apprenticeship and met John Thomas Smith who used some of Constable's early pictures for his book, Remarks on Rural Scenery. His early inspiration came from Gainsborough and particularly his East Anglian period. In 1799 he joined the Royal Academy and later set up a studio in East Bergholt. With financial assistance from his uncle, David Pike Watts, he went on a painting tour of the Lake District in 1806 from which came a number of watercolours and oil paintings. A year later he met the 5th Earl of Dysart who commissioned Constable to reproduce some family portraits. It wasn't until 1816, however, that he became financially secure with the inheritance following the death of his father. His first mature works started to appear in the 1820s, most noticeably with 'The Hay Wain' (1821) which exhibited at the Royal Academy. It was bought by John Arrowsmith who introduced Constable to Charles Schroth who in turn commissioned the artist to produce further works. He worked in the Picturesque style for some years but eventually renounced this in favour of a more realistic representation of his subjects. He was fascinated with the beauty of the British countryside and endeavoured to capture the ever-changing weather conditions and effects of light over the scenery. He generally sketched his subject matter in oil paints then finished the paintings in his studio. However, his 'six-footers' were sketched outdoors full-size, which leant his pictures a level of spontaneity which some critics claim was lost in the finished studio versions. Nevertheless, his landscapes express a true devotion to his subject matter. His fascination with the earth and the sky and everything in between is always clear. During his career he won a number of awards and was elected a Royal Academician in 1829, a year after the death of his wife Maria Bicknell. Alongside Gainsborough, John Constable is regarded as one of the finest British landscape painters. Leonardo da Vinci Born: 1452 Died: 1519 Gender: Male Nationality: Italian "Among the sciences painting comes first. Do you not perceive how many and various notions are performed by man only, how many different animals there are, as well as trees, plants, flowers, with many mountainous regions and plains, springs and rivers, cities with public and private buildings; machines, too, fit for the purposes of man, diverse costumes, decorations and arts? And all these things ought to be regarded as of equal importance and value by the man who can be termed a good painter." Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci was born in Anchiano near Vinci. His talents blossomed early and he entered the Florentine workshop of Andrea del Verrochio in 1469. Three years later he joined the painters' guild of St. Luke in Florence after an apprenticeship with Verrochio. Numerous provisional drawings exist from this period and it was already clear that Leonardoshowed enormous skill. In 1482 he moved to Milan where he stayed until 1499(leaving because of the French invasion). Soon after arriving in Milan he received a commission for the 'Madonna of the Rocks' from the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. He worked mainly at the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza where he undertook two major projects, the first of which was a large equestrian statue to Sforza's father and the second, 'The Last Supper' (c.1495-1497). Besides these, Leonardo worked on a number of portraits including the 'Lady with an Ermine' (c.1483-1486) and an altarpiece of the 'Madonna of the Rocks' (1483-1485). Then in 1500 he returned to Florence. He began working as a military engineer for Cesare Borgia. In 1506 he then returned to Milan and a year later Louis XII of France appointed Leonardo as his painter and engineer. By 1513 he was in Rome again where Pope Leo X offered him an apartment in the Bleeder of the Vatican. However, it was between 1500 and 1506 when Leonardo was probably most active, producing 'Mona Lisa' and the wall painting 'Battle of Anghiari' amongst others. In 1516 da Vinci moved to France on the invitation of Francis I and three years later died at Cloux, near Amboise. Leonardo da Vinci has left an astonishing legacy, not only in his painting and theses on painting but in the fields of design and engineering also. Works such as 'Mona Lisa' and 'St John the Baptist' show his skill most exquisitely. His work influenced the High Renaissance movement and particularly the two artists Michelangelo and Raphael. Although he did not leave a large body of work, his remarkable intellect and innovative ideas as well as the extraordinary technique he showed in his paintings and sculptures ensured his enduring reputation. Salvador Dali Born: 1904 Died: 1989 Gender: Male Nationality: Spanish "I'll be a genius... Perhaps I'll be despised and misunderstood, but I'll be a genius, a great genius." Salvador Dalí. Salvador Dalí was born in Figueras, in the Catalan region of Spain, and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Madrid. His main influences came from metaphysical painters such as De Chirico and Carra and the realism of the Pre-Raphaelites and French 19th century painters. In 1927 Dalí exhibited in Madrid and Barcelona, gaining a reputation as one of the most promising painters of his generation. In 1928 Dalí visited Paris where he met Picasso and the Surrealists Miro, Masson, Ernst, Tanguy and Breton. Joining this group the following year he rapidly became the leading figure of the movement for the next ten years. In 1929 he made the Surrealist film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ with Buñuel. Dalí's work of the Thirties, in line with the Surrealist mode of thinking, attempted to describe the unconscious. He took images culled from his dreams and fantasies and integrated these into natural environments. For example, 'Apparition of face and fruit-dish on a beach' (1938) depicts a dog's head, a fruit bowl and a human head emerging out of a beach landscape. A number of recurring images appeared in his work such as human figures with half open drawers protruding, burning giraffes and melting watches. Dalí named his technique 'critical paranoia', describing the delusional state one could create while aware that control of reason and will have been deliberately suspended. Dalí's art was a sensation, yet despite being the most recognised exponent of Surrealism, due mainly to his flamboyant and eccentric personality, he was thrown out of the movement by Breton in 1937. The reason was two-fold; firstly his art had become more traditional and secondly his political views, openly supporting General Franco, were not in accordance with the consensus Surrealist opinion. In 1940, Dalí left for the U.S. to have his first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. From 1948 he split his time between Spain, Paris and New York, finally settling in Spain in 1955 where he became a world famous recluse. As well as his paintings and prints he was a sculptor, jewellery designer and set designer. As mentioned before, he also worked in cinema collaborating with Luis Buñuel and later Alfred Hitchcock. Dalí is one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, yet there is much debate as to the actual quality of the work he produced. His paintings of the Thirties are generally well-respected but his later works are much criticised. His religious paintings in particular are often described as kitsch, for example 'The Crucifixion of St. John of the Cross' (1951), yet this remains incredibly popular amongst the public. Stuart Davis Born: 1894 Died: 1964 Gender: Male Nationality: American "I paint what I see in America, in other words I paint the American scene." Stuart Davis. Born in Philadelphia, Stuart Davis grew up in an artistic environment - his father was the art director of the Philadelphia Press and his mother was Helen Stuart Foulke, a sculptor. In common with Edward Hopper, Davis studied under Robert Henri. Davis' early works include street and bar-room scenes in the spirit of the Ashcan school, many of its exponents such as Gluckens, Luks and Shinn having worked on his father's newspaper. In 1913 he was one of the youngest exhibitors at the influential Armory Show. After practising illustration for the left-wing journal The Masses he took up painting full-time three years later. In 1914 Davis spent the first of many summers in the port of Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was the extraordinary light there, combined with the vast array of images (signal lamps, warehouse signs, striped buoys and gas pumps) that were to inform much of his work in increasingly more abstract form. In 1917 at the Sheridan Square Gallery, New York, Davis had his first one-man show exhibiting his watercolours and drawings. It was during the 1920s that he began to paint in a Cubist style depicting an assortment of products and packaging such as cigarette boxes, 'Lucky Strike' (1921) and bottles of mouthwash, 'Odol' (1924). By the late Twenties he was the only painter of the American Scene working on avant-garde terms. In the 1930s he worked for the Federal Art Project and became involved in the art politics of the Depression, being elected president of the Artists' Union established to combat discrimination in the distribution of public funds to artists. In 1936 he was one of the founder members of the American Artists' Congress but resigned disillusioned four years later. Davis was a passionate lover of jazz and the dynamism of this music was to infuse much of his work, most famously in the vibrant 'Swing Landscape' (1938). Stuart Davis is regarded as the most important American painter working in a Cubist idiom. Incorporating the sights and sounds of American life, he was a witty and distinctive abstract painter. His work is a precursor to Pop Art, with Edward Lucie-Smith describing him in his book Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists (1986) as 'the link between the American art world of the 1930s, in many respects still isolated and provincial, and the triumphant internationalism of the post-war epoch'. Tamara de Lempicka Born: 1898 Died: 1980 Gender: Female Nationality: Polish "I live life in the margins of society. And the rules of normal society don't apply in the margins." Tamara de Lempicka. Tamara de Lempicka was born Tamara Gorska in Warsaw, Poland and married Tadeusz de Lempicki in 1916. Fleeing the Russian Revolution she settled in Paris and took up study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and later received tuition from Maurice Denis and Andre Lhote. By1923 she had exhibited at the Salon des Independents, the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Moins de Trente Ans. She painted portraits generally in an Art Deco style which was an extension of Cubism and became Neo-Classicism in the 1930s. Some of her earliest subjects included writers, artists, the aristocracy and the generally well-to-do. She was interested in style both in life and in her art. She painted with strong colours in a very stylised and neat fashion, reflecting her hatred of Impressionism and her preference for precision, especially favouring the works of the Italian Renaissance. In 1925 she exhibited at Count Emmanuele Castelbarco's gallery, the Bottega di Poesia in Italy and it was a great success. She moved to the United States in 1939 with her second husband Baron Raoul Huffner and continued to consolidate her artistic success. By the Fifties, however, her work had gone out of fashion, causing her to take up abstract art, for example in 'Blue Abstract' (1955). With critics dismissing her new work, she decided never to exhibit again. From 1963 to1978 she lived in Houston, Texas before moving to Mexico where she died in1980. Some of her most impressive works included 'Group of Four Nudes' (1925) and 'Irene and Her Sister' (1925). She was known for her decadence and her elegance and both these themes can be seen in her art. Her paintings convey her fascination with beauty but not at the expense of emotion. Works such as 'La Belle Rafaela' (1927) and 'Adam and Eve' (1932) are deeply sensuous and highly individual. In the Seventies her work became fashionable once again, as it has done in the Nineties. Her work sums up the Twenties and particularly the milieu of cosmopolitanism and nobility which she inhabited. Edgar Degas Born: 1834 Died: 1917 Gender: Male Nationality: French "Even when working from nature, one has to compose. No art was ever less spontaneous than mine." Edgar Degas. Edgar Degas was born on Rue de la Victoire in Paris, the son of a wealthy art-loving banker. Initially trained in law, he instead entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1855 where he studied under Louis Lamothe. Degas spent a period of time in Italy studying the work of the Old Masters. His first works include many portraits, copies and historical paintings, for example 'Italian Head' (1856) and 'Young Spartans' (1860), all painted in a severely classical style. A chance meeting with Manet led Degas to encounter the Impressionist group and he soon moved away from historical scenes to concentrate on the contemporary. He exhibited in seven out of the eight Impressionist exhibitions. In his paintings he began to favour certain subjects such as racing scenes, café scenes, ballet, theatre and the circus. Unlike the Impressionists, however, he did not depict landscapes with their eye to the effects of light and shade, but preferred more rigorous academic studies. Works such as 'Four Studies of a Jockey' (1866) show great attention to detail while 'Dancers Preparing for the Ballet' (c.1872/1876) demonstrates an intimate viewpoint, as if we have just stumbled upon the scene. The influence of Japanese prints can be seen here with its surprising, almost off-kilter composition while in other studies one can see the Japanese technique Degas adopted for conveying a sense of movement. Degas became fascinated with ballet and his many depictions in paintings and pastels as well as in sculpture, prints, drawings and even fan decorations, show an almost documentary-like examination of this world. Degas also represented many scenes of modern life including unusual portraits of his family such as 'Uncle and Niece' (c.1875/1879) and contemporary works for example, 'Mary Cassatt in the Painting Gallery of the Louvre' (c.1879). When his sight began to fail his use of pastels became increasingly more common. Throughout his life, however, he experimented with many palettes. In his final years of work he turned to modelling, for example galloping horses, women at their toilette and nude dancers. Degas, like Manet (who also came from an upper middle-class background), remained aloof from the Impressionists, yet he devoted his life to his art. He had many admirers among his contemporaries, indeed Camille Pissarro said that he was 'certainly the greatest artist of our epoch'. Degas was fascinated with form and technique. Always experimenting with composition, with different media and colours, Degas was a master draughtsman, both academic and instinctive. He was the first of the Impressionists to achieve recognition and his work is still held in high esteem. Robert Delaunay Born: 1885 Died: 1941 Gender: Male Nationality: French "As an artist, as a manual craftsman, I wage my revolution on walls. I have now discovered new materials that can transform a wall, not only externally but in its very substance. Separate man from art? Never. I cannot separate man from art because I build houses for him! Even when fashion dictated easel art, I was already envisaging great murals." Robert Delaunay. Robert Delaunay was born in Paris to an upper class family. He started painting when he was young and served an apprenticeship with a theatrical designer from 1902 to 1904. Otherwise he had no formal training. He was first exhibited in 1904 at the Salon des Independents (he was the youngest exhibitor ever) and his work was clearly influenced by the Impressionists. He began to experiment soon after, however, taking pointillist ideas and stretching them to incorporate colour and movement. By 1908 he was playing an active role in the development of Cubism. His painting 'The Eiffel Tower' (1910) was received with great acclaim, and two years later his 'City of Paris' caused a sensation at the Salon des Independents. Delaunay's abstract works proved revolutionary in the development of French art. Apollinaire christened his style Orphism in the way the art had similarities with the abstract in music. By 1914 Delaunay was experimenting with wax. With the outbreak of the First World War he moved first to Portugal then to Spain where he worked briefly with Diaghilev. Relocating to Paris in the Twenties he collaborated with Leger in the Art Deco Exhibition and worked in set design on a number of films. His reputation declined somewhat in the latter part of his career but he continued to experiment with materials such as sand, mosaics and lacquered stone to be used in his acclaimed 'Reliefs' series. He had always had grand ambitions for his art and these were fulfilled with his commissions for the International Exposition in1937. The following year with the help of his wife Sonia and others he decorated the Tuileries Salon where he created three enormous 'Rhythms'. Robert Delaunay was hugely influential on the Expressionist movement, indeed, he had initially been invited to participate in the first Blaue Reiter exhibition in 1913. Yet his work was also an inspiration for the Futurists in Italy and the American Synchronizes, and he had many social contacts within the Dadaist movement. Sonia Delaunay-Terk (Delaunay-Terk) Born: 1885 Died: 1979 Gender: Female Nationality: Russian "I am attracted by pure colours. Colours from my childhood, from the Ukraine. Memories of peasant weddings in my country in which the red and green dresses decorated with many ribbons, billowed in dance." Sonia Delaunay-Terk. Her original name was Stern but she adopted Terk from her rich uncle living in St. Petersburg. Max Liebermann, a friend of the family encouraged her to paint. She settled in Paris in 1905 and studied at the Academie de la Palette. She married Robert Delaunay in 1910. The couple developed Orphism, a movement which applied a new sense of lyricism to the Cubism of Picasso, Braque and the like. In 1912 she worked on her first Simultaneous Contrasts. During the 1920s she designed hand-printed fabrics and tapestries which won her great acclaim. In 1925 she participated in the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts working in collaboration with the couturier Jacques Heim. During the Depression in the 1930s she returned to painting and became a member of the Abstraction-Creation association, a group of artists who worked from geometrical, non-representational elements as opposed to those with natural appearances. Following the death of her husband she continued to forge a successful career. Although sometimes overshadowed by the brief yet sensational career of her husband, Sonia Delaunay enjoyed a strong reputation as one of the finest designers working in her day. She designed clothing for the world's most glamorous women and for the finest theatrical productions. In 1963, having donated 58 of her works and 40 of her husband's to the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris, she became the first woman ever to be exhibited at the Louvre. Andre Derain Born: 1880 Died: 1954 Gender: Male Nationality: French "For a moment, Derain sat down and placed his hand against his chest. The massiveness of his head, the thick strong hands, the slow curving volume of his body gave monumentality to the living Derain. There was grandiloquence in his manner." Alexander Liberman from Andre Derain in North American Collections (Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1982). Andre Derain was born in Chaton on the outskirts of Paris, the son of a successful pastry cook. From 1898 to 1899 he studied at the Academie Carriere meeting Matisse and in 1900, Vlaminck. After a spell in the army, Derain participated in the Salon d'Automne in which his Fauvist portrait of Matisse first appeared. By 1907 he had started working in the Cubist idiom but four years later his style was becoming influenced by Byzantine art and African art. He exhibited at the influential Armory Show in 1913 in which he sold two out of his three pictures, including 'The Window on the Park' (later titled 'Window at Vers') to John Quinn a wealthy New Yorker. In 1916 he had his first one-man show at the Galerie Paul Guillaume in Paris and was gaining a strong reputation. In the 1920s he favoured the work of the Old Masters and produced landscapes, portraits and still-lifes in a surprisingly conservative fashion considering his avant-garde roots. He only had one individual show in Europe at the Brummer Gallery in 1922 but he continued to work prolifically and in 1928 won the Carnegie Prize for his 'Still-life with Dead Game' (c.1918)at the 27th Annual Carnegie International. A decade later, when Germany occupied France, his work escaped destruction, and was seen as upholding the classical tradition instead. He was thus put to work helping the Nazis prepare propaganda material. After the war he worked in theatre designing sets and costumes. As a result of his involvement with the Nazis during the war, the French eyed Derain with suspicion. Controversy, however, dogged most of his career. In 1931, for example the periodical, Les chroniques du jour published an article entitled 'Andre Derain: Pour ou Contre'. Certain critics feel he never quite fulfilled his early promise, while others see his work as a reconfiguring of many elements of French art history into something new and distinctive. Frank Dicksee Born: 1853 Died: 1928 Gender: Male Nationality: French "...Themes from chivalry and romance pervade Dicksee's work." Jeremy Maas, Victorian Painters. Frank Dicksee was the son and pupil of Thomas Francis Dicksee. He specialised in romantic historical scenes and in the later part of his career he concentrated on society portraits. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1876 and found success a year later with 'Harmony' which was brought by the Chantrey Bequest. Paintings such as 'The Magic Crystal' contain elements of Watts, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, while 'Reverie' (1895) for example, depicted a social drama very much in the manner of Orchardson. Dicksee was most popular at the turn-of-the-century. In 1900 he was awarded a medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition. The year before his painting 'The Two Crowns' had been voted the most popular picture at the Royal Academy summer exhibition. In 1924 he was elected to president of the Royal Academy, but this was seen by many as a mere concession to his seniority as opposed to his position in the art world. By the end of his career he was opposed to modernism of any kind and was regarded as old-fashioned by his contemporaries. Richard Diebenkorn Born: 1922 Died: 1993 Gender: Male Nationality: American "It was just that [in the 1960s and 1970s] artists who did feel nature was worth exploring were sidelined by the institutional and critical clout of purist abstraction." Robert Hughes. Richard Diebenkorn was born in Portland, Oregon but his family moved to San Francisco when he was two. He spent a good deal of his life in the Bay Area before moving to Santa Monica in 1963. He studied and taught at a number of schools including the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco from 1947 to 1950. Fellow teachers included Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, and it was their influence that led him to abandon still-lifes and interiors and take up Abstract Expressionism. With a strong emphasis on landscapes, Diebenkorn employed directional brushstrokes and expansive forms, using bright colours such as pinks, yellows and blues similar to the style of Willem de Kooning. By 1957 however, his work became more figurative, as he began a series of roughly rendered paintings, frequently depicting women observing landscapes from interiors. 'Woman in Profile' (1958) is a good example of this. As Diebenkorn moved between abstraction and figuration, elements from the likes of Matisse and Edward Hopper can easily be identified. Perhaps his best known work is his 'Ocean Parks' series begun in 1967. Abstract in essence these paintings nevertheless evoke the real-life landscapes of Santa Monica. Employing the formality of Matisse particularly in his depictions of the relationship between interior and exterior as well as the faces deep in thought inspired by figures in Hopper's work, Diebenkorn was nevertheless a truly instinctive and individual painter. He never quite received the adulation of his predecessors but his work remains on show in galleries around the world. Simon Dixon Born: 1966 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: British "My work is influenced by my interest in 20th century history, popular culture and women with no clothes on." Simon Dixon. Simon Dixon's iconic pop art images gained instant popularity with the underground scene from their very first showing in 1998. He quickly gained a reputation in his hometown of Brighton for lively, brightly coloured portraits, which began appearing on walls around the town in the late 1990s. Dixon now has an established reputation for witty, eye-popping portraits of twentieth century icons. His subjects include Mohammed Ali, Johnny Rotten, Billie Holiday and Chief Kicking Bear, and his painting style is pure pop, with photographic detail imposed on broad areas of flat colour. The roots of this style are in the artist's background, illustrating underground comics and music magazines. This training, combined with a personal obsession with all things Rock and Roll defines the visual impact of Dixon's work. A simple idea links every image Dixon paints. He chooses famous people, who have an interesting history, but picks the moment the subject truly began to enter the public eye. Every image therefore speaks clearly of change, determination and the passion of holding true to one's self-beliefs. Dixon's art continues to go from strength to strength and his reputation is spreading rapidly as one of today's most talented image-makers. His images have the likelihood to be as enduring as the iconic faces he portrays. Robert Doisneau Born: 1912 Died: 1994 Gender: Male Nationality: French "I've never examined why I make photos. In truth it's a hopeless struggle against the idea that one will die. It's something I'm more prepared for, because one shouldn't think that every action is temporary and momentary. I try obstinately to stop this time that is passing." Robert Doisneau. Robert Doisneau was born in Gentilly in the Val-de-Marne near Paris. He studied engraving and lithography and went to work at lettering and advertising photographs in 1930. He began working for André Vigneau in 1931 as his cameraman, and then joined the Renault factory in Billancourt in 1934 working as an industrial and advertising photographer. Doisneau was fired in 1939 for being consistently late and joined the Rapho Photo Agency taking some of his first professional street photographs. With the outbreak of the Second World War, however, he was called upon to serve in the French Army for a year before working for the résistance until 1945. At the end of the war he joined the Alliance Photo Press Agency but returned to Rapho a year later. In 1949 he joined Vogue as fashion photographer where he remained for three years before going freelance. Doisneau is best known for his street photography, his most famous example being 'Kiss in front of the Palace of City Hall' (1950). But he took thousands of photographs striving to capture the pulse of Parisian life. Like his contemporary Brassaï, Doisneau liked nothing better than to walk the streets never knowing what sights he was to encounter. Doisneau's work has been enormously influential on many photographers and film directors. His talent lay in his ability to capture a moment of poignancy, absurdity or just plain strangeness. Whether it was a sailor staring up at his pinups, 'Pinups' (1952), a dog with wheels replacing his hind legs, 'Dog on Wheels' (1977) or a portrait of Pablo Picasso with loaves of bread for hands, 'Picasso and the loaves' (1952), Doisneau's work contained a distinctive sense of humour as well as a deep empathy for his subjects. Jean Dubuffet Born: 1901 Died: 1985 Gender: Male Nationality: French "... The most simple and common spectacles appeal to me the most... I am a tourist of a very special kind: what is picturesque disturbs me. It is where the picturesque is absent that I am in a state of constant amazement." Jean Dubuffet. Jean Dubuffet was born in Le Havre, the son of a wealthy wine merchant. He attended the Lycee of Le Havre then in 1918 he went to study at the Academie Julian where he remained for six months. He had doubts, however, about the value of art and abandoned his burgeoning career in 1924 not resuming until 1942. His first one-man exhibition took place in 1945. He was fascinated with representing urban scenes, for instance, 'Man With A Hod ' (1956). He called his style Art Brut (Raw Art), similar to Outsider Art in which paintings and sculptures are executed by those beyond the system such as prisoners, mental patients or recluses. He was an experimental artist in the way he found new ways of applying materials to his artwork. For example, he used sand or plaster in his paintings and incorporated items discarded on the street into his sculptures. Dubuffet was obsessed with materials and with creating works outside any accepted understanding of what constitutes art. He was closest to the Surrealists and the spirit of the Naive Artists. In pieces such as 'The Hourloupe', which begins as a doodle and extends into a free-form journey into painting, sculpture and relief, he presented works which were fuelled by his subconscious and free from the burden of technical perfection. Marcel Duchamp Born: 1887 Died: 1968 Gender: Male Nationality: French "... perhaps the most important art-theorist and avant-garde provocateur of the 20th century. He directed attention away from the work of art as a material object, and instead presented it as something which was essentially an idea: he shifted the emphasis from making to thinking. "Edward Lucie-Smith. Marcel Duchamp was born at Blainville in Normandy, one of six children. In1904 he followed his brothers to Paris and studied for one year at the Academie Julian. He was influenced by the Post-Impressionists and the Fauvists but his early works already showed that he was less interested in technique but more so in ideas. By 1909 Duchamp had work exhibited at the Salon des Independents and the Salon d'Automne. His first major success was 'Nude Descending a Staircase No.1' (1911). It was shown at the Armory Show in 1913 and was the subject of considerable controversy. The painting and its version 'No. 2' showed his interest in photography particularly in the way he conveyed a sense of movement. However, he abandoned painting concentrating instead on his 'ready-mades'. Having relocated to New York and being a key figure in the Dada scene there, he produced probably his most famous work, the ready-made 'Fountain' (1917). It consisted of a urinal signed R. Mutt and established his reputation as a ground-breaking artist challenging the accepted notion of what comprised a work of art. After a year in Buenos Aires playing chess he returned to Paris to create his Mona Lisa parody replete with moustache, beard and rude inscription. In 1920 he was back in New York and began work on what many regard as his conceptual masterpiece, 'The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even'(1920-1933). A nine foot high structure incorporating an upper and lower glass panel set in an aluminium framework, the work became one of the most discussed pieces of its day and still causes a great deal of discussion. Duchamp divided his time between his art and his chess. He was regarded as one of the finest players in France and took part in four Olympic tournaments. Duchamp was an iconoclastic figure on the one hand deriding the pretensions of art and on the other exploring its possibilities. He is seen as the godfather of modern art, predicting movements such as Conceptualism, Minimalism and even Pop Art. He was one of the key exponents of the avant-garde and was instrumental in raising the profile of the Surrealists in France and the United States. He was exploring radical ideas in art up until the end of his career with his final work, 'Given:1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas' proving as challenging and provocative as anything else he had produced in his career. Raoul Dufy Born: 1877 Died: 1953 Gender: Male Nationality: French "What I wanted to do was to carry my investigations further than those of the Impressionists. The Impressionists looked for the inter-relationships of flecks and patches of colour, and that in itself was good. Now, however, we need something more than the satisfaction of vision alone; we need to create the world of things unseen." Raoul Dufy. Raoul Dufy was born in Le Havre, Normandy, already one of the most lively centres of contemporary painting. His training was initially strictly academic, first at the Ecole Municipale des Beaux-Arts du Havre (where he met Othon Friesz and Georges Braque) and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1901 he first exhibited his work at the Salon des Artistes Français. The following year he graduated to the Salon des Indépendants. With paintings such as 'The Courtyard of the Louvre' (1902), Dufy had shed all traces of Impressionism and Symbolism and had found his own voice. In 1905 to 1906 Dufy worked in the Fauvist movement, in which colour was one of the most important factors to many though design was the primary concern for Dufy. He was intent on depicting the 'unseen'. He also encountered other challenging movements and centres such as Cézanne's Provence and Expressionist Germany, but being sure of his direction was never seduced by them, although he was certainly open to experimentation. Dufy invented rather than represented nature. He was extraordinarily optimistic and this is evident in his airy paintings. He understood the world in terms of decorative art and indeed turned his attention to textile design for a while, which like his paintings were a tapestry of clear colours. The figures in his paintings are often like characters in a play, for example 'Harlequin in the Venetian Manner' (1939) in which a particular figure takes centre stage and directs the emotions of the audience. In this way he found great joy in depicting public events with their pomp and ceremony, such as 'The Coronation of King George VI' (1937). Many argue that his paintings lack substance, others say that they simply express a delight in life. Albrecht Durer Born: 1471 Died: 1528 Gender: Male Nationality: German "What shall I say of the firmness and accuracy of his hand? You could have sworn that what he drew without other means than the brush, pencil, or pen, to the immense astonishment of his beholders, had been drawn with rule and compass. What shall I say of the sympathy which reigned between his hand and his ideas so that often on the spur of the moment he dashed off, or, as painters say, composed sketches of every kind of thing with pencil or pen?" Camerarius, 1528 as quoted by Christopher White in Durer (Phaidon). Albrecht Durer was born in Nuremberg. At the age of 15 he was apprenticed to Michael Wolgemut, the book illustrator and painter. He then travelled to Italy where he produced his first notable painting in 1500, a self-portrait. As well as producing woodcuts and engraving she was concerned with tackling many of the key Renaissance questions such as perspective and proportion. In 1505 he moved to Venice where he remained for two years experimenting with technique and produced 'The Feast of the Rose-Garlands'. He specialised in line engravings, which involved cutting into the surface of metal, frequently copper, with a burin, resulting in images very rich in texture. Works such as 'St. Jerome in his Study' (1514) and 'Agony in the Garden'(1515) were produced in this way. He worked in many different media including dry point and printmaking. He was an expert in matters of proportion even writing four books on the subject. Yet despite his scholarly approach to his work and also his uncertain stance on religion he was a deeply instinctive artist and is regarded as one of the first great draughtsmen of Germany. Max Ernst Born: 1891 Died: 1976 Gender: Male Nationality: German "Ernst came to describe the additions he made to his collages as changing them into images which 'transformed into revealing dreams my most secret desires'." Ian Turpin from Max Ernst (Phaidon, 1979) Max Ernst was born in Cologne to a deeply religious family. In 1911 he attended Bonn University where he studied philosophy and psychology. It was while at university that he met August Macke and a number of the Blue Rider group. In 1920 alongside Hans Arp and the social activist Alfred Grunwald, he set up the Cologne Dada group. Although short-lived, it was a crucial time in his development as an artist. It was at an exhibition entitled 'Beyond Painting' at the Au Sans Pareil gallery that he achieved his first notable success with his collages. His series of peinture-poesie (picture-poems) set him apart from his contemporaries as he experimented with various word-image combinations. Then in 1925 he developed 'frottage' in which he positioned paper over wooden floorboards and rubbed a pencil over the top. Using a mixture of textures he produced works of a dreamlike quality with mysterious figures and features. Moving on from this and with the help of Joan Miro he pioneered 'grattage' in which he applied the frottage technique to oil painting. In 1934 he worked in sculpture for the first time, then, After a period with the Surrealists he left them in 1938 due to Breton's desire to ostracise Ernst's friend Paul Eluard. Following the outbreak of the Second World War Ernst was interned as an enemy alien but eventually manages to escape Paris and, after a stop in Spain, arrived in New York in 1941. He remained in the United States on and off until 1952. During this time he collaborated with Breton and Duchamp on the periodical VVV. This was a focal point for the European Surrealists who had escaped to America because of the war. Returning to France in 1953 he set up a studio in Paris and eventually took up French citizenship. Ernst favoured subject matter derived from his childhood fantasies. His work embraces his unconscious, tackling both his desires and demons. He had no formal training yet his talent was clear from an early age. A work such as 'Men Shall Know Nothing of This' (1923) can be considered a Surrealist masterpiece while 'Blind Swimmer: the Effect of Contact' (1934) is a work of an artist completely in control of his technique. He did not succeed financially until 1954 when he won the Venice Biennale. After this, based in Paris with his second wife Dorothea Tanning(he was married briefly to Peggy Guggenheim), his work finally received the recognition it deserved. Maurits Cornelius Escher Born: 1898 Died: 1972 Gender: Male Nationality: Dutch "Good cannot exist without evil, and if one accepts the notion of God then, on the other hand, one must postulate a devil likewise. This is balance. This duality is my life... [I]t really is very simple: white and black, day and night - the graphic artist lives on these."M.C. Escher. Maurits Cornelius Escher was born in Leeuwarden, the youngest son of a hydraulic engineer. He showed talent from an early age and went to study at the Technical School of Art in Haarlem from 1919 to 1922. His early work consisted mainly of Italian inspired landscapes and towns, but he began to experiment with patterns of repeated images while still young. The bulk of his work up until 1937, however, was mainly focused on architecture though paying particular attention to matters of space and perspective. By the early Forties Escher's work was becoming progressively more complex. He utilised sophisticated mathematical principles with which to plan his mind-bending images. From 1944 onwards Escher's work became increasingly Surrealist, with his numerous optical illusions. Some his most famous works include 'Day and Night' (1938), 'House of Stairs' (1951) and 'Relativity' (1953). In his pictures, one is never sure where one should look first. Escher seems to be sending the viewer's eye on a wild goose chase as one looks for a start and end point to his images, only to be bombarded with an infinite set of possibilities. His fascination is with mirror images and geometrical questions. How far can he twist logic and still present a semblance of reality? The work of M.C. Escher has baffled audiences for many years. He created illusions that both thrilled the public and challenged at the same time. Mathematicians were fascinated by his techniques. Indeed, a major exhibition of his work took place at the International Mathematical Congress in Amsterdam in 1964. The duality that so interested Escher is evident throughout his most important works, that is his continued exploration of figure against ground, flat patterns versus three-dimensionality and the possibility of depicting the infinite and thus taking art into new realms of visual possibility. Richard Estes Born: 1936 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American "He presents the city as a visual spectacle, usually in bright light, so that even the garbage looks glossy." Ian Chilvers from The Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Art. Richard Estes was born in Kewanee, Illinois and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1952 to 1956. From 1959 onwards he made New York his home. Estes started out as a graphic artist, not concentrating on his painting full-time until 1966. His early work focused mainly on people but in 1967 the urban landscape became his main interest. By 1968 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Allen Stone Gallery in New York and by the end of the decade he had already become known as a leading figure. Superrealism or Photorealism are the terms used to describe his work and that of related artists. Names associated with this movement include Chuck Close (who specialises in enormous portraits), Howard Kanovitz, Robert Cottingham and Audrey Flack. The Superrealists' aim was to depict their subjects with immense attention to detail. Their subject matter included American diners and trucks, gum-ball machines and neon signs - all typifying images of both urban and suburban life in 1970s America. Estes, unlike most Superrealists, used traditional brushes rather than airbrushes to achieve his depiction of reality, often using acrylic paint and then oils. He also made very elaborate screenprints. Estes presents the city as visual spectacle. The landscape of New York was clearly inspirational to the painter. The movement is a direct descendant of Pop Art with its depictions of the commonplace, except the humour of Pop Art is distinctly lacking in Superrealist works with their cool and impersonal points of view. Many critics see paintings of this type as admirable only for their displays of technical prowess, with very little else to appreciate. Lyonel Feininger Born: 1871 Died: 1956 Gender: Male Nationality: German "... Art is not a profession but the highest expression, the greatest necessity." Lyonel Feininger. Lyonel Feininger was born in New York to German immigrant parents. He left for Europe in 1887 to study music but soon turned to art which he studied in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris. He quickly established a reputation as one of the foremost political cartoonists in Germany before being offered a contract to produce caricatures for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, for which he created one of his most famous strips in 1906, 'The Kin-der-Kids'. In 1907 Feininger dedicated himself to painting. On a visit to Paris he came into contact with Cubism and, with the support of Robert Delaunay, he began to develop a distinctive style of painting. He became a member of the Section door in 1912 and exhibited with the Blue Rider group the following year. He remained in Germany throughout the First World War and in 1919 joined the Bauhaus school where he taught until its closure by the Nazis in 1933. During this period he developed his woodcutting techniques. The Nazi exhibition of Degenerate Art, however, persuaded him to return to the United States in 1937, and he remained in New York for the rest of his life. His style took on the mannerisms of analytical Cubism. He made use of rhythmic interpretations of natural forms, studied the effects of transparency and prismatic planes, and used light to reconstruct elements from the real world. He was fascinated with seascapes and the urban views presented in Manhattan. Feininger's work is highly individual and is highly regarded. While a lot of his early work featured quite reserved colouring, he actually became more vigorous later in life, incorporating much more vibrant colours into his work. He always claimed his first love was music, but it is his artwork that will be remembered. Laurie Fields Born: 1954 Died: Gender: Female Nationality: American Laurie Fields began her career working as a textile designer in Connecticut. She is best known for her abstract paintings in which she incorporates textiles into her work as well as other materials such as cellophane and roofing tiles. She received considerable attention for her two series, 'Avant' and 'Cipher' and has won a number of awards for her work. Other notable works include 'Lumina' and 'Argenta' which show Fields' remarkable use of light. Duggie Fields Born: 1945 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: British "MAXIMALism - Include all exclusively. Conquer divisive ideology. Maximise to the max." Duggie Fields studied architecture, briefly, at Regent Street Polytechnic before going to Chelsea School of Art in 1964 . He left with a scholarship that took him on his first visit to the United States. As a student his work moved from Minimal, Conceptual and Constructivist phases to a more hard-edge post-Pop figuration. By the middle of the 1970s his work included many elements that were later defined as Post-Modernism. In 1983 in Tokyo, sponsored by the Shiseido Corporation, a gallery was created specially for his show, and the artist and his work were simultaneously featured in a television, magazine, billlboard and subway advertising campaign throughout the country. Despite his concern with the identity-dissolving impact of mass media on the contemporary psyche, Fields manages to sustain a coherent signature style that is as flamboyantly dysfunctional as it is cool and simple. He started working with digital media in the late 1990's describing his work in progress as "MAXIMAList". Sam Francis Born: 1923 Died: 1994 Gender: Male Nationality: American "The Japanese artist, like the Abstract Expressionist, sees the working process as eliciting a new consciousness that becomes the work, and Francis found himself closely attuned to Japanese aesthetics." Peter Selz. Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California and studied botany, medicine and psychology at the University of California at Berkeley from 1941 to 1943. While serving in the US Air Force he injured his spine in a plane crash and was bedridden for several months with spinal tuberculosis. It was during this time that he began to paint landscapes and views of the sky, eventually leading to his first abstractions in 1947. Francis studied with David Park in San Francisco before returning to Berkeley to take an MA in Fine Arts in 1950. The same year he went to Paris to attend the Académie Fernand Léger where his style was heavily influenced by the Art Informel painters as well as the work of Jackson Pollock. In 1952 he had his first one-man show at the Galerie Du Dragon and this was soon followed by a number of group exhibitions. In 1957 Francis embarked on a world tour taking in such places as Mexico, Thailand, India and Japan. It was Oriental Art that made a lasting impression on the artist. It was the way that the Japanese traditionally regard art as a meditative medium that inspired Francis. The lyrical qualities associated with this form can be seen in 'The Whiteness of the Whale' (1957) for example. Throughout the Sixties Francis returned numerous times to Japan and exhibited in Tokyo and Osaka. He was commissioned to produce a 26-foot-long mural for the Segetsu School of Sofu Teshigahora and, becoming fascinated with the possibilities of wall-painting, completed a number of other murals for places such as the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York (1959) and the Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1969-1971). In 1961 Francis returned to California, first Santa Barbara and then Santa Monica. As well as his mural work he continued to paint with the Japanese influence leading him to the development of a style known as Tachisme, in which free-flowing oil paint is allowed to drip down the canvas creating an accidental design. 'Meaningless Gesture' is a good example of this; the canvas is saturated with light, cloud-like forms with thin streams of paint raining down. Sam Francis has had exhibitions around the world and is highly respected. His paintings, taking Oriental mysticism as his inspiration, are beautifully rendered with the thin texture of his paint and frequent contrast of colour and void. Besides paintings and murals, he has explored a number of media, perhaps most sensationally his painting in 1966 produced by five helicopters releasing coloured pigments into the air. Helen Frankenthaler Born: 1928 Died: Gender: Female Nationality: American "Pictures are flat and part of the nuance and often the beauty or the drama that makes a work, or gives it life... is that it presents such an ambiguous situation of an undeniably flat surface, but on it and within it an intense play and drama of space, movements, light, illusion, different perspectives, elements in space." Helen Frankenthaler. Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York where she was to spend most of her life. She studied at a number of art schools and was taught at one stage by Hofmann. By 1950 she had met many of the main figures of Abstract Expressionism. Inspired by the 'all-over' style of painting made famous by Jackson Pollock, Frankenthaler produced 'Mountains and Sea' in 1952. In this she developed Pollock's drip technique by pouring and running very thin paint onto canvases laid on the floor. According to the critic, Clement Greenberg, this painting was the 'first monument of Post-Painterly Abstraction', it is certainly one of the most important works in the 'Colour-Field' style. The painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Nolan were deeply impressed by Frankenthaler and began to experiment with the techniques she was employing. By 1962 she changed from oil to acrylic painting allowing stronger colours and increased vibrancy, for example, 'Interior Landscape' (1964). Since 1960 she also worked in ceramics and made aquatints, lithographs and woodcuts, also in 1972 she made her first sculpture. Throughout her career, Helen Frankenthaler won a number of awards and distinctions. The stain technique she made famous is still an integral part of her work and it can be seen running through her entire oeuvre. Although the paintings are abstract, a strong suggestion of landscape is often apparent, and they have been praised for their lyrical qualities. Daniel Gasser Born: 1948 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: German Daniel Gasser was born in Mulhouse in Alsace and went on to study at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg. Before concentrating on his painting full-time he worked as an illustrator for a number of publishers and advertising agencies. His paintings are deeply expressive and highly sensuous. Often using a combination of blues, reds and yellows he is able to merge realism with abstraction to create supremely evocative images. His 'Mythologie' series is indicative of much of his work. Paul Gauguin Born: 1848 Died: 1903 Gender: Male Nationality: French "I am a great artist and I know it. It is because I am that I have endured such suffering." Paul Gauguin. Paul Gauguin was born in the Paris at the height of the 1848 Revolution. His childhood was spent in Lima but in 1865 joined the merchant marines for two years followed by three years with the French Navy. In 1871 he joined the stock exchange and painted in his spare time. He collected works by artists such as Manet, Monet and Cezanne which he studied intently. It was Camille Pissarro who was his greatest influence and in 1883 Gauguin moved to Rouen to be closer to the man. By this time, with his wife Mette Gad, he had a family based in Copenhagen. As he gave up his job he could no longer support them financially and effectively abandoned them and everything besides for his art. He went to Brittany in 1886 and produced works such as 'The Bathers' which still owed a great debt to the Impressionists. However, in Pont-Aven he met Emile Bernard who introduced Gauguin to the concept of 'cloissonism', a visual equivalent of symbolist poetry in which only the essence of an object was expressed. This idea led to the creation of 'Vision After The Sermon' (1888), Gauguin's first masterpiece. A year later he was excluded from the official Universal Exhibition in Paris but managed to hang his and his associates' paintings in the Cafe des Arts entitling themselves, 'The Impressionist and Synthetist Group'. Although not rousing great interest the pictures did serve to raise his profile somewhat. His paintings contained increasing amounts of religious imagery often featuring himself in the role of one of the protagonists. He used vivid colours unnaturally, reflecting his interest in primitive art forms and his desire to recapture some lost paradise from his youth. By 1891 he was gaining quite a reputation but instead of consolidating this new found success he fled to Tahiti. It was not the paradise he had been seeking yet he remained for two years and produced almost 80 paintings. Poverty and illness drove Gauguin back to France but after receiving an inheritance from the death of an uncle he headed back to Tahiti once more. In 1897 his daughter, Aline dies and falling into a deep depression completes one of his finest works, 'Where do we come from...?' Soon after he makes an attempted suicide then eventually takes up a post as government draughtsman in Papeete. Three years after his death a huge exhibition of his work took place at the Salon d'Automne in Paris. It is regarded as one of the most influential exhibitions of the 20thcentury. His richly coloured, highly evocative work has inspired countless artists. Adolph Gottlieb Born: 1903 Died: 1974 Gender: Male Nationality: American "[I]t seemed that if one wanted to get away from such things as the American scene or social realism and perhaps cubism, [Greek mythology] offered a possibility of a way out, and the hope that given a subject matter that was different, perhaps some new approach to painting...might also develop." Adolph Gottlieb. Adolph Gottlieb was born in New York and studied at a number of art schools in the early Twenties. From 1935 to 1940 he exhibited his work with the Expressionist group known as The Ten which included Mark Rothko as one of its members. Around this time he also participated in the Federal Arts Project set up to support artists during the difficult Depression years. After he moved to the Arizona desert in 1937 his work became more Surrealist and upon moving back to New York two years later he met a number of European Surrealists who introduced him to the concept of the subconscious and the importance it can play in one's work. Gottlieb's 'Pictographs' (1941-1951) series was his first fully realised work. It was the first time that he incorporated mythology into his painting through his use of various symbols arranged in a grid-like format. From 1951 to 1957 he worked on his 'Imaginary Landscapes' series featuring shapes suggesting the night sky amidst heavy brushstrokes. His 'Bursts' (1957-1974) series also drew inspiration from the stars above this time creating a more immediate dramatic effect. He is regarded as one of the leading Abstract Expressionists. Juan Gris (real name José González) Born: 1887 Died: 1927 Gender: Male Nationality: Spanish "I consider that the architectural element in painting is mathematics, the abstract side; I want to humanise it." Juan Gris. Juan Gris was born in Madrid and studied mathematics, physics and engineering before taking up painting in 1904. He moved to Paris in 1906 and made a living by producing cartoons for newspapers. He painted full-time from 1910 and by 1912 was exhibiting his works in the Cubist style at the Section d'Or exhibition. Among his contemporaries were Picasso and Braque. By 1913 Gris was developing his own distinctive style. Incorporating decorative or printed paper into a picture (a technique known as 'papier collé') Gris produced works with a systematic eye, composing his works as an architect would design a building. He continued to work during the First World War and in 1919 he had his first one-man show at the Léonce Rosenberg Galérie l'Effort Moderne in Paris. From 1920 onwards he spent much of his time in the South of France due to poor health. He continued to paint, however, becoming more painterly as time went on, for example in 'Violin and Fruit Dish' (1924). As well as paintings, Gris also worked on sculptures, drawings and set and costume designs for the ballets of Sergei Diaghilev. Gris' work was highly calculated and at the same time deeply lyrical. Working from the template of Synthetic Cubism he was able to create paintings which are highly distinctive and although not as famous as Picasso or Braque his work is important when considering the Cubist movement. Red Grooms Born: 1937 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee and studied at the Peabody College there. He moved on to the Art Institute of Chicago, the New School for Social Research in New York and then a summer school in Provincetown run by Hans Hofmann. He initially came to prominence with his Happenings in New York in the late Fifties. By the 1960s he was working on mixed-media installations featuring garish figures taking over whole rooms. In some ways like a comic strip come to life these events established his reputation. He went on to create more ambitious projects often drawing on a team of collaborators including his wife Mimi Gross. Besides these 'environments', Grooms has produced many paintings characterised by their vivid colours and distinctive figures, and has worked with the filmmaker Rudolph Burckhardt on a number of occasions. Keith Haring Born: 1958 Died: 1990 Gender: Male Nationality: American "I am trying to state things as simply as possible." Keith Haring. Keith Haring was born in Kutztown, Pennsylvania and was prompted to draw from an early age mainly through cartoons on television. He studied at the Ivy School of Art in Pittsburgh where he began to silk-screen T-shirts. In 1978 he moved to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts. The burgeoning East Village club scene was to become his main inspiration. In 1980 Haring took up Graffiti Art, at first decorating advertisements in the New York Subway with his marker pen and soon producing a series of narratives done in white chalk on the black billboard paper of unused advertising spaces. His choice of imagery was highly distinctive, for example incorporating modes of communication like televisions and telephones, references to nuclear energy, and featuring flying saucers at every opportunity. By mixing comic figures with political messages, Haring provoked considerable debate both on street level and within the art establishment. Like Warhol, he embraced popular culture and was intent on breaking down the barrier between high art and low art. Haring worked in a number of different media including sculpture, posters and body painting, but they always featured his distinctive Day-Glo colours. As his art became more prominent in the galleries and museums he caused more debate by purposely commercialising his own work. He reproduced his signature on a range of products and in 1986 opened his own retail stores in New York and Miami. The Haring style was adored by teenagers. He painted their skateboards and created a public message in the wall-painting, 'Crack is Wack' in 1986. That same year he even painted a section of the Berlin Wall. Keith Haring's work was flamboyant and reflected the garish colours of Eighties fashions. However, far from being vacuous, his work was highly politicised. There is a lot of energy in his paintings and they have the power both to amuse and provoke. Comparisons can be made to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Haring's contemporary and another who died prematurely. Towards the end of Haring's life, he devoted himself to The Keith Haring Foundation, conveying the dangers of AIDS, which claimed another victim in the artist himself in 1990. Tsugio Hattori Born: 1951 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: Japan Tsugio Hattori was born in Japan and studied mechanical engineering, technical illustration, design and fine arts. Despite emigrating to the United States in 1981 Hattori's style is still distinctively Japanese. Using a range of techniques the artist's strength lies in his compositions and the sense of tranquillity they seem to convey. His works such as the 'Silk Road' series have been exhibited in a number of exhibitions around the world. Martin Johnson Heade Born: 1819 Died: 1904 Gender: Male Nationality: American Martin Johnson Heade was born in Lumberville in Pennsylvania and studied portrait painting under the Quaker artists Edward and Thomas Hicks. He travelled widely for a number of years supporting himself as a professional portrait artist. Having moved to New York in the 1850s Heade soon moved away from portraits turning to landscape scenes instead. He was particularly interested in experimenting with the effects of coloured light upon a painting, a concern shared with artists such as John C. Kensett, Fritz Hugh Lane and Sanford Gifford. The Luminist School of Painting as it was called was a popular movement at the time and can be seen as a key stage in the development towards Impressionism. In 1863 Heade moved to Brazil, drawn to the country by its magnificent light. He produced a large number of flower paintings particularly favouring magnolias and orchards, as well as studies of birds, all done in the Luminist style. Returning to the United States in 1885 Heade settled in Florida where he continued painting seascapes until his death. Patrick Heron Born: 1920 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: British Patrick Heron was born in Headingley in Leeds. After living in Cornwall his family moved to Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire in 1929. Five years later, working for Cresta Silks, Heron designed his first silkscreen. Then in 1937 he became a part-time student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London for two years. In 1940 he worked as an agricultural labourer in Cambridge and Welwyn Garden City for our years before becoming an assistant at Bernard Leach's Pottery in St.Ives in Cornwall and finally, in 1945, moving to Holland Park after marrying Delia Reiss. He was art critic for the New English Weekly for two years before having his first one-man exhibition in 1947. His early work included many figurative studies such as 'The Gas Stove' (1946) but the painting 'The Boats and the Iron Ladder' (1947) showed the direction he was moving towards with its complex patterning and unusual use of colours. His early work was influenced by Georges Braque and Henri Matisse but in the mid-Fifties he became more abstract for example in 'Red Layers with Blue and Yellow' (1957). After working as art critic on The New Statesman and Nation he started a teaching job at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in 1953 and in 1956 moved to Cornwall settling at Eagle's Nest in Zennor. Heron was awarded the Grand prize at the second John Moores Liverpool Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. During the Sixties and Seventies he lectured around the world, culminating in a book, The Shape of Colour in 1978. 1979 brought about a commission to design two carpets for the foyer of the Cavendish Hotel in London, followed two years later with a commission to design a tapestry for the University of Galway in Eire. Heron produced over 50 paintings while working as Artist in Residence at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney and these represented an artist who was still developing in terms of his techniques with which to represent the natural world using unlikely juxtapositions of colour and original compositions. Patrick Heron's work is devoted to analyses of natural forms and colours. From his abstract works, particularly those made up of horizontal or vertical stripes to his softer-edged shapes, he regularly uses colour to express the pleasure of sight as one of the most important human senses. Although working in the European tradition, one can also see aspects of Pollock, Rothko and De Conning in Heron's work. As well as painting and tapestry design, he has also designed a stained glass window for the Tate Gallery in St. Ives and designed a kneeler to encircle the Henry Moore altar at St. Stephen Wallbrook in London. Edward Hicks Born: 1780 Died: 1849 Gender: Male Nationality: American Edward Hicks was one of the prime exponents of naive art or folk art which developed in the 19th century. He was a Quaker preacher and specialised in painting religious scenes. David Hockney Born: 1937 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: British "Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want. The idea of the rigid style seemed to me then something you needn't concern yourself with, it would trap you." David Hockney. David Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1937 to a working class family. He went on to a prize-winning career as a student at the Royal College of Art. It was there that he met fellow artists such as R.B. Kitaj, Peter Philips and Patrick Caulfield, who were to become stars of the British Pop Art Scene. By his mid-20s, Hockney had already become one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary artists in Britain. At only 26 he had his first one-man show and in 1967 was awarded first prize in the John Moores Exhibition. Hockney worked in a variety of fields as a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, photographer and designer. As well as the versatility of his work, he is also known for his exuberant personality, easily recognisable with his trademark circular specs. Although he rejected the label 'Pop', much of his work contains references to popular culture and contains a good deal of humour. The Californian swimming pool was one of his favourite subjects, indicating his love-affair with Los Angeles and most memorably featured in the painting 'A Bigger Splash' (1967). In the Seventies his style became more traditional with a series of portraits of couples such as 'Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy' (1970-1971) and ‘My Parents’. Hockney is also a celebrated graphic artist, etching illustrations to Cavafy's Poems (1967) and Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1969) for example, as well as individual prints often on homoerotic themes. In the 1970s he became popular as a stage designer for productions such as Stravinsky's 'The Rake's Progress' (1975) and Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' (1978) both at Glyndebourne. Photography was Hockney's main preoccupation in the 1980s, with his experimentation of complex, Cubist-like photomontages, but throughout his career painting remained his prime concern. David Hockney has received great critical acclaim. From the representational nature of his more serious portraits to the depictions of the Californian landscape, his style is always distinctive and versatile. Picasso was one of Hockney's role models in his demonstration of creative freedom and original thinking. In addition to his art, Hockney has also published two books on art, David Hockney on David Hockney (1976) and That's the Way I See It (1993). Howard Hodgkin Born: 1932 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: British "I would like to paint pictures where people didn't care what anything was, because they were so enveloped by them.." Howard Hodgkins. Howard Hodgkins was born in London and studied at the Camberwell School of Art in 1949 for a year, followed by the Bath Academy of Art from 1950 to1954. After finishing his education he taught at the Charterhouse School in Surrey for two years. This was followed by posts at the Bath Academy of Art (1956-1966)and the Chelsea School of Art (1966-1972). He was married to Julia Lane in1955 and with whom he has had two sons. Hodgkins' first painting was 'Memoirs' (1949) which although stylistically is very different from his later works, does hint at some of the themes he was to investigate later on, specifically the concept of memory and there collections of emotions. His favourite subjects include the interior, the portrait and scenes from everyday life. He aims to take snapshots from a person's life and represent the fleeting thought, movement or feeling in his painting. This is in the vein of Intimism, a movement that also included Matisse, Bonnard and Vuillard. His early work, however, suggested a sense of claustrophobia and unease, as if the artist desired to be elsewhere. With later paintings such as 'Egypt' (1983-1984) he became more open as he travelled extensively and experimented with new ways of representing the natural world. He was searching for new ways to convey his perception of reality, for example, 'Mrs K.' (1966-1967) describes the idea of a person rather than an exact replication of the image of a person. He uses bright colours and frequently incorporates traditional wooden frames into the painting. He painted on a small-scale at first, but in the1980s began producing much bigger works. Hodgkins covers a vast range of emotions in his work from the spectacular, 'When did we go to Morocco?' (1988-1993) with its vivid and energetic colouring to the deeply melancholic, 'Sunset' (1990-1993) which features dark and heavy brushstrokes overwhelming the bright colours beneath. He tries to describe feelings and it has been the subject of much debate as to how far he succeeds. He certainly has a reputation as one of the finest colourists in contemporary art and his standing in the art world is beyond doubt. He has been a Trustee of the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery and in 1985 won the Turner Prize. He was knighted in 1992. Winslow Homer Born: 1836 Died: 1910 Gender: Male Nationality: American In his energy, the pristine freshness of his vision, and his simple sensuous vitality, he embodied the affirmative element of the American spirit as no preceding artist had. He did for our painting what Walt Whitman did for our poetry - he made it native to our earth and air." Lloyd Goodrich from Winslow Homer. Winslow Homer was born in Boston and began his career with an apprenticeship to J.H. Bufford, a lithographer in Boston where he remained for three years. He then found a job as an illustrator for Harper's Weekly in 1857. While still working for the magazine, Homer went to drawing school in Brooklyn in 1860 and studied in night school at the National Academy of Design. Then in 1862, one of his assignments was to cover the Civil War. So he moved to Virginia and the resulting vignettes of life on the frontline proved highly successful. After the end of the war, Homer travelled through France working in an Impressionist style. His oils and watercolours show a great interest in the effects of light on his subjects and he is also keen to convey a sense of narrative in his pictures. As well as Impressionism, his work has similarities to Japanese Art, particularly in his understanding of man's relation to his surroundings. 'Sunlight and Shadow' and 'Children on a Fence' show Homer's style at its most tender and perhaps most incisive. Homer spent the last 25 years of his life in Prouts Neck in Maine. As he got older his paintings became more sombre and his preferred theme was the relationship between man and his surroundings, for example 'The Blue Boat'. Edward Hopper Born: 1882 Died: 1967 Gender: Male Nationality: American "Maybe I am not very human. What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." Edward Hopper. Edward Hopper was born in Nyack in New York State and was to spend the majority of his life in New York City, holding a studio on the top floor of 3 Washington Square North for over fifty years. He studied at the New York School of Art (the Chase School) as well as a brief stint in Paris. Besides exhibiting and selling a picture at the Armory Show in 1913, he spent the next ten years working exclusively as a commercial illustrator. Hopper's early work was clearly influenced by Impressionism in the European tradition, particularly characterised by his female nudes, the study of which continued throughout his career. Achieving considerable success from the Twenties onwards, he nevertheless lived a quiet and stable life with his wife Josephine. Hopper is known as an American Scene painter. He takes pleasure in the commonplace, depicting such everyday scenes as motel rooms, filling stations, street scenes and cafeterias, this last example being defined by possibly his best known work, 'Nighthawks' (1942). He was preoccupied with the effect of light and shadow and the moods they evoked at different times of the day, making him in every sense an American Impressionist. As his career progressed, however, Hopper became fascinated with the confrontation between Nature and Civilisation, most noticeably in paintings such as 'Gas' (1940), where the tension is expressed through both colour contrasts and precise composition. Hopper's reputation is marked by his profound vision of American life. In the words of Robert Hughes in his American Visions, "Edward Hopper was the quintessential realist painter of 20th century America. His images have become part of the very grain and texture of American experience, and even today... it is all but impossible to see America without some refraction through them." Rarely developing narratives in his work, he was primarily concerned with the struggle between man and his surroundings. In his highly formal compositions, Hopper was able to convey a character's complex inner life in direct correlation to his environment, often achieving a great sense of poignancy. Robert Indiana Born: 1928 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American Born Robert Clark he took the name of the state in which he was born. After studying in Indianapolis, Ithaca, Chicago, Edinburgh and London, he settled in New York in 1956. He gained a reputation for his Pop Art incorporating letters and signs onto a variety of geometric shapes. He worked with Andy Warhol on the film 'Eat' (1964) and created a six metre sign reading EAT for The New York State Pavilion during the New York World's Fair. Some of Indiana's most famous works incorporate the word LOVE including a number of paintings and sculptures. Jasper Johns Born: 1930 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American "I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason." Jasper Johns. Jasper Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia and studied at the University of Southern Carolina before dropping out and moving to New York in 1949. After two terms at a commercial art college and a brief stint doing military service, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg in 1954. Their close relationship was to endure for eight years. Forming a partnership, their first project was designing upmarket window displays. With the money they earnt, they were able to concentrate on their artistic experiments. 'Flag' (1954) is one of Johns' key works. Inspired by a dream, the painting depicts the American flag rendered in heavily textured brushwork. It was the first of many such studies, as he produced not only variations on the flag image in various mixed media, but also replicated other commonplace two-dimensional objects such as targets, numbers and maps. Similarly, his sculpture work depicted banal everyday objects such as beer cans and brushes in a coffee tin. In 1958 Johns exhibited his first one-man show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. It was a tremendous success and his reputation was confirmed. In the 1970s a cross-hatching motif characterised much of his work. While in the 1980s autobiographical elements entered his paintings, for example in 'Racing Thoughts' (1983), his collage contains personal references such as artifacts from his bathroom. The everyday objects in Johns' work raise questions about the relationship between art and reality. His paintings are essentially open texts with a multitude of readings available to the viewer. At the same time realistic and artificial, Johns' paintings are admired by many but dismissed by others as uninteresting and as banal as the objects he depicts. For Johns his interest lies beyond symbolism, instead he claims merely to try and understand the familiar with a fresh outlook. Frida Kahlo Born: 1910 Died: 1954 Gender: Female Nationality: Mexican "In the whole history of art, Frida is the only example of a painter virtually tearing her breast and heart open in order to express the feelings in them and tell the biological truth." Diego Rivera. Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacán, a suburb of Mexico City, the daughter of the German photographer Guillermo Kahlo (who had emigrated to Mexico) and a Mexican mother. In 1923 she began studying medicine and joined the 'Liga de la Juventud Communista'. A year later she met Diego Rivera for the first time, the man whom she would eventually marry in 1929 and remain with, on and off, for the duration of her life. At the age of 18 she was involved in a terrible car accident that left her with a crushed pelvis, fractured spine and broken foot. This accident led to a lifetime battle for her health with endless infections and operations. It was this event that prompted her to paint and the pain she felt was to become an ongoing theme of her art. Kahlo was mainly self-taught as a painter. She was greatly influenced by Rivera as well as by Mexican folk art. She specialised almost exclusively in self-portraits ranging from simple likenesses to portraying herself in dramatic settings. Every picture contained a strong autobiographical element, whether it was simply the artist dressed in traditional Mexican dress or still-lives of fruit which she found in the surroundings of her beloved abode. Her preoccupation with death (a favourite theme amongst the Mexican people) was evident in many of her most famous works, particularly the disturbing 'Two Fridas' (1934). Kahlo said that many of her contemporaries "thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." Her paintings were widely shown in Mexico and in 1939 she had successful exhibitions in New York and Paris, but during her lifetime her husband's career overshadowed her own. After her death, however, she became a feminist icon for her struggle against illness and her left-wing political activities. Kahlo's paintings of physical and mental pain are both narcissistic and nightmarish yet at the same time fierce and flamboyant. Working in a primitive style, her paintings are full of odd colour combinations, static figures, and incredible space and scale. Her paintings not only reflect her inner feelings but also position them in the perspective of Mexican culture. She seemed deeply attuned to the consciousness of Mexican people and as a result found great success within her own country. Beyond her native land, however, her work was frequently overlooked, especially after her death, not resurfacing until many years later. Wassily Kandinsky Born: 1866 Died: 1944 Gender: Male Nationality: Russia "Technically, every work of art comes into being in the same way as the cosmos - by means of catastrophes, which ultimately create out of the cacophony of the various instruments that symphony we call the music of the spheres. The creation of the work of art is the creation of the world." Wassily Kandinsky. Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow where he studied economics, law and ethnography there. In 1889, upon receiving a commission by the Russian Imperial Society of Friends of Natural History, Anthropology and Ethnography, Kandinsky embarked on a solo expedition to the remote Vologda province where he was impressed by native folk art. After being deeply moved by Monet's 'Haystack' in 1896, he moved to Munich to study painting. From 1901 to 1904, Kandinsky was heavily involved in the Phalanx exhibition society. After this he lived in a number of locations around Europe. In 1909 Kandinsky began what was to be his most powerful and ambitious project entitled 'Compositions'. The first seven were produced between 1909 and 1913 and the final three in 1923, 1936 and 1939. At the same time he also commenced his 'Impressions' series, and both these projects were to be known as the 'Improvisations' series. In these he removed any representational aspects in order to work in a purely abstract form. In a collection of his writings Concerning the Spiritual in Art (first published in 1912), Kandinsky explained how mysticism and theosophy were important to his attempts to express deep emotions in his work. When his work was rejected by the Neue Künstlervereinigung group, he set up the Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider group) in 1911 with Franz Marc and August Nache. For the next three years, Kandinsky produced an enormous amount of work and with a number of prestigious exhibitions around the world achieved considerable success. Paintings from this period include 'Composition VI' (1913) and 'Light Picture' (1913). With the outbreak of the First World War, Kandinsky was forced to leave Munich and return to Russia where he became a respected teacher in various schools before taking up a post at the Bauhaus in 1922. Despite the geometrical precision that was the Bauhaus style, Kandinsky experimented with such forms as circles, triangles and uneven lines. In 1922 Kleine Welten was published containing examples of possibly Kandinsky's finest work as a graphic artist, and at this time he broadened his artistic range to designing stage sets, costumes and ceramic tiles. In both his writings and paintings, Kandinsky has been enormously influential. He was intrigued by the possibility of conveying a range of emotions through the variety of colours and lines he chose to use. Kandinsky was influenced by a great many styles throughout his career, such as Art Nouveau at the turn-of-the-century, Symbolism around 1910 in his interest in the similar effects caused by both colours and sounds, and Surrealism towards the end of his career in 'Sky Blue' (1940) for example. His many works continue to be exhibited in many galleries worldwide. Ellsworth Kelly Born: 1923 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York. In 1941 he graduated from high school and with financial aid from his parents, moves to Brooklyn to study technical drawing at the Pratt Institute. In 1943, however, he was inducted into the US Army yet managed to continue his artistic endeavors through making silkscreen posters about camouflage and, in 1944 on a tour of duty in Europe, making watercolours and sketches. In 1946 he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then taught at the Norfolk House Centre in the Roxbury section of Boston. With a stipend from the American Army Kelly travelled to Paris in 1948 to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He remained in Paris for many years building up a community of like-minded artists and enjoying the respect given to cultural pursuits in the city. In May 1949 he completed his first abstract painting, then in June with the visit of his friend Ralph Coburn from Boston, he was introduced to the Surrealist technique of unpremeditated drawing'. In 1951 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Arnaud in Paris featuring many of his collages, reliefs and drawings. It was at this time that he met such influential figures as Eduardo Paolozzi and Jean Arp. After his first one-man show in the United States in 1956 he met Richard Kelly, the lighting designer and consequently received commissions to execute lobby and restaurant sculptures in the new Transportation Building for Penn Centre in Philadelphia. By now his reputation was confirmed. By 1959 he had enjoyed considerable success in a number of exhibitions. He produced his first floor pieces for a show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in this year including 'Gate' and 'Pony'. In his painting and sculpture, Kelly liked to explore the complexities that a simple design could offer up. He favoured smooth flat surfaces with hardly any surface texture. He was greatly inspired by Picasso's outline painting, 'The Kitchen' and this informed his abstractions and reliefs for much of his career. Kelly frequently felt frustrated with the way his work was received. He felt that he was ahead of his time, and that with the acclaim being heaped upon the American Expressionists he was not getting his due. His many works in the Hard Edge style, however, have been influential and his work is regularly featured in exhibitions. Peter Kitchell Born: 1950 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American "Colour is like music. One colour is meaningless by itself, it takes its meaning from its relationship to other colours, from the rhythm of its structure." Peter Kitchell. Peter Kitchell was born to architect parents in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After a spell in Exeter, New Hampshire, the family moved to San Francisco and Kitchell at the age of five started attending art classes at the Museum of Modern Art and the De Young Museum. During the 1960s he studied under Rolf Penn who had studied at the Bauhaus school under Kandinsky and Klee. Kitchell embarked on a world tour in the early Seventies, painting or drawing his way through Europe, Africa, the Carribean and the United States. The different shades and tones of light he experienced on his travels provided great inspiration for the artist. His broad watercolours such as 'Antelope Dust' and 'Memory of Life' depict the natural world in an abstract style. Paul Klee Born: 1879 Died: 1940 Gender: Male Nationality: Swiss "Art does not render the visible, it makes visible." Paul Klee. The birth of Paul Klee near Berne came soon after the rise of the Impressionist movement in France. Klee's father and his mother were both musicians. As a boy, Klee loved to listen to his grandmother's fairy tales, many of which she illustrated herself. At school, languages, literature, poetry, music and drawing were all that interested him and he hesitated over the choice of career - poet, musician or illustrator? He settled in Munich to study art. During these early years his excursions into the domain of colour were rare as he devoted himself above all to drawing and inaugurated the very distinctive style, at once philosophical and satirical, which was to characterise his work until around 1913. After a visit to Italy, Klee discovered early Christian art and the works of Raphael, Leonardo and Botticelli. He left for Berne and underwent a deep revision of all his beliefs and theories about art. In 1906 he married Lily Stumpf and had a son. His career at this point was a mixture of successes and failures. Five years later he met Kandinsky and other artists from the newly founded 'Der Blaue Reiter' group (The Blue Rider). Klee believed that they shared a deep-rooted impulse to transform nature into a spiritual and pictorial equivalent. The following year an even more influential meeting took place with Robert Delaunay who gave equal and independent importance to colour, light and movement in his work. In 1914 Klee's pre-occupation with colour was heightened during a trip to Tunisia. After World War One Klee's reputation was increasing. By 1920 he had joined the Bauhaus group where he was to teach for the next decade. Violently attacked and forced to move by the Nazis, Klee returned to Berne penniless after all his German funds had been confiscated. He started to produce larger pieces with fine linear qualities and bold graphic strokes. 1934 not only brought him his first English exhibition but sadly, the onset of skin cancer. In 1937 he resumed work with a phenomenal drive and energy, but died three years later near Locarno. Klee was extraordinarily prolific, producing almost 9,000 works during his career. Working in a number of different styles and media he was extremely flexible in his techniques as he explored the human psyche through his art. Yet his work remains highly distinctive and he continues to be amongst the most popular artists of the 20th century. Yves Klein Born: 1928 Died: 1962 Gender: Male Nationality: French "...First there is nothing, then a deep nothing, and then there is a blue depth." Bachelard in L'Air et des Songes. Yves Klein was born to bohemian parents in Nice. His first love was not art but judo; he travelled to Japan to study at the Kodokan Institute. He also developed a fascination with the doctrines of Rosicrucianism, with Heindel's Cosmology of the Rosicrucians becoming one of his favourite books. In 1951, however, he started making monochrome prints at first for himself and to hang in his judo hall, but later, in 1955, he offered a monochrome orange work to the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles only to have it refused. At the same time he developed a friendship with such artists as Tinguely, Raysse and César, the main exponents of the movement known as Nouveau Réalisme. It was two years later when he first gained some recognition as he developed his own unique shade of ultramarine. He called the colour International Klein Blue (IKB) and this became his trademark. His first exhibition took place at the Apollinaire Gallery in Milan. It was a success and raised a lot of interest in his work. While in Düsseldorf, Klein met members of the Zero Group and created two sponge reliefs in his signature IKB for the foyer of the Gelsenkirchen opera house. In a lecture at the Sorbonne in 1958 Klein's explanation for his monochrome paintings clearly took in much of the Rosicrucian's philosophy in the way the paintings showed no evidence of the human hand preferring to let the works affect the viewer almost subconsciously. He continued working with the Rosicrucian philosophy in 1960, this time focusing on the theme of classical alchemy when he sold a zone of emptiness for gold dust, for which he gave a receipt, and then threw the dust into the Seine and burnt the receipt. The same year he also executed his famous 'leap into the void', a photograph showing Klein seemingly flying out of the second floor of a building. Continuing his one-man challenge on the orthodox art world he also held an event in which he conducted an orchestra to play ten minutes of one single note followed by ten minutes of silence while at the same time three naked women writhed on the floor in blue paint. This happening was his first example of 'Anthropométries' and it was entitled 'Le Vide'. Klein was extraordinarily prolific in a diverse range of media. In Klein's work one can draw comparisons to that of Marcel Duchamp but whereas Duchamp wished to challenge the notion of what actually constitutes a work of art, Klein's intention was one of pure sensationalism. Every project Klein executed was stamped with his personality. Similar to artists such as Joseph Beuys, Klein's art was a form of self-promotion. He was enormously influential, most notably on the Minimalist movement. Gustav Klimt Born: 1862 Died: 1918 Gender: Male Nationality: Austrian "The water-lily grows by the lake. It is in bloom. The yearning for a handsome man is in her soul." Gustav Klimt. Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, a country suburb of Vienna, and was the oldest son among seven children. Early on in his career he achieved great academic success as a painter of elaborate decorative interiors, but he soon became impressed by the Impressionist, Symbolist and Art Nouveau movements. In opposition to the conservative values espoused by the Viennese Artists' Association Klimt, among others, set up the Sezession in 1897. (This trend was first established in Munich in 1892 by Franz von Stuck and Wilhelm Trübner and others followed later such as Max Lieberman presiding over the group in Berlin). Klimt painted a mural for the Vienna University on 'Jurisprudence, Medicine and Philosophy' at the turn-of-the-century but it received heavy criticism for its incendiary content and official commissions were few and far between after this. Klimt's avant-garde tendencies, however, were admired by many and he was frequently commissioned to produce portraits, which he did so depicting his subjects in a variety of allegorical themes. He was fascinated with the female form. Paintings such as 'Judith I' (1901) show the female subject as a figure of both mystery and intense sensuality. In his most famous work, 'The Kiss' he combines this depiction of womanhood with elaborate decoration in golds and silvers. The figures are draped in a flat mosaic-patterned robe, rich in texture and colour, conveying a sense of passion as well as wealth. Klimt's work is still highly regarded, with 'The Kiss' being one of the most celebrated works of the time. His lustrous designs and supreme craftsmanship have influenced numerous artists and designers. His use of rich textures and strong colours was remarkable at the time and still remains extraordinarily powerful today. Oskar Kokoschka Born: 1886 Died: 1980 Gender: Male Nationality: Austrian "... What makes these portraits the most poignant gallery of individuals painted in this century... is the intensity of the artist's personal involvement which made him sweep aside the protective covering of conventional 'decorum' to reveal his compassion with a lonely and tormented human being." Ernst Gombrich on Kokoschka's intimate 'psychological portraits'. Oskar Kokoschka was born in Pšchlarn and grew up in Vienna. He went to study at the School of Arts and Crafts in 1905 and remained there for four years. He first made an impact with his 'psychological portraits' in which he seemed to express intimate truths about his subject. His first one-man exhibition took place in 1910 at Paul Cassier's gallery in Berlin. Around this time he started to contribute illustrations to Der Sturm, the avant garde periodical based in Berlin. After serving with the Austrian Army he was badly wounded and took to teaching at the Dresden Academy in 1919. He left in 1924 and spent the following years travelling. He moved away from portraits to painting landscapes, specialising in bird's eye views of cities, for example Jerusalem' (1929-1930). By 1938 he had settled in London, after the Nazis had declared his work as degenerate. After the war Kokoschka moved to Switzerland in 1953 and ran a summer school at Salzburg. He is regarded as one of the early masters of modern art. His paintings were remarkable for their psychological depth and distinctive brand of Expressionism. His later works were based on mythology such as 'Prometheus'(1950) for the ceiling of the house of Count Seilern and the 'Thermopylae' triptych (1954) for Hamburg University. He also wrote a number of plays Including the controversial Expressionist work of 1908, 'Murder Hope of Women'. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Born: 1864 Died: 1901 Gender: Male Nationality: French "[He] painted no landscapes, no religious pictures, no abstract conceptions. All his subjects, except for a few representations of animals, were real people whose lives were an integral part of his own life. "Gerstle Mack, from Toulouse-Lautrec (1938). Lautrec begins his schooling at the Lycee Fontanes in Paris and his interest in art can already be seen as he frequented the studio of Rene Princeteau. At the age of 14 he fractured his legs leaving him permanently stunted. In 1882 he became a pupil of Bonnat and a year later of Cormon. In 1885 with an allowance he sets himself up in a studio in Montmartre and begins to draw for illustrated journals. Meeting van Gogh in 1886, Lautrec came into contact with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. From 1888 he begins to paint scenes and characters from society around him. Thus pictures of theatres, cafes, music-halls (most often the Moulin Rouge) and brothels can be seen again and again in Lautrec's work. In 1889 he exhibits for the first time at the Salon des Independents and two years later produces his first poster for the Moulin Rouge. By 1894 Lautrec takes up residence in the brothel in the Rue des Moulins and by now he was fully immersed in the drinking and debauchery of this seamier side of Parisian life. Works such as 'Les Deux Amies' (c.1894) and 'La Goulue Dancing' (1895) for example are just two of the many paintings he produced that documented these 'fin-de-siecle' scenes. By 1899, due to excessive living, Lautrec is taken to an asylum at Neuilly with an attack of delirium tremens. Upon release he can't help but return to his hard-drinking ways and two years later he dies from a paraltyic attack. Despite his short life, Lautrec managed to produce some 737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 368 prints and posters and 5,084 drawings. His works provide an amazing document for the years 1880 to 1900, a period described as 'la belle epoque'. The extraordinary characters in his paintings from clowns to aristocrats, from sportsmen to prostitutes cover a broad social spectrum. His works were always striking with bold forms and colours. His influences probably came from Goya in Lautrec's etchings and Degas in his painting. A friendship with Gauguin certainly led Lautrec in a particular direction in his lithographs, inspired by Japanese colour prints. Despite his colourful life, his vast oeuvre covers a precise time and place with extraordinary detail, evoking the atmosphere of this time perfectly. Fernand Leger Born: 1881 Died: 1955 Gender: Male Nationality: French "There are not just natural elements, like the sky, the trees and the human body; all around us are the things that man has created, the things that make up our New Realism." Fernand Léger. Leger was born the son of a cattle-drover in Argentan, France. He did not excel at school and wasn't accepted into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His 'Nudes in the Forest' (1909-1910), however, was a success at the Salon and he joined Gabriel Ferrier's school. After a brief Post-Impressionist spell, he started working in the Cubist idiom and exhibited at the Section d'Or. With his 'Contrasts in Form' series he achieved his reputation and by 1913 he was famous. His experience as a stretcher-bearer in the First World War was a traumatic one but served to inspire two of his most acclaimed works, 'The Soldier with a Pipe' (1916) and 'The Game of Cards' (1917). Under the guidance of Le Corbusier and Ozenfant he worked in the Purist mode in the early Twenties, producing static paintings often depicting machine parts. His work encompassed a number of different styles including stage sets for the Ballets Suédois and filmmaking with him co-directing 'Ballet Mécanique' (1924). He also worked as an art critic and ran his own art school, the Académie de l'Art Contemporain. Léger travelled widely throughout Europe in the 1930s as well as visting the United States for the first time, exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1935 and eventually moving there in 1940 to teach until 1945. Once back in France he continued his quest to bridge the gap between the visual arts and the general public primarily with his series of 'Constructors'. His mural, 'The Builders' (1950) was one of the most impressive examples of his aesthetic programme 'available to the people'. Léger worked with flat colours with heavy black contours often on a monumental scale. His 'Objects in Space' series show his fascination with form and his attention to detail. Painting for him was, however, always about describing the human experience, an obsession he expressed with supreme confidence and originality. Frederic Leighton Born: 1830 Died: 1896 Gender: Male Nationality: English "If Leighton looked back to classical prototypes, he did so through the eyes of a Victorian aesthete, whose primary concern was to please the eye and elevate the imagination of his audience, not to belabour them with the perfection of Greek form." Richard Ormond. Frederic Leighton was born in Scarborough in the north of England, and travelled widely from an early age. By the age of 15 he had decided to become an artist and studied in Frankfurt and Florence. He exhibited his first painting, 'Cimabue finding Giotto in the Fields of Florence' in 1850. By 1853 he was already developing a distinctive style with his portrait 'Isabel Laing'. A year later he painted 'Cimabue's Madonna' (1853-1855) and it divided audiences into those who viewed it as the zenith of Pre-Raphaelite painting and those who hated the painting, as well as this burgeoning movement. Leighton exhibited at the Royal Academy as an associate member in 1865 with 'Mother and Child (Cherries)'. As in much of his work there is a certain degree of sentimentality in this painting but he took care not to let this overwhelm the piece. He was enthralled by classical themes and this can be seen most impressively in 'Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis' (1871) for example. By 1878 Leighton became President of the Royal Academy and was made a baronet in 1886. In 1893 he produced one of his most striking paintings in 'Flaming June' only to die a year later. Leighton took on the directness of a classical style of art, relishing the grandiose themes and heavy symbolism associated with this. Yet he managed to convey the intimate at the same time, expressing a deep sense of humanity. Leighton's draughtsmanship was sublime, his compositions were always immaculate and his colouring very rich. He achieved great success in his lifetime, perhaps only matched by his contemporary John Everett Millais. Roy Lichtenstein Born: 1923 Died: 1997 Gender: Male Nationality: American "Witty and skillful, [Lichtenstein's] pastiches represent the triumph of industry over inspiration." Robert Hughes. Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York where he studied at the Art Students League in 1939. From 1940 to 1949 he studied at Ohio State University, Columbus, interrupted for three years (1943 to 1946) with service in the US Army. After a brief spell teaching at Columbus, Lichtenstein moved to Cleveland, Ohio where he took on a number of odd jobs to support his painting. In 1957 he returned to teaching, first at New York State University, Oswego then in 1960 to Rutgers University in New Brunswick. After passing through an Abstract Expressionist phase, Lichtenstein became best known as one of the leading figures in the Pop Art movement. With his one-man exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1962, his work achieved instant success. Alongside artists such as Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselman, Lichtenstein took the distinctive style of the commercial art world as his inspiration. His paintings such as 'The Kiss' (1961) and ' Whaam!' (1963) appropriated comic strip imagery, reproducing the primary colours and Benday dots of the cheap printing processes and replicating such subject matter as violent action and sentimental love. By the mid-1960s Lichtenstein was making Pop versions of paintings by modern masters such as Cézanne and Mondrian as well as producing screenprints. In the 1970s he moved into sculpture, mostly in polished brass and imitating the Art Deco forms of the 1930s. He also received several commissions for public places including 'Mural With Blue Brushstrokes' (1986) for the Equitable Building in New York. Lichtenstein saw beauty and pathos in the comic strip art he reproduced. Critics admired his strength of composition and his power to communicate. His witty pastiches seem to represent the triumph of the modern, celebrating the imagery of mass culture. Morris Louis Born: 1912 Died: 1962 Gender: Male Nationality: American "With Louis, fully autonomous abstract painting came into its own for really the first time, and did so in paintings of a quality that matches the level of their abstraction." John Elderfield (from the introduction to the Art Council's Exhibition of Louis' work in 1974). Born Morris Louis Bernstein to Russian-Jewish immigrants, he was raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied at the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts from 1929 to 1933, moved to New York for six years to work on the Federal Art Project then returned to Baltimore in 1940. After seven years there he moved to Washington, first to the suburb of Silver Spring then in 1952 to the city itself. Although keeping himself detached from the New York art scene it was a trip to the city in 1953 that led him to appropriate the technique he first saw used in the work of Helen Frankenthaler. She applied liquid paint onto unprimed canvas, it was then allowed to flow across and soak into the canvas, the result being a stain of paint as opposed to a layer of paint applied on the surface. Louis experimented on this basis creating paintings of extraordinary vibrancy. Many of the leading American abstract painters of the 1950s and 60s, Louis included, were exponents of Colour Field painting, where whole works consisted of large expanses of more or less unmodulated colour. Louis painted a number of pictures using this technique beginning with 'Veils' (1954). In 'Where' (1960) his style moved towards colours positioned in rainbow-like bands on a bare canvas. By the end of the Fifties his reputation was confirmed. He had his first foreign exhibition in 1960 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Sadly, however, he died of lung cancer just two years later. Louis was perhaps the greatest exponent of Colour Field painting. He was a notorious perfectionist with many paintings being destroyed that did not meet his exacting standards. His paintings remain widely exhibited. August Macke Born: 1887 Died: 1914 Gender: Male Nationality: German "A work of art is a parable, it is man's thought, an autonomous idea of an artist, a song about the beauty of things: a work of art is the noble differentiated expression of man who is capable of something more than merely saying: 'Isn't that beautiful?' "Auguste Macke. Macke was born in Meschede on the Ruhr. From 1904 to 1905 he studied at the Academy and later with Ehmcke at the School for Arts and Crafts in Düsseldorf. Macke visited Paris for the first time in 1907. He returned a couple of years later and befriended Franz Marc, one of the founders of the 'Blue Rider', with Kandinsky, an influential movement intent on finding ways to express an artist's 'inner desire'. Auguste Macke was to join this group with three of his paintings being included in the first exhibition and a number in the second. The group united such artists as Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso and Braque. The name of the movement was chosen because Marc and Kandinsky shared an appreciation for the colour blue and for horses. In 1912 Macke participated in the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne and in 1913 spent eight months in Hilterfingen on the Lake of Thun in Switzerland. Then after travelling to Tunis with Klee and Moilliet, Macke was drafted into the army and died in action in September 1914. Macke was interested in colour and composition and the way the two interact. His work is a synthesis of Impressionism, Fauvism and Orphism. His paintings are full of life and utterly free of the angst shown by other Expressionists. Inspired by the light of Tunisia, his final paintings are regarded by many as his finest. As well as painting, Macke made pottery, woodcarvings and a few prints. He also did a lot of design work for carpets, tapestries and wall-hangings, later executed by his wife. Charles Rennie Mackintosh Born: 1868 Died: 1928 Gender: Male Nationality: Scottish "The architect must become an art worker... the art worker must become an architect... the draughtsman of the future must be an artist..." Charles Rennie Mackintosh Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow and worked as an architect, designer and watercolourist. While studying architecture at the Glasgow School of Art he won first prize in a watercolour competition. He went on to produce many watercolours during the 1890s, gradually integrating more mystical themes into his work. His style was very much in the vein of Art Nouveau. Works such as 'Princess Uty' (1897-1898) and 'In Fairyland' (1897) show a preponderance with the magical as he moved away from his earlier Symbolist works with their eerie moods produced for The Magazine. From 1900 Mackintosh's architectural work took precedence over his watercolours. His most famous building is the Glasgow School of Art (1897-1899). He incorporated considerable detail from nature into both his watercolours and his architecture. Wild flowers were present in many of his buildings, furniture and paintings. He was also concerned with design, pattern, line and colour over content and emotion. In 1914 he moved to London with his wife Margaret Macdonald and, although continuing with his design and watercolour work, gave up architecture. He turned to landscape painting and produced a number of impressive works first in Dorset and later in France, where he lived from 1923 to 1927. Many of these works show a concern with the relationship between the man-made and the natural environment. His influences can be seen in such artists as Gustav Klimt and the early work of Egon Schiele. One can see elements of Cubism and Fauvism in his work, but principally he did not consciously draw on these precedents preferring to concentrate on the representation of the natural world in his own intricate fashion. His work enjoyed a major reputation amongst the avant-garde in Europe, especially Germany and Austria, but in his own country he was far less appreciated. Today his many architectural achievements, furniture designs and watercolours are highly regarded. Rene Magritte Born: 1898 Died: 1967 Gender: Male Nationality: Belgian "If the spectator finds that my paintings are a kind of defiance of 'common sense', he realises something obvious. I want nevertheless to add that for me the world is a defiance of common sense." René Magritte. René Magritte was born in Lessines the son of a wealthy manufacturer. After his mother committed suicide in 1912, Magritte entered the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1916. Some of his early paintings, for example 'Three Women' (1919), were in a Cubo-Futurist style, reminiscent of early Picasso. He married Georgette in 1922 and for the next three years supported the household through a number of dismal jobs such as painting cabbage roses for a wallpaper factory. In his free time he experimented with various styles of painting eventually realising Surrealism was his preferred means of expression. Among his first works in this vein were 'The Menaced Assassin' (1926) and 'The Lost Jockey' (1925), the latter of which he produced many variants upon throughout his career. Around the same time he founded, with the Belgian poet and collagist E.L.T. Messens, the reviews ‘Oesophage and Marie’ which launched Belgian Surrealism. In 1927 Magritte had his first one-man show at the Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels. At this time he was producing almost a painting a day. Later that year he moved to Paris to join the Surrealists. This period up to 1930, Magritte described as his 'Cavernous' period with paintings depicting macabre and bizarre scenes tinged with eroticism. After falling out with André Breton, Magritte moved back to Brussels where he would remain for the rest of his life. His work was consistently true to Surrealism throughout almost his entire career. He incorporated many favourite recurring themes into his work for example floating rocks, paintings within paintings and inanimate objects with human features. The bowler-hatted figure also appears regularly and is seen by some as a self-portrait. Occasionally Magritte worked on Surrealist versions of famous paintings such as Manet's 'The Balcony', in which he replaced the subjects with coffins. He later produced sculptures along these lines and it was this playful yet provocative sense of humour that was to inform many of his best works. In his series of pipe paintings, this fascination with the paradoxical is clearly seen; the words 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' underneath a picture of a pipe have prompted endless philosophical, linguistic and semantic debates. Magritte's paintings challenge the everyday, the notion of common sense. By subtly rearranging recognisable forms and perspectives he forces the viewer to look more closely at what is generally taken for granted. He exploited the ambiguities between real objects and images of them and delighted in playing with the viewer's expectations. Many of his paintings were included in Surrealist exhibitions, but it wasn't until his 50s that he achieved international recognition. In Surrealism's progression into Pop Art, Magritte's work was enormously influential and his images continue to be seen regularly. Kasimir Malevich Born: 1878 Died: 1935 Gender: Male Nationality: Russian "The world is the world, not spirit or matter." Kasimir Malevich. Kasimir Malevich was born in Kiev, one of six children, to Russified Poles. He developed a passion for art during his teens, largely teaching himself while living in the Ukraine. In 1904, having saved money from his job as a railroad clerk, Malevich moved to Moscow to study art full-time at the school of Fedor Rerberg. While under his tutorship, Malevich produced Symbolist, Impressionist and Art Nouveau paintings and drawings. In 1907 he first took part in the Moscow Artists' Society's twice yearly exhibition along with such artists as David Burliuk, Aleksander Shevchenko and Natalia Goncharova. In 1909, with a broad knowledge of Western art, there was a move in Malevich's work towards Post-Impressionism. With the influence of contemporary French art, however, and of the Russian avant-garde, Malevich's style developed into one of Cubo-Futurism, for example 'The Knife Grinder' (1912). Malevich's new outlook was first seen at the 'Donkey's Tail' exhibition in 1912 arranged to promote Neo-Primitivist styles and subjects. His paintings, generally of peasants and urban scenes, were often brightly coloured and highly expressive, for example 'On the Boulevard' (1911). In 1913 Malevich met a group of artists and poets interested in taking a more philosophical and theoretical approach to art. The theory espoused by Krucherykh and Khlebnikov of the 'self-sufficient world' influenced Malevich enormously. The notion of 'zaum' was promoted, a state where experience occurs beyond the naturally perceived world. This concept and his work for the Cubo-Futurist opera 'Victory Over The Sun' (1913) propelled Malevich into the style of Suprematism. It was first seen at the '0,10' (Zero-Ten) exhibition of 1915, and is best shown by works such as 'Black Square' (1915) and 'Black Cross' (1916-1917). Suprematism reduced abstract painting to a previously unheard of geometrical simplicity. His work at this time ranged from the austere with his 'White on White' series to the colourful such as in 'Yellow Parallelogram on White' (1917). Although Malevich only worked in this style for about five years, it is crucial to understanding his development and his work as a whole. He produced a great deal of work during his Suprematist period and in 1919, having decided his exploration of this area was complete, he turned to teaching. In 1922 he settled in Petrograd and taught at the Institute for Artistic Culture from 1922 to 1927. In the late Twenties he took up figurative painting once more, depicting peasants in colourful and highly stylised works, for example 'Woman with a Rake' (1928-1932). His work, however, was in opposition to the ideology of the government at that time and Malevich fell out of favour. Nevertheless, his contribution to 20th century art is of tremendous importance. Both in his experiments with style and his theoretical writings, his influence on abstract art is beyond doubt. Edouard Manet Born: 1832 Died: 1883 Gender: Male Nationality: French "One must be of one's time and paint what one sees." Edouard Manet. Manet was the son of a department chief in the Ministry of Justice. He went to school in Poiloup in 1839, then to the Collège Rollin in 1842 to study drawing. After two years with the navy Manet entered the studio of Thomas Couture in 1850 where he remained for six years. It is during this time that he studied the Old Masters at the Louvre including Velásquez and Ribera. He also made trips to many museums throughout Europe. In 1859 Manet made his first submission to the Salon, 'The Absinthe Drinker' (1859) but it was rejected. Two years later he had a couple of paintings accepted including 'Le Guitarrero' (1861), but in 1863 his 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (1863), thrown out by the Salon, caused a scandal with its perceived base morals, when it was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés. The subject in 1865 Manet's 'Olympia' created another uproar as the officials at the Salon were offended by this portrait of a sexually provocative woman. 'Olympia' is flooded with a strong frontal light producing simple tonal contrasts and flattening form and space. Manet regarded the painting as his masterpiece. The controversy he succeeded in causing led Manet to become a figurehead for the avant-garde. He was admired by the other Impressionists but did not spend a great deal of time with them, nor did he exhibit with them. In 1870 Manet served as a lieutenant in the National Guard then left Paris the following year. In 1881 Manet's health began to deteriorate, yet he managed to produce one of his finest works, 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère' (1882) the following year. The painting brought together many elements from his career, such as the still-lifes, the isolated figure gazing out of the picture and the crowds. Manet painted a diversity of subjects and was highly instinctive. His studies of the Old Masters can be seen reflected in many of his paintings yet rather than appearing stale and derivative, Manet's work is always fresh and full of vitality. He was the definitive modern artist, documenting many contemporary scenes throughout his career, yet also showing a continued fascination with the mechanics of art, that is the actual process of painting, and it is this which established him as one of the fathers of early 20th century modern art. Franz Marc Born: 1880 Died: 1916 Gender: Male Nationality: German "The Blue Rider has fallen, a mighty, biblical figure about whom there hung a fragrance of Eden. Across the landscape he cast a blue shadow. He was the one who could still hear the animals speak; and he transfigured their uncomprehended souls." Else Lasker-Schuler's obituary to Franz Marc in the Berliner Tageblatt.(1916). Franz Marc was born in Munich the second son of the painter Wilhelm Marcand his Alsace-born wife Sophie. After one year's military service he attended the Munich University to study philosophy and theology. He switched to painting in 1920 and studied for two years at the Kunstakademie. In 1903 he travelled to Paris where he first encountered the work of the Impressionists; the works of Gauguin and van Gogh particularly impressed him. In 1909 Marc moved to Sindelsdorf with Maria Franck who was later to become his wife and a year later he met August Macke who was to become his closest friend. In 1911 he became a member of a Munich exhibiting society, the Neue Kunstlervereinigung and by the end of the year had moved on to the splinter group, Der Blaue Reiter. Marc concentrated on painting animals for the most part, believing they were more important physically and spiritually than humans. He was a highly emotional painter regarding different colours as representing some feeling or perception of the animal. In 1912 he was exposed to the work of Robert Delaunay and this led Marc into further abstractions, most notably 'Animal Destinies' (1913). Franz Marc was at the forefront of German Expressionism. His paintings were highly distinctive and incredibly powerful. He was very sensitive to his surroundings, a characteristic which was pushed to overload with the outbreak of the First World War. The death of Macke on the battle field disturbed him enormously. Sadly Marc was to succumb to the same fate a few months later. Henri Matisse Born: 1869 Died: 1954 Gender: Male Nationality: French "What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or disturbing subject-matter... like a comforting influence, a mental balm - something like a good armchair in which one rests from physical fatigue." Henri Matisse. Matisse began by studying law in Paris but by 1891 had taken up art instead, becoming a student at the Académie Julian in Paris under Bouguereau. He left a year later, however, displeased with Bougereau's teaching, and unofficially joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts studying with Rouault, Piot, Guerin and Bussy amongst others. By 1896 Matisse had four of his paintings accepted for exhibition at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars, he sold two of them. A year later he saw the work of Camille Pissarro and van Gogh and was deeply impressed. In 1900 Matisse had fallen on hard times and had to paint exhibition decorations at the Grand Palais to make a living. He continued with his painting, however, and, after having experimented with still-lifes and landscapes in the late-Nineties turned to Neo-Impressionism and produced one of his first major works in 1905. 'Luxe, calme et volupte' (1904-1905) was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and bought by Signac. In the same year Matisse and his friends caused a sensation at the Salon d'Automne giving rise to the name, 'Fauves'. He also found himself important patrons in the American Steins thus solving his financial difficulties. His paintings were brightly coloured and contain a deep sensuality, for example, 'Pink Nude' (1935) and one of his most uplifting paintings, 'Large Red Interior'. He worked constantly throughout his life, creating possibly his masterpiece between 1949 and 1951 in the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence. It was a dedication to the woman who nursed him back to health after a serious illness and later became a nun. Matisse designed every aspect of the convent in immaculate detail. Other digressions from his painting include sculpting, for example, 'The Back I-IV' (1909-1929) and an original technique involving the arrangement of brightly-coloured cut-out shapes into abstract patterns. He also designed sets and costumes for Diaghilev and was a supreme book illustrator. Whatever Matisse turned his hand to, his work always shows a lightness and airy quality. He loved colour and vitality and was loathe to represent tragedy. Alongside Picasso he was internationally renowned from the 1920s onwards. Joan Miro Born: 1893 Died: 1983 Gender: Male Nationality: Spanish "I'd like to get beyond easel painting, which in my opinion pursues a petty aim, and find ways of getting closer, in terms of painting, to the broad mass of human beings who have always been in my thoughts." Joan Miró. Joan Miró was born in Barcelona, in the Catalan region of Spain and studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and at the Academie Gali. Like many of his contemporaries, Miró found it necessary to venture to Paris to complete his education. He first visited the French capital in 1919 and for the next 17 years spent every winter in Paris and summers at his family's farm outside of Barcelona. Miró was in Portugal with Delaunay during World War One before settling in Paris. He met with Picasso early on and through him and Gris became interested in the painting styles of Cubism and Fauvism. In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealists, a movement and philosophy to which he remained faithful throughout the remainder of his career. 'Harlequin's Carnival' (1924-1925) is Miró's first major adult work and it contains many of the characteristics that made up his distinctive vision. In 1940 Miró returned to Spain, escaping the German occupation of France and eventually settling in Majorca. A year later the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted a retrospective exhibition to Miró and with this he achieved international recognition. From paintings such as 'Morning Star' (1940) to 'Woman, Bird' (1976) the Miró style was unmistakable. Using vibrant colours and bizarre forms Miró stayed true to the Surrealist ideology without ever submitting to obvious devices. His freely invented calligraphy of highly coloured forms derived from Breton. In 1944 he began making ceramics with the potter Josep Llorens Artigas and soon took up sculpture beginning with small-scale terracotta's and eventually making large-scale pieces for casting in bronze. Miró had always wanted to have his work widely recognised and in the USA he began to achieve this with a number of murals, for example one at the Terrance Hilton Hotel in Cincinnatti and another at Harvard University. Later on he took up printmaking and in his eighties began stained glass window design. Joan Miró is recognised as one of the greatest of all Surrealist and Abstract artists, yet unlike the other Surrealists known for their flamboyant personalities, Miró was an understated figure devoted purely to his work and his public. He was fascinated with subverting traditional forms such as humans and animals and finding new ways of depicting them. In his own words, Miró was driven by his need "to rediscover the sources of human feeling". Amedeo Modigliani Born: 1884 Died: 1920 Gender: Male Nationality: Italian "I want to be a tuneswept fiddle string that feels the master’s melody and snaps." Amedeo Modigliani. Amedeo Modigliani was born in Leghorn (Livorno) into a Jewish Merchant family. Childhood illnesses meant he did not follow a normal education and he began studying with a landscape painter in 1898. He studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Venice and then settled in Paris in 1906 where he lived for the rest of his life. His early paintings show numerous influences such as Gauguin, the Fauves, Cézanne and Botticelli. In 1909 he met Brancusi who encouraged Modigliani to take up stone sculpture. However, in 1915 he reverted to painting as the materials for sculpting proved hard to find and the stone dust affected his breathing, since his lungs were already weakened by disease. Modigliani always worked primarily with bodies, whether it be sculpting heads or crouching figures, or painting portraits or female nudes. He applied many sculptural effects in his portraits and nudes, particularly the characteristic elongation of the head, the long raised ridge of the nose and the long neck. Many of his portraits depicted close friends such as 'Juan Gris' (1915) and 'Portrait of Paul Guillaume' (1915). While his sensuous nudes such as 'Reclining Nude' (1919) proved controversial for their rather blatant eroticism. Modigliani died from tuberculosis after a brief yet dissolute life; his mistress, Jeanne Hébuterne, pregnant with their second child, committed suicide the day after he died. Despite his short life, his reputation continues to live on. His work was varied and conveyed a range of emotions, from the primitive to the sensual. He is seen by some as the godfather of modern art, but to many it is his reputation as a hard-living bohemian artist that ensures he will be remembered. Piet Mondrian Born: 1872 Died: 1944 Gender: Male Nationality: Dutch "I think that the destructive element is too much neglected in art." Piet Mondrian. Mondrian was born in Amersfoort and grew up with his older sister and three younger brothers in a Calvinist family. In 1892 Mondrian moved to Amsterdam to study art at the Rijksacademie. Five years later he was submitting still-lifes and landscapes to membership-only shows at Arti et Amicitiae and at Sint Lucas, two artists' groups in Amsterdam. During this time he made a living by painting portraits and copying museum art, alongside occasional commissioned work. In 1898 his landscape painting began to develop as he moved away from the Hague School-type and started focusing on structure and rhythm. In the way he concentrated on composition this early work can be seen to prefigure his abstract work. For example, 'Village Church' (c.1898). Between 1907 and 1910, influenced by Symbolism he produced work such as 'Devotion' (1908) and 'Passion-flower' (1908) portraying women with sad expressions and flowers next to their heads. He alternated between figurative and landscape work, experimenting with many different styles. In 1911 he moved to Paris where he encountered Cubism for the first time, a movement that was to lead him to produce a series of paintings revolving around trees, for example 'Flowering Apple Tree' (1912). In 1914 Mondrian returned to Holland and continued his study of abstraction. Three years later he founded De Stijl with Theo van Doesburg, a movement searching for laws of balance in both art and life. The abstract style they developed became known as Neo-Plasticism. The technique restricted the use of shapes purely to rectangles and with a limited colour palette of black, white and grey, plus the primaries. In 1919 Mondrian moved to Paris where he remained for 19 years. In 1931 he joined a group of abstract painters and sculptors known as Abstraction-Création. The group arranged exhibitions and published an annual of their works which generally centred on geometrical abstraction. By 1938 with the outbreak of the Second World War, Mondrian fled to London then two years later to New York. It was here that he developed a more energetic style inspired by his passion for jazz and dancing, as can be seen in the colourful 'Broadway Boogie-Woogie' (1942-1943). Piet Mondrian was expert in conveying emotion with the bare minimum of detail. His minimal style of abstraction can be seen in relation to his study of Theosophy in his quest for the 'Absolute'. His influence can be seen not only on other artists but also on the media of industrial design and advertisements from the 1930s onwards. Claude Monet Born: 1840 Died: 1926 Gender: Male Nationality: French "I work constantly, constantly at grips with nature." Claude Monet in a letter to Durand-Ruel, May 1918. Claude Monet grew up in Le Havre. He excelled at caricatures to begin with but Boudin, an early mentor persuaded him to take up landscape painting. In1859 he attended the Academie Suisse in Paris where he befriended Pissarro. Following two years' military service he continued his training with Jongkind, followed by time spent in the studio of Gleyre in 1862. At this time he met Renoir, Sisley and Bazille, all of whom were to become core members of the Impressionist movement. In 1870 Monet moved to London to escape the Franco-Prussian War. He stayed with Pissarro and met the influential dealer Durand-Ruel. Then from 1871 to 1876, based in Argenteuil, he produced some of his most accomplished works. By 1890 he had found success. His subsequent paintings continued his exploration of light on his subjects as he produced 'Haystacks' (1890-1891) and 'Rouen Cathedral' (1891-1895), two amongst many studies in which the artist painted the same subject at different times of the day. His latter years were spent painting his water-garden in Giverny, which led to a series entitled 'Waterlilies'. Monet was one of the founders and archetypal members of the Impressionist movement. He produced a huge amount of work during his career and his work is still present in many galleries around the world today. Albert Moore Born: 1841 Died: 1893 Gender: Male Nationality: British "[Moore has a] genuine feeling for the juxtaposition and interrelation of colour." Sir Joshua Reynolds. Albert Moore was born in York, England, the son of a portrait painter and brother of the painter and watercolourist Henry Moore. Albert moved to London after the death of his father and joined the Academy School. At this time his style tended towards that of the Pre-Raphaelites, merging modern symbolism with romantic imagery. By the 1860s he had turned to classical subjects. Inspired by a number of trips to Rome, the influence of classical sculpture dominated Moore's output. Single Grecian figures or groups posed in an elaborate fashion with detailed attention to the diaphanously draped fabric became regular features of his work. As well as subject matter he was interested in the correlation of colour in his paintings, leading him to reproduce many compositions with different colour patterns. Moore worked closely with Whistler throughout his career, sharing many ideas and techniques until Moore's death in 1893. Moore's close friends organised a memorial retrospective after his death, it was his first exhibition. Paintings such as 'The Dreamers' and 'A Sofa' remain two of his most famous works. Robert Motherwell Born: 1915 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American "I belong... to a family of 'black' painters and earth colour painters in masses, which would include Manet and Goya and Matisse." Robert Motherwell. Robert Motherwell was born in Aberdeen, Washington and began to study painting at the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles in 1926 when he was only 11. Family money offered him a comprehensive education: a BA in philosophy at Stanford, a pre-war tour of Europe and PhD studies in philosophy at Harvard eventually abandoned to enrol on an art history course at Columbia run by art historian Meyer Schapiro. And it was Schapiro who persuaded Motherwell to take up painting professionally. He studied painting with the Chilean Surrealist Matta in Mexico in 1941. His first solo exhibition was in 1944 at Peggy Guggenheim's Art Of This Century Gallery. He was the youngest of the Abstract Expressionists, and was unusual in that he produced work which was abstract from the outset, although there is a suggestion of figuration in his paintings. Despite comprising only a fraction of his output, Motherwell's best known work is the 'Spanish Elegies' collection prompted by the Spanish Civil War, an event that moved him deeply but not begun until a decade later in 1949. In 1948 Motherwell, together with other leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, founded the Subjects of the Artist School. His earliest paintings contained ideas prompted by his friendship with a number of expatriate Surrealists, but by the late 1940s he turned to using bold slabs of paint, often ovals or upright rectangles in a very subdued palette reminiscent of the late Matisse cutouts. This technique, making dramatic use of black and white continued for some time. It can be seen to good effect in 'Elegy to the Spanish Republic LXX' (1961). In 1967 he changed tack, beginning a series of Colour Field paintings called 'Open'. They featured large areas of dense colour broken by a few spare lines, a style chosen to convey both expansiveness and simplicity. Motherwell was highly prolific both as an artist and as a critic and lecturer. His understanding of various different styles inform a lot of his art - Surrealism within his early work and his later collages such as 'Unglueckliche Liebe' ('Unhappy Love') (1975) and Abstract Expressionism clearly evident in 'Elegies'. However, he always retains an understanding of the world around him, conveying a sense of humanity as opposed to cold intellectualism. Alphonse Mucha Born: 1860 Died: 1939 Gender: Male Nationality: Czech "For the Slavs, the plastic arts are a common striving towards a symbolic manifestation... a taste for symbols is part of the inheritance of all Slavs... That is why the language of symbols is the surest way to communicate our feelings to our brother Slavs." Alphonse Mucha. Alphonse Mucha was born in South Moravia. In 1882 he started to earn a living by painting portraits in Mikulov. The following year Count Khuen commissioned Mucha to decorate his castle at Emmahof and his brother Count Egon Belasi became his patron. He was educated at the Munich Academy of Arts and at the Académie Julian in Paris and after completing work for Count Khuen began work as an illustrator in 1889. His first work was a theatre magazine entitled Le Costume au Theatre and in it his first drawing of Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra appeared in 1890. By 1895 he had signed a six year contract with Bernardt to produce stage and costume designs as well as posters. At the same time Mucha joined the Salon des Cent, a Symbolist group that included Bonnard, Mallarmé and Toulouse-Lautrec. He designed a poster for their 20th exhibition in 1896 and the next year he exhibited many of his works at this exhibition as well as at his own one-man show at the Topic Gallery in Prague. Between 1903 and 1922 Mucha made four visits to the United States where his work proved particularly successful. Charles Richard Crane, a Chicago industrialist and Slavophile, agreed to finance Mucha's series of 20 huge paintings entitled 'Slav Epic' (1909-1928). He continued to work on a number of projects, however, including the design of new postage stamps for Czechoslovakia in 1918 and producing a number of posters and designs for public buildings besides the 'Slav Epic' for example, 'Allegory of Prague' (1911) for the Prague Town Hall. He completed the full cycle of the 'Slav Epic' finally in 1928 and it was exhibited at the Trade Fair Palace. Just three years later he was commissioned to produce a stained-glass window for the St. Vitus Cathedral, then in 1938 embarked on yet another mammoth project involving a triptych, 'The Age of Wisdom', 'The Age of Love' and 'The Age of Reason'. Sadly they were never completed. Mucha is best known for his luxurious poster and product designs, which encapsulate the Art Nouveau style. Yet his impressive 'Slav Epic', featuring 20 vast canvases show both his commitment to his art and his country. After his death he received little attention until an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris revived interest in his work in 1980. Edvard Munch Born: 1863 Died: 1944 Gender: Male Nationality: Norwegian "People's souls are like planets. Like a star that rises from the darkness - and meets another star - only to disappear again into darkness - it is the same when a man and woman meet - drift apart - light up in love - burn up - and disappear each in their own direction..." Edvard Munch. "I have always worked best with my paintings around me. I placed them together and felt that some of the pictures related to each other through the subject matter. When they were placed together a sound went through them right away and they became quite different from when they were separate they became a symphony." Edvard Munch. Edvard Munch was born in Loten, Hedmark in Norway. Munch's childhood was traumatic, his father was almost fanatically religious and his mother and eldest sister died prematurely. The difficulties of his early years were to affect his character throughout his life. In 1881 after a failed period training to become an engineer, he enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design where he painted his first self-portrait and managed to sell two paintings. By 1884 he was already part of the bohemian world of Christiana (now Oslo). In 1885 he went to Paris for the first time where he was heavily influenced by the Impressionists and Symbolists particularly Gauguin with his simplified forms and non-naturalistic colours. Munch exhibited many of his paintings during this period. In 1892 he exhibited at the Kunstlerverein (Artists' Union) in Berlin, where his work proved so controversial that the show had to be closed. Now famous, Munch moved to Berlin the same year where he lived on and off until 1908. In the 1890s Munch embarked on his 'Frieze of Life' which he described as "a poem of life, love and death". Informed by his dark neuroses, with themes such as jealousy, sickness and sexual desire, his paintings make up an intense depiction of extreme psychological states. The most famous of his paintings is 'The Scream' (1895), a disturbing depiction of anxiety and melancholy. Munch went on to translate many of his paintings into etching, lithography and woodcut. In 1908, after prolonged heavy drinking, overwork and a failed love affair, the artist suffered a complete mental breakdown and he entered a clinic for the next eight months. After this his work changed dramatically. The intense emotions disappeared and his paintings became far more extroverted, characterised by brighter colours and a renewed vigour. He painted a series of large oil paintings for the University Hall of Oslo (1910-1915) conveying an optimistic perspective on nature, science and history. Thereafter, however, he took up the life of a recluse, and his work once again became fuelled by his profound sensibilities. The last of his self-portraits, 'Between the Clock and the Bed' (1940-1942) portrayed his ailing body teetering on the brink of eternity. Edvard Munch is one of the most distinctive painters of his generation. The emotion instilled in his work is deeply affecting and frequently quite disturbing. Plagued with inner demons that tormented him through much of his career, Munch effectively used his paintings to give voice to his neuroses. His influence was strong in Scandinavia and Germany particularly, with van Gogh and himself being seen as the two best exponents of Expressionist art. Emil Nolde Born: 1867 Died: 1956 Gender: Male Nationality: German "Perhaps the greatest modern watercolourist." Frank Whitford, art critic. Emil Hansen was born in Nolde, Schleswig, later taking the name of his birthplace when he was married in 1902. He worked initially as a cabinet maker and taught ornamental drawing from 1892 to 1897 at the School of Industrial Design at St. Gall in Switzerland. Between 1898 and 1899 Hansen studied painting in Munich before moving to Paris to study at the Académie Julian where he first saw the work of the Impressionists. He worked from a studio in Berlin and also on the island of Alsen in the North Sea. Nolde then spent several months in Dresden working as part of the Die Brücke group which he joined in 1905. Although he remained at a distance from many of his contemporaries, one of the leading figures of the movement, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, did teach Nolde woodcut before he resigned in 1907. He went on to produce a number of religious paintings such as 'The Last Supper' and 'Pentecost' both in 1909. They were marked by their bright colours and distorted images, produced with thick paint, conveying very strong emotions. At the same time he also produced some vivid depictions of Berlin nightlife. In 1912, having been expelled from the Neue Sezession, Nolde travelled to New Guinea in 1913 where he developed an interest in primitive art leading to works such as 'Exotic Figures'. From 1915 onwards he produced a vast number of landscape paintings as well as flower depictions. A retrospective of his work was held in 1927 and showed throughout Germany. He had been a member of the Nazi Party since 1920 yet he was declared a degenerate artist in 1941. He continued to produce small watercolours in secret, however, which came to be known as the 'Unpainted Pictures'. After the war he reworked these into larger oil paintings. Nolde's large body of work, much of which is at the Nolde Foundation in Seebüll, can be characterised by his strong use of colour to convey very powerful emotions. He is regarded as one of the most important painters working in Expressionism. David Noton Born: 1957 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: British "Any landscape photographer is bound to be 'green', and I am no exception. Hopefully by creating striking images of the world's most beautiful and fragile landscapes, I can promote subconsciously a greater awareness of nature's wonders." David Noton. David Noton was born in Bedfordshire and his family moved to Canada in 1965. He developed a love of hiking early on and upon returning to England in 1971 he embarked on numerous walking expeditions across the country. While serving with the British Merchant Navy where he served for three years, Noton started taking photographs. He is most interested in documenting the effects of light across the land at dawn and dusk. He has taken photographs all around the world and has had his work published many times. Georgia OKeeffe Born: 1887 Died: 1986 Gender: Female Nationality: American "Finally, a woman on paper." Alfred Stieglitz. ""O'Keefe was a 'natural': not a naive or primitive painter by any means, but one who seemed to be instinctively in touch with the vibrations of the cosmos." Robert Hughes. Georgia O'Keefe was born near Madison, Wisconsin, the daughter of farmers. In 1905 to 1906 she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and for a further year at the Art Students League in New York. She worked as a commercial artist for the following two years then taught at art schools in South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. During a brief stint at New York's Columbia University in 1912, O'Keefe met a teacher named Arthur Dow who introduced the artist to Pont-Aven painting, a style that emphasises flat abstract arrangements of colour and bonding line. Both this style and Japanese art were to inspire much of her work throughout her career. In 1915 to 1916 some of O'Keefe's abstract charcoal drawings impressed Alfred Stieglitz, a Texas based photographer, editor, writer, publisher and art dealer. He was to give her her first one-woman show a year later with work such as 'Sky Above Clouds' representing the sparse yet luminous landscapes of the Texas plains. O'Keefe moved to New York in 1918 with the prospect of increased financial support and in 1924 married Stieglitz. In the Twenties, her work became more representational and less naturalistic, though still showing a fascination with the abstract forms of objects. Some of her best known work includes her flower and plant forms such as 'Black Iris' (1926), an elegant work construed by many as being sexually suggestive though this was denied by the artist. She was also inspired by the townscapes of New York, painting in a style close to Precisionism, a movement which depicted urban and industrial scapes with smooth, sharply defined imagery. From the 1930s O'Keefe spent her winters in New Mexico, settling there in 1946 after the death of Stieglitz. The desert landscape is represented in much of her work, particularly her interest in bleached animal bones, as typified in 'Mule Skull and Turkey Feathers'. She travelled widely in the 1950s and the views of the earth, sky and clouds she saw out of aeroplanes were to appear in many of her later paintings. After a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1970, O'Keefe became partially blind and little work was produced thereafter. O'Keefe's work has led her to become an icon of feminism. Her paintings, from the large close-ups of flowers to the American landscapes, all display a sense of elegance and vitality and show a deep connection with her surroundings. Marsden Hartley, a painter, admired a certain 'purity' in her work referring to "the quality of a thing or a thought when it has been released from all irrelevant influences." Ruth Orkin Born: Died: Gender: Female Nationality: American "Taking pictures is my way of asking people to 'look at this - look at that'. If my photographs make the viewer feel what I did when I first took them - 'isn't this funny/terrible/moving/beautiful?' - then I've accomplished my purpose." Ruth Orkin. Ruth Orkin was born in Boston, Massachusetts and studied at the Los Angeles City College in 1940. In 1943 she served as a private in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, then in 1943 she joined the MGM Film Studios working as a messenger. Having taught herself photography she went freelance in 1945. She worked as a photojournalist for a number of prestigious magazines including Life, Cosmopolitan and Esquire. Her distinctive style of photography was a voyeuristic one. She is best known for her photographs of New York City taken from her window on the West side of Central Park. Orkin covered a diverse range of subjects, such as parades, joggers in the park, motor cars and concerts. As well as photography Orkin worked briefly as a filmmaker during the Fifties. Her short film, 'The Little Fugitive' made with her husband Morris Engel was nominated for an Oscar. In the Seventies she became an instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Orkin's work has been widely exhibited. Maxfield Parrish Born: 1870 Died: 1966 Gender: Male Nationality: American "[His prints] are in a lush and romantic style, set in an escapist world combining elements of the Arabian Nights, Hollywood, and classical antiquity, with languorous maidens and idyllic landscape backgrounds." Ian Chilvers from The Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Art .. Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia, the son of landscape painter Stephen Parrish. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and was inspired by classes given by the author-illustrator Howard Pyle, famous for his children's books. A cover for Harper's Weekly in 1895 was his first success and he soon gained a reputation for his illustrations, posters and advertisements. His mural paintings were also admired, most notably the 'Old King Cole' series of 1906 for the Knickerbocker Hotel (now the St. Regis-Sheraton Hotel) in New York. Parrish became celebrated for his colour prints designed for the mass market. Such pictures as 'The Garden of Allah' (1919) and 'Dawn' (1920) were hugely popular across America. In line with many of his advertisements, these pictures were aglow with sentimentality and produced with a fine eye for detail. By the 1930s, however, his style had gone out of fashion and he retired to paint landscapes. His works represent an escapist quality, presenting idylls into which one can flee everyday life. The romanticism and innocence of much of his work was never going to please the art critics, but at the time it was embraced by millions of American households, many of whom would not normally show any interest in art. In the Sixties, his paintings long regarded as kitsch experienced a minor revival with the Metropolitan Museum buying one painting 'Errant Pan' (1915). Pablo Picasso Born: 1881 Died: 1972 Gender: Male Nationality: Spanish "The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution, or as steps toward an unknown ideal of painting. When I have found something to express, I have done it without thinking of the past or future. I do not believe I have used radically different elements in the different manners I have used in painting. If the subjects I have wanted to express have suggested different ways of expression, I haven't hesitated to adopt them." Pablo Picasso. Although born in Malaga, southern Spain, Picasso studied principally in Barcelona where he lived from 1895 to 1904. He showed prodigious artistic ability as a youth with very early works reflecting Art Nouveau influences. His paintings of 1901-1904 are known as his Blue period. These paintings of poor and suffering people such as 'Old Guitarist' (1903), depicted in restricted colour and simplified forms, express intense melancholy and pathos. In 1904 his move to Paris resulted in a lighter mood and palette, with increasing emphasis on experimentation around primitive forms. The epoch-making 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' (1907) was a conscious attempt to complete his researches and is now seen as the moment that Picasso relinquished his obligation to natural appearances. Inspired by the Negro art he first saw in this year, along with Georges Braque, Picasso created Cubism. His early paintings in this style, now known as Analytical Cubism, clearly show recognisable forms dissected and reconstructed using overlapping translucent planes. Objects, landscapes and people are represented as many faceted solids. 'Woman with a Guitar' is a clear example of this. Having moved through 'Hermetic Cubism' which saw flatter, more abstract pieces, produced in mainly monochromatic greys and browns, colour reappeared in the final phase of Cubism known as 'Synthetic Cubism'. The impact of Cubism on the history of European painting and sculpture is immeasurable. Between 1917 and 1924 Picasso worked on designs for many of Diaghilev's ballets which took him to Italy and led to a Classical feel entering his work. From 1925 his static figurative compositions became grotesque and violently active. This 'fantasy' period lasted until around 1940, with works such as the famous 'Guernica' (1936) revealing the latent expressive force of Picasso's work that had laid dorment during the Cubist years. Like many of the Surrealists, Picasso was disturbed and personally involved with the current political unrest in Europe and associated himself with the Spanish Republican cause. Leaving Paris in 1946, he subsequently lived in Antibes, Vallauris and Vauvenargues. After Cubism, his major contribution to modern art is the freedom which characterises every aspect of his painting, sculpture, ceramics and graphic work. Picasso remained a prolific artist until his death and was arguably the most versatile and influential artist of this century. Horace Pippin Born: 1888 Died: 1946 Gender: Male Nationality: American Horace Pippin was born at West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised in Goshen, New York. He left school at 15 and took on a series of dead-end jobs before enlisting in the US Army in 1917. He sustained a serious injury to his arm while serving in France and it wasn't until 1930 when he was able to use his arm properly in order to paint. He drew largely from his combat experience as inspiration for his paintings and often worked with religious themes. His work was first exhibited in 1938 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show was entitled 'Masters of Popular Painting: Modern Primitives of Europe and America' and featured many examples of so-called naive art. Pippin's paintings stood out as being some of the most heart-felt in the exhibition, featuring highly dramatic combat scenes infused with the intense emotions he had experienced first hand. Camille Pissarro Born: 1830 Died: 1903 Gender: Male Nationality: French "In Lucien's finished, considered pictures, there is an abundant evidence of a slow, absorbed search to express the structure of a landscape and the forms which are part of it, a striving for an architectural quality." W.S. Meadmore from Lucien Pissarro. Lucien Pissarro was born in Paris, the eldest son of Camille Pissarro. In 1870 the family fled to London because of the Franco-Prussian war; when he returned to Louveciennes a year later he found his former residence torn apart. In 1878 Pissarro worked for some dealers in English fabrics in Paris, but this work did not suit him and he returned to his family and went to work for his father, preparing exhibitions. Pissarro spent a year in London in 1883, learning English and developing his painting. Then, back in France, Pissarro studied wood-engraving under Auguste Lepere and later concentrated on illustration. In 1886 Pissarro befriended Van Gogh who dedicated the painting 'Still-life with Apples' to him. This same year, Pissarro exhibited his work in the final Impressionist group show as well as the Societé des Indépendants in Paris. This was the first of many exhibitions with the Indépendants. Pissarro lived mainly in England over the next few years and established the Eragny Press in 1894. Lucien exhibited with the New English Art Club twice in 1905 and a year later joined their ranks and was to exhibit there almost every year for the rest of his life. In 1916 he became a British citizen. Three years later he formed the Monarro Group with J.B. Manson as Secretary in England and Theo van Rysselberghe in Paris. The aim of the group was to exhibit those artists who were inspired by the leading Impressionists, Monet and Pissarro, however, it lasted only three years. He continued to exhibit his work regularly with the final show, 'Three Generations of Pissarro' occurring at the Leicester Galleries in 1943 a year before his death. Although Lucien's career was overshadowed by his more celebrated father, his many landscapes stand as the vital link between Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. He experimented with pointillism at first, with paintings such as 'The Church of Eragny' (1887) but soon found his style with his landscapes, simple yet lyrical in their expression of beauty and perfection. He was fascinated with the structure of a landscape, bringing his skills as a printer to the representation of the English and French countryside. Jackson Pollock Born: 1912 Died: 1956 Gender: Male Nationality: American "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about [....] The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through." Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock was born on a sheep ranch in Cody, Wyoming and grew up in Arizona and California. In 1929 he studied painting at the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benson. In the Thirties Pollock started painting in the Regionalist style, influenced by Mexican muralist painters and various aspects of Surrealism, such as the use of mythical figures to represent the subconscious. Early works include 'Pasiphae' (1943) and 'Mural' (1943). By the mid-Forties Pollock's work was entirely abstract. Pollock's best known works are created by the 'drip and splash' style pioneered by Surrealists like Andre Masson and Max Ernst, and employed by artists such as Hans Hofmann in his paintings of the early Forties. However, Pollock's approach was quite different to the rest. He fixed his canvas to the floor or wall and, holding the brush or stick a foot or so away, threw lines of paint towards it, allowing chance to direct the evolution of a painting. He then manipulated the paint with an assortment of instruments, sometimes achieving textured effects using elements such as sand or broken glass. The critic Harold Rosenberg termed the phrase 'Action-painting' to describe this radical technique. Another term applied to Pollock is the 'All-Over' style as seen in his 'Number 1' ('Lavender Mist') (1950) for example. In this, the whole canvas is without any point of emphasis, as Pollock abandoned any traditional notion of composition. Indeed, the design of his paintings bore no relation to the dimensions of the canvas, for in the final work the canvas often had to be trimmed to suit the image. Although these paintings are Pollock's best known they only counted for four years of his work. Soon after, totemic images began to reappear. However, by 1954 his alcoholism and depression ended his career and he died in a car crash two years later. The intensity and scale of Pollock's finest abstract works led him to be regarded as one of the most important American artists of his day, and his paintings remain incredibly popular to this day. Edward Poynter Born: 1836 Died: 1919 Gender: Male Nationality: English NONE Edward Poynter was born the son of the architect Ambrose Poynter. He trained in Italy where he was heavily influenced by the work of Michelangelo. He specialised in historical scenes executed with great precision. Along with contemporaries such as Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema he was part of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. One of his most popular works was 'Libra and Her Sparrow'. Despite his great popularity he concentrated on his administrative work in the later part of his career being appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at University College, London in 1871 where he remained for four years. He also worked as Director of the National Gallery (1894-1904) and President of the Royal Academy (1896-1918). Raphael ( Raphael, Sanzio) Born: 1483 Died: 1520 Gender: Male Nationality: Italian "It is from his having taken so many models that he became himself a model for all succeeding painters: always imitating and always original." Sir Joshua Reynolds. Raphael was born in Urbino. His father was highly influential on his son's painting but after his death when Raphael was only 11, Pietro Perrugino probably became his biggest influence. Raphael worked in Tuscany and Umbria and was an independent artist by 1500. One of his first major commissions was the 'Coronation of St. Nicholas of Tolentino' (1500-1501) for S. Agostino, Città di Castello. From 1504 to 1508 Raphael worked mainly in Florence. His work became grander in scale, possibly due to the influence of Leonardo and Michelangelo. At this time he began to paint about religious themes such as 'Ansidei Madonna' (1505) and Madonna del Baldacchino' (1505). In 1508 Raphael's reputation was such that an invitation was extended to him from Pope Julius II to paint frescos in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was completed in 1511 and after its completion Raphael was commissioned to do two more apartments. By 1514, however, he was so in demand that an assistant was needed, Giulio Romano, to help with his work. A huge number of elaborate works were completed or guided by Raphael. His work in the Vatican is a triumph, in the painting 'The School of Athens' (1509), he depicts the philosophers Plato and Aristotle set in a dramatic architectural context, while in 'Disputà' (1510?) the doctors of the church appear while the saints and martyrs stand above the Trinity. These paintings are marked by their huge scale and also the gracefulness with which they were executed. In 'Galatea' (1511-1512) Raphael produced his most accomplished work for this wall fresco in the Villa Farnesina. As well as frescoes, many of his projects involved designing everything from the sculpture, the stucco work, the mosaic and the architecture. He also painted many portraits, including the 'Baldassare Castiglione' (c.1515) and the 'Sistine Madonna' (c.1512-1514). He showed a great mastery of subtle characterisation and was skilled in his use of rich colours. In 1514 Raphael became architect to St. Peter's and, besides Bramante, stands as one of the greatest High Renaissance artists. Upon his death, the Pope was said to have been greatly upset; he said he was considering making Raphael a cardinal. The body of work he left was impressive, though it is difficult to assess which were produced solely by him without the help of assistants. Yet until the late 19th Century he was regarded as the finest artist to have lived. His reputation lies in his ability to express the basic doctrines of the Christian Church through figures that have a physical beauty worthy of Greek and Roman classical antiquity. He became the authority on painting techniques only to be used as a figure of revolt by the Pre-Raphaelites. His classical paintings are seen as some of the finest ever created and his work proved inspirational to such artists as Carracci, Poussin and Ingres. Robert Rauschenberg Born: 1925 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American "My work is about wanting to change your mind. Not for the art's sake, not for the sake of that individual piece, but for the sake of the mutual co-existence of the entire environment." Robert Rauschenberg. Milton, later Robert, Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas, part German and part Cherokee Indian. He became interested in art after a chance visit to a gallery while serving in the US Navy as a mental hospital nurse in the final years of World War Two. Discharged in 1945, Rauschenberg studied art at a number of institutions including the Kansas City Art Institute, the Academie Julian in Paris, the Art Students League in New York and Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It was at Black Mountain where Rauschenberg found his greatest influences. The painter Josef Albers ran the art department and as one of his assignments sent students out to find objects that could be deemed aesthetically interesting. This project was to prompt Rauschenberg's later fascination with 'found' items incorporated into many of his works. It was also in North Carolina where he first met the composer John Cage and the dancer and choreographer, Merce Cunningham, both of whom influenced him greatly. Rauschenberg's first one-man show took place in 1951 at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York. At this time his work was minimalist in style, often using single colours in his paintings. In the mid-50s he developed a collage and montage technique called 'combine painting' using real objects such as photographs and 'found' objects which he affixed to the painting's surface. His studio was a junk heap, containing items as varied as cola bottles, clocks, radios and fragments of clothing which would eventually be integrated into his work. One of his most famous works, 'Monogram' (1955-1959) featured a stuffed goat with a rubber tyre surrounding his middle and splashed with paint in a style reminiscent of Action painting. By the end of the Fifties his reputation was assured. Rauschenberg's innovative technique included being the first artist to incorporate silk-screen printing on canvas. In 1966 fuelled by his desire to fuse art with technology, he helped form EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) a group enabling artists and engineers to work together. Moving away from Abstract Expressionism, he became involved in theatre production, choreography and Pop Art as he extended the means through which his ideas could be expressed. Rauschenberg worked in an enormous range of styles incorporating some startlingly innovative techniques. In his hectic imagery, conveying a sense of the chaos of Manhattan and describing the constant rush of stimuli from all directions, Robert Hughes has described Rauschenberg as 'the laureate of downtown New York'. In the materials he used and the vitality with which he imbued each painting, his oeuvre perfectly represents the overload of information in Post-War society. Man Ray (Emmanuel Radinski) Born: 1890 Died: 1977 Gender: Male Nationality: American "It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realise them." Man Ray. Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radinski in Philadelphia the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant tailor. He became known as Man Ray from the age of 15 as other youngsters teased him about his foreign sounding name. In 1897 his family moved to New York where he was to work as a designer while attending evening classes in art. Man Ray was inspired by the Armory Show in 1913, after which he began painting in a Cubist style. Two years later he met Marcel Duchamp and along with Picabia, the three artists were to become the main exponents of Dadaism in New York. In 1920 with Duchamp and Katherine Dreier he formed the Société Anonyme, an association for the promotion of contemporary art in America. In 1921 he moved to Paris where he became part of the Surrealist movement. While in Paris he gained a high reputation as a fashion and portrait photographer but returned to painting full-time in the Thirties. In 1940, fleeing the German occupation of Paris, Man Ray settled in Hollywood, where he was to spend the next decade returning to Paris in 1951. While his early endeavours included painting aerographs and making the first packaged objects (a field later made famous by Christo), Man Ray is best known for his photography. He developed the technique of 'solarization' and pioneered what became known as 'Rayographs', that is photographs produced by placing objects directly onto sensitized paper and exposing them to light without the use of a camera. Man Ray was also involved in filmmaking, producing a number of experimental and abstract films. Man Ray worked in a variety of media and achieved substantial success in each. His most famous object is generally regarded as 'The Gift' (1921), a flatiron with a row of nails sticking out of it and his most renowned painting is 'Observatory Time' (1934) depicting an enormous pair of floating lips. Odilon Redon Born: 1840 Died: 1916 Gender: Male Nationality: French "...The artist... will always be a special, isolated, solitary agent, with an innate sense of organising matter." Odilon Redon. Odilon Redon was born in Bordeaux and studied drawing early on under an artist named Stanislas Gorin. It was Gorin who introduced Redon to the principles of Romantic art, that is to make every line an expression of both sensibility and reason and reject all rules and formulae. Upon finishing school, Redon failed to be accepted for the architectural class of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and therefore remained in Bordeaux where he took up sculpture. Around 1861 Redon was introduced to the writings of Flaubert, Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe, three authors who would be greatly influential on Redon's drawings. In 1864, however, he was accepted to the Ecole des Beaux Arts to study painting. The art establishment represented values he couldn't tolerate and he backed away from the system consigning himself to obscurity. Redon found guidance instead from Rudolphe Bresdin who had also rejected the official art world. He introduced Redon to Rembrandt and Dürer and taught him how nature can be utterly transformed by the broadness of one's imagination. So Redon turned to graphic art, working mainly in black and white, giving expression to the mysterious and the fantastic. Works in charcoal such as 'Mephistopheles' (c.1877) and 'Head of a Martyr on a Platter' (1877) contain references to Romantic literature, caricature and children's books, but they are strikingly original and, serving no satirical purpose, are quite disturbing. After recovering from a religious crisis and major illness in the 1890s Redon's outlook became much more optimistic. The sombre tones were replaced by bright colours and scenes of idealistic beauty often taking mythological themes as his inspiration. Although remaining a very private person throughout his lifetime, his work was much admired by many including Henri Matisse. Later on the Surrealists regarded Redon as one of their greatest predecessors. Pierre-Auguste Renoir Born: 1841 Died: 1919 Gender: Male Nationality: French "Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world." Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir was born in Limoges to his father Léonard, a tailor and mother, Marguerite, an ex-seamstress. In 1845 he moved to Paris and in 1854 he found work as a painter in a porcelain factory where he remained for four years. During lunch hours he would rush to the Louvre to copy great works of art, particularly the Rococo masters who were to influence him immensely. In 1862 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Renoir entered the studio of Gleyre and there met Monet, Sisley and Bazille, who were to become the leading Impressionists. The character of Impressionism emerged from the paintings of Monet and Renoir between 1867 and 1870. Renoir struggled to achieve any degree of success until the late Seventies when the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel started buying his work regularly. He worked in the Impressionist style until a trip to Italy in 1881 led him to a crisper, more definite technique. In 'The Umbrellas' (1884) one can see the transition in the more striking couple on the left in contrast to the more hazy figures on the right. As the decade continued, Renoir's paintings evolved into a freer more sensitive style using rich colours and unexpected brushstrokes, for example, 'Young Girl Carrying a Basket of Fish' (1889). Then later his style developed even further, becoming simpler and grander and he began to incorporate mythological subjects such as in 'The Judgement of Paris' (c.1913-1914). Throughout his career he had a number of favourite themes including pretty children, flowers, picturesque landscapes and women. He was a student of beauty and devoted himself to conjuring up the most pleasing images. Renoir showed little interest in modernity, focusing his energy on the ideal and the perfect. He could capture the light of a scene beautifully, for example in one of his most famous paintings, 'Les Grandes Baigneuses' (1884-1887), the influence of southern light is shown by the pastel greens and blues of the landscape. While being attracted to the Impressionists for their grasp of lighting he found the movement limiting and wished to explore more deeply. In his final years despite being crippled with rheumatism, Renoir turned to sculpture using two assistants as his hands. His work is timeless and full of optimism and has inspired many artists since. Bridget Riley Born: 1931 Died: Gender: Female Nationality: English "For me Nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces - an event rather than an appearance - these forces can only be tackled by treating colour and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles." Bridget Riley. Bridget Riley was born in London and studied there at Goldsmith's College (1949-1952) and the Royal College of Art (1952-1955). She was influenced by her study of the Neo-Impressionist technique of Pointillism, but taking up 'Op Art' in the early Sixties she worked initially in black and white. In 1958 she was deeply impressed by the large Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. This was one of the reasons that led her to pursue her own art, finally leaving her job as illustrator at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1962. In 1966 Riley turned to colour with 'Chant' and 'Late Morning'. She was already receiving considerable recognition, secured in 1968 when she won the International Prize for painting at the 34th Venice Biennale. After a major retrospective in the early Seventies, Riley begins to travel extensively. Up until early 1980 she had been working on her 'curve' paintings, but these came to an end after a particularly inspiring sojourn in Egypt. Her extensive exploration of colour and contrast began after this. In 1983 she designed a mural made up of soothing bands of blue, pink, white and yellow for the Royal Liverpool Hospital. In the same year, she made her first set for the ballet 'Colour Moves' first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1983. Three years later she met the postmodern 'Simulationist' painters Philip Taaffe and Ross Bleckner, and inspired to introduce a diagonal element to her work, thus adding another dimension to her fascination with the juxtaposition of colours. Bridget Riley is one of the finest exponents of Op Art, with her subtle variations in size, shape and position of blocks within the overall pattern. Her work is characterised by its intensity and its often disorientating effect. Indeed the term 'Riley sensation' was coined to describe this effect of looking at the paintings, especially her early black and white pictures. Riley is fascinated with the act of looking and in her work aims to engage the viewer not only with the object of their gaze but also with the actual process of observation. Faith Ringgold Born: 1930 Died: Gender: Female Nationality: American "I emulate the nameless women who worked with paint and dyes, yarn and cloth and other soft materials." Faith Ringgold. Faith Ringgold was born in New York and studied at City College under Robert Gwathmey and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Her work in the Sixties was strongly political with paintings such as 'Die' (1967) depicting a huge riot. She used bold stencil-type images to express her concerns about the treatment of blacks. Ringgold was also keen to pursue feminist issues and most notably painted a mural depicting many successful women for the Rikes Island Women's Prison in the early 1970s. After 1973, however, she gave up painting and began to work with fabric. This was preferable in terms of portability and was also more in line with her desire to return to the artistic techniques used traditionally by women particularly in Africa. This led to her 'story-quilts' which she started producing towards the end of the Seventies in collaboration with her mother. Faith Ringgold has been a painter, sculptor, performance artist, fibre artist and lecturer. Her work has been exhibited widely and she has done a lot to bring attention to many important issues affecting late 20th century society. Diego Rivera Born: 1886 Died: 1957 Gender: Male Nationality: Mexican "He liked to be seen with women and he loved women very much. Only one thing pleased him more than being out to dinner or to a gala celebration with two beautiful women, that was free time to paint... Painting was his true love." Lola Olmedo, a close friend. Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato and his family moved to Mexico City when he was six. By the age of ten he had enrolled at the Academia de San Carlos and studied under a number of influential teachers including Félix Parra and José Maria Velasco. Disagreeing with the system of photographic realism introduced by the new director, Antonio Fabrés, he left the academy in 1902 and took up painting full-time. He had his first exhibition in 1907 and was awarded a grant to study in Madrid at the Academia de San Fernando. From 1908 to 1909 he travelled widely around Europe before returning to Mexico in 1910 and witnessed the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. In 1911 Rivera was back in Paris where he was influenced by the Pointillist and Cubist movements. He was to remain in Europe for ten years. By 1921 Alvaro Obregon had been elected President of Mexico and Rivera, with his strong personality, became the leading artist under his administration. Rivera undertook a number of murals that glorified the history and peoples of Mexico. Often huge in scale they decorate many public buildings in Mexico City. One of the most magnificent, although left unfinished at his death, was his mural for the National Palace in 1929, depicting the history of Mexico. Rivera spent four years in the United States from 1930, painting a number of frescoes, the most famous being a series on industry in Detroit. Returning to Mexico he continued to turn out a huge number of paintings, mainly landscapes and portraits. Rivera's murals were hugely inspirational to the Mexican people. He channelled enormous amounts of energy into his works, driven by his fierce nationalism and socialist identity. His skill lay in the riveting way he rendered graphic scenes, combining traditional and modern scenes using both stylised and realistic images. At the same time, his paintings showed great compassion for his countrymen and he often infused his work with a great deal of charm and sensuality. Rivera was also a skilled printmaker, sculptor and book illustrator. Auguste Rodin Born: 1840 Died: 1917 Gender: Male Nationality: French "One must have a consummate sense of technique, to hide what one knows." Auguste Rodin. Rodin was a Parisian born to a working class family. Despite their lack of resources, the children were raised and educated well. Early on, Rodin showed a talent for drawing and mathematics in the Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine. Excelling there he was encouraged to apply to the Ecole des Beaux Arts but was rejected three times. He supported himself working as an ornamental mason. Then aged 23 his sister died and, overwhelmed with grief, entered the monastery of the Eudistes in the Faubourg St. Jacques. After six months he returned home and soon after met Rose Beuret who was to remain his partner for life. In 1864 Rodin studied under Barye, the animal sculptor and worked in the studio of Carrier-Belleuse where he remained for six years. One of his first works was the now famous 'Man with the Broken Nose' (1864). Rodin was in the National Guard during the siege of Paris but was judged unfit for service and headed to Belgium with Carrier-Belleuse in 1871. After a dispute, however, Rodin left the French artist and joined the Belgian sculptor Van Rasburg. In 1875 Rodin studied the works of Donatello and Michelangelo in Italy and they were to be influential on much of his work. He was soon to achieve success and a great deal of controversy with 'Man Awakening to Nature' and the 'Age of Brass' (1876) shortly followed by 'St. John the Baptist Preaching' (1878). By 1880 after a tour around the cathedrals of France, Rodin embarked on his epic 'Gate of Hell' for the future Museum of Decorative Arts. As well as 'The Thinker' who commanded the scene, almost 200 other figures were incorporated into the work. Despite struggling over this work for more than 20 years it was never completed. Rodin created many sculptures over the course of his career and frequently courted much controversy, with a commissioned work portraying Balzac for example being rejected by the Société des Gens de Lettres in 1891 due to its depiction of genius in essence as opposed to a straight portrait of the man himself. Rodin devoted his entire life to his work. His influence on modern art has been immense, he reinvigorated sculpture at a time when it was becoming stagnant and unimaginative. His art regularly proved sensational but he was a very considered and dignified man rarely getting personally entangled in the often very public disputes his work provoked. Dante Gabriel Rossetti Born: 1828 Died: 1882 Gender: Male Nationality: English "For [Rossetti], the world of the imagination and the world of natural appearance were two distinct entities not to be confused. That a self-created world of the imagination can readily become too claustrophobic and too incestuous for comfort unless its creator is far-sighted and outward-looking, did not concern him." Brian & Judy Davis in Dante Gabriel Rossetti - an alien Victorian. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born to a distinguished family that excelled in literary endeavours. His father was an exiled Italian patriot and Dante scholar, his sister was a poet, his brother a critic. Rossetti was divided by poetry and art as his prime concern, in the end choosing painting as his profession but continuing to write poetry throughout his lifetime. In 1848 together with Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 'Girlhood of Mary Virgin' (1849) was the first work to bear the new movement's initials but despite receiving excellent reviews, the Brotherhood in general was harshly criticised leading Rossetti to rarely exhibit his work again. In 1860 Rossetti married Elisabeth Siddal who was to become the model for many of his drawings. Her pale complexion and melancholic demeanour entranced him and her face became the archetypal image of the Pre-Raphaelite style. When she died from an overdose of laudanum two years later, Rossetti was devastated. He painted 'Beata Beatrix' (1864) in her memory. Over the last two decades of Rossetti's life he returned to oil painting and soon found a new model in William Morris's wife Janey, to whom he would eventually fall in love. Together with Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, the decorative arts company Morris & Co was founded. But with Rossetti's feelings growing ever stronger for Janey the group soon parted ways. His final years were spent as a recluse, tending a range of unusual animals, and fighting a losing battle against drug and alcohol addiction. Despite Rossetti's reluctance to exhibit his work in public, his drawings and paintings were extremely influential. The appearance of his models particularly Janey Morris with her flowing locks, sensuous pout and beguiling eyes were to entrance the Symbolists. His medieval settings were instilled with a great sense of romanticism and this appealed to the decadent tastes of artists at the turn-of-the-century. His work is still widely displayed and his position as one of the leading Pre-Raphaelites is irrefutable. Mark Rothko (Rothkowitz) Born: 1903 Died: 1970 Gender: Male Nationality: Russian "I'm not an abstract artist, I'm not interested in the relationship of colour or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on." Mark Rothko. Mark Rothkowitz was born in Dvivsk, Russia. His early childhood was marked by terror campaigns against the Jews forcing his mother to emigrate with her children to the United States in 1913. Rothko turned out to be a gifted academic entering Yale University in 1921 and a man with strong radical tendencies, maintaining that he was an anarchist his whole life. Dropping out in the second year he headed to New York to study with Max Weber. His early paintings were oriented to social themes and contain expressionist as well as surrealist overtones. In 1935 Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb founded 'The Ten', a group of artists that favoured expressionist styles over the more abstract techniques of the Americans. The Ten sought to communicate human emotion and human drama through their paintings. From around 1947 Rothko began to develop his mature and distinctive style, often featuring large rectangles of colour in vertical juxtaposition. His contrasts were carefully chosen in order to convey a wide range of human emotions from foreboding and despair to hope and rapture. In 1961 Rothko was given a major retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After years of teaching art to subsidise his painting, this show finally brought him the success he so deserved. Some of his most impressive works were not to be seen until after his death, when his murals for the nondenominational chapel in Houston, Texas were finally unveiled. Becoming known as the Rothko Chapel these 14 final works were supremely sombre in tone but achieve an almost transcendental quality when viewed in the tranquility of the building itself. After a life of severe depression Rothko committed suicide by slashing his wrists in his studio. Mark Rothko's most fully realised paintings with their large expanses of colour and uneven, hazy divisions between them, strive to convey emotions rarely attempted in modern art. While his work is greatly admired by many, his detractors either view his attempts at expressing the sublime as over-ambitious or see his paintings merely as boring and wholly unimpressive. Henri Rousseau Born: 1844 Died: 1910 Gender: Male Nationality: French "It has been for M. Rousseau as for all innovators. He proceeds from himself alone, he has the merit, rare today, of being absolutely personal... what an obsession, what a nightmare! What a powerful impression of insurmountable sadness! One would have to be of bad faith to dare to pretend that the man capable of suggesting ideas like these is not an artist." Louis Roy in the Mercure de France (1895). Henri Rousseau was born in Laval (Mayenne), where his father owned a tin-ware shop. The business went into liquidation in 1852 and the family moved to Couptrain, while Rousseau remained with relations in Laval to finish his education. In 1863, working for a solicitor, Rousseau and two friends began unsuccessfully pilfering small sums of money from the company, leading to a month's imprisonment in 1864. The next five years were spent serving in the army with a discharge to support his mother after the death of her husband in 1869. After another brief tour of duty in the Franco-Prussian war, Rousseau, now married, found a job with the Paris Customs Office in 1871 and remained there for 22 years eventually giving rise to his nickname 'Le Douanier'. Painting in his spare time, Rousseau had the first of many exhibitions in 1886 at the Salon des Indépendents. In 1893 he decided to devote all his time to painting and became known as one of the greatest 'naïve artists', a term applied to painters with no formal expertise, working with bright colours, and with an innocent perspective. He painted many landscapes and portraits throughout his career, one of his most famous works being a literal combination of the two, 'Myself. Portrait-Landscape' (1890). But he is probably best known for his jungle scenes, the first being 'Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!)' (1891) and the last 'The Dream' (1910). He claimed these images were inspired by his time in the army serving in Mexico but it is more likely that zoos and illustrated books were his sources. Rousseau produced a vast range of paintings in his lifetime from the elegant 'Avenue in the Parc de Saint-Cloud' (c.1908) to the grotesque 'Boy on the Rocks' (c.1894-1895). His untrained eye gave him a freshness of vision and his vivid imagination gave rise to some fantastic scenes. His attention to detail was also very precise even when working on a large scale. What characterises Rousseau and perhaps all the 'naïve painters' or 'primitives' was the real urge for self-expression and the fulfilment that is evident in the paintings they produced. Another characteristic of this 'group' was poverty and so Rousseau died penniless, was buried in a pauper's grave and it was only later that his paintings began to achieve a reputation. Franz Ruzicka Born: Died: Gender: Male Nationality: German Franz Ruzicka developed his technique by visiting such places as California, Africa and South America. Working in the figurative and abstract modes, Ruzicka is concerned with the nature of the individual. To express this theme the artist often uses contrasting styles such as soft colours with powerful brushstrokes to create a sense of the great complexity of the human being. John Singer Sargent Born: 1856 Died: 1925 Gender: Male Nationality: American "An American, born in Italy, educated in France, who looks like a German, speaks like an Englishman, and paints like a Spaniard." William Starkweather from The Art of John S. Sargent. John Singer Sargent was born in Florence to wealthy parents and travelled widely from an early age. His painting was heavily influenced by the Old Masters, particularly Velázquez and Frans Hals. He mingled with many of the Impressionist painters but Singer's style, containing elements of both Impressionism and Naturalism was viewed with suspicion by many; only Monet saw value in his work and the two became close friends. Singer made his name with his portraits of influential society figures, remarkable for the elegance and luxury he captures with his superb brushwork. In 1907, however, he tired of the portraits profession preferring to concentrate on his landscape watercolours. In 1890 he began working on a series of oils on canvas for the Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. These allegorical works were followed by works with themes drawn from classical mythology. These Symbolist paintings were to be completed just before his death and sadly did little to enhance his reputation. The painting 'Gassed' (1918), on the other hand, provoked by the First World War and which he painted as an Official War Artist is extraordinarily powerful and is still highly regarded. Egon Schiele Born: 1890 Died: 1918 Gender: Male Nationality: Austrian "Art cannot be modern, art is eternal." Egon Schiele. Egon Schiele was born in Tulln, Austria. He started sketching at an early age and by 1906 was already developing a distinctive style, as can be seen in 'Madonna and Child' (1906). Influenced to a large degree by the Symbolist movement, Schiele studied at the Vienna Academy from 1906 to 1909 and in 1907 met Gustav Klimt, one of the leading members of Symbolism. Klimt and Schiele were to remain close friends until their deaths. By 1909 Schiele started to paint portraits. In his use of non-naturalistic colour and unusual angles, these portraits already highlight Schiele's unique vision, for example, 'Standing Female Nude with Crossed Arms' (1910). As well as Klimt, the influences of Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh can be seen in this early work. His career is best known for his remarkable nudes, but he also painted landscapes and allegorical works. In 1912 Schiele was briefly imprisoned charged with indecency due to the explicit nature of his paintings. With the outbreak of the First World War, he was enlisted to serve in the Austrian Army and could not continue his painting whilst in military service. Schiele died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Schiele's paintings, whether portraits, self-portraits or nudes convey a sense of both the physical and the emotional. His numerous self-portraits, frequently adopting awkward sexual postures, seem to suggest a profound unease with the body and distress at its limitations. His use of striking colours and linear technique help create this feeling of anxiety. In his most powerful portrayals of the male and female form the figures express in their postures, and in his use of pencil, gouache or watercolour, emotions from despair through to passion. Schiele received a certain amount of success in his lifetime, but his work was not truly appreciated outside of Austria until the Sixties when it was agreed that he was one of the most important exponents of Expressionism. Oskar Schlemmer Born: 1888 Died: 1943 Gender: Male Nationality: German "My themes - the human figure in space, its moving and stationary functions, sitting, lying, walking, standing - are as simple as they are universally valid. Besides they are inexhaustible." Oskar Schlemmer. Oskar Schlemmer was born in Swabia and, after a period studying painting, enrolled at the Stuttgart Academy in 1912. Under Adolf Hölzel, Schlemmer learnt to abandon the style promoted by the Impressionists and instead turned to the Cubists for inspiration. He was fascinated with their ideas of form and composition and the tensions between them. In his painting, sculpture and metalwork, Schlemmer would try to explore new approaches to structure and perspective. In 1920 Schlemmer went to work as a teacher at the Bauhaus where he remained for nine years. His complex ideas were influential, making him one of the most important teachers working at the school at that time. However, with the rise of the Nazis at the end of the Twenties, Schlemmer's work was seen as degenerate and he was dismissed from his post. After using Cubism as a springboard for his structural studies, Schlemmer's work became intrigued with the possibilities of figures and their relationship to the space around them, for example 'Egocentric Space Lines' (1924). Schlemmer's characteristic forms can be seen in his sculptures as well as his paintings. Yet he also turned his attention to stage design, first getting involved with this in 1929, executing settings for the opera 'Nightingale' and the ballet 'Renard' by Igor Stravinsky. Schlemmer's ideas on art were complex and challenging even for the progressive Bauhaus movement. His work, nevertheless, was widely exhibited in both Germany and outside the country. His work was a rejection of pure abstraction, instead retaining a sense of the human, though not in the emotional sense but in view of the physical structure of the human. He represented bodies as architectural forms, reducing the figure to a rhythmic play between convex, concave and flat surfaces, and he was fascinated in every movement the body could make, trying to capture it in his work. As well as leaving a large body of work, Schlemmer has also had his theories on art published and a comprehensive book of his letters and diary entries from 1910 to 1943 is also available. Jurgen Schmitz Born: 1960 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: German Jürgen Schmitz was born in Möchengladbach and is a self-taught artist. He was inspired by his time spent in the Mediterranean with the distinctive light of the south frequently being reflected in his work. The colour blue is often represented in his paintings, a colour that for Schmitz encapsulates the unique ambience of the Mediterranean with its association with the sky, the ocean and a general sense of freedom. Schmitz is extraordinarily dedicated to his work. He proofs every silkscreen and once satisfied that it conforms to his high standards he signs every single one. Sean Scully Born: 1945 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: Irish / American "To become an artist was the most adventurous, in a sense the most dangerous, the most insecure, and, potentially, the most profound thing I could do" Sean Scully. Sean Scully was born in Dublin, but grew up in London, where his family moved when he was still a child. From an early age Scully wanted to do something in his life that was not ordinary and decided that this could be achieved by becoming an artist. An American citizen since 1983, Scully lives and works in New York, London, and Barcelona. Scully's work is heavily influenced by the American and European traditions, embodied in the figures of Mondrian and Matisse in Europe, and Pollock and Rothko in America. How to combine these different influences has remained the basic question of Scully's work, to which he gave slightly different answers throughout the decades. During the 70's, when he moved to New York and set up a studio, his work is dominated by a minimalism that is reflected in the rigid geometric precision of his art. In the 80's we can see his work move towards much more freedom in their composition. This art is characterised by marks of thick brushstrokes and textured surfaces, yet still retaining the stripe, a constant presence in Scully's art. More recently Scully has been drawn towards the "visually, edgy" potential of severe abstraction and the emotional power of certain works, like Frank Stella's black paintings and Agnes Martin's grids. He has also explored the possibilities of photography and this medium became an important source of inspiration in his later work. We can see the mutual influence between his photographic series "wall of light" and his paintings, in which fading walls and cracked surfaces show a decadent beauty and the contradiction of nature and life. Scully is a leading representative of a new generation of abstract painters and his work is already strongly acclaimed, and has been exhibited in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2000), the Albright-Knox Gallery (1998-1999), Galleria de Arte Moderna, Bologna and Gallerie de Jeu de Paumme, Pais (1996). Tony Smith Born: 1912 Died: 1980 Gender: Male Nationality: American Tony Smith was born at South Orange, New Jersey and studied at one of the most important art schools in America, the Art Students' League in New York where he stayed for three years from 1933 to 1936. He then moved on to the New Bauhaus based in Chicago from 1937 to 1938, after which he took up an architecture apprenticeship as a clerk of works for Frank Lloyd Wright. For the next 20 years Smith worked in architecture, painting as well as sculpture, the latter of which established his reputation when he first exhibited in 1964. His sculptures were frequently produced on a large scale and were often characterised by his interest in repetitive geometrical shapes rendered in steel. In 1966 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, followed shortly after by a show at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He was friends with Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, and shared their interest with the way art can refer to both nature and the organic. His work is concerned with the way art functions in a public context, for example, one of his most famous works, 'Grasshopper', is located in the exterior, thus realising one of his aims to use sculpture as a way to add new dimensions to the environment. Philip Taaffe Born: 1955 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American Philip Taaffe specialises in appropriating the work of others and using it as the subject of his own work. In 'Defiance' (1986) for example, he takes a piece by Bridget Riley and reinterprets it in such a way that he makes a comment on the impersonality of the Op Art movement. Other works include 'Homo Fortissimus Excelsius' (1986), his take on Newman's 'Vir Heroicus Sublimus' (1951) and also 'Green Blue' (1987), a silk screen collage referencing the work of Ellsworth Kelly. Antoni Tapies Born: 1923 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: Spanish "Art is life and life is transformation." Antoni Tàpies. Antoni Tàpies was born in Barcelona and showed artistic talent from an early age. During the Spanish Civil War, Tàpies remained in Barcelona, witnessing terrible horrors and remaining deeply disturbed for the rest of his life by the suffering he witnessed. In 1942, having recovered from a serious illness following a heart attack, he started making copies in oils of works by van Gogh and Picasso. A year later Tàpies enrolled on a law course at the University of Barcelona but in 1946 dropped out to take up painting full-time. His early work employed a variety of materials such as earth, newspaper and rope. In 1947 he also produced engravings and in 1948, together with a group of young writers and painters, the review, Dau al Set was established. In this year Tàpies had his first one-man exhibition and the reaction was one of anger and controversy. With the help of a scholarship from the French government, Tàpies moved to Paris in 1950. He remained for a year after which time he based himself in Barcelona. By 1952 his style had taken on a more geometrical appearance and was more concerned with studies of pure colour, for example 'Scraping on Red' (1952) and 'Grey Ochre' (1953). His influences included the artists Miró, Klee, Ernst as well as oriental art and existentialist philosophy. In 1955 he gave a lecture at the Santander Summer University discussing his approach to art, making a case for the importance of spontaneity in art and the need to improvise away from tradition. 1959 saw Tàpies increase his work rate considerably. He continued to use basic materials such as cardboard, paper, threads, cloth and ash. Tàpies' art was devoted to making the insignificant significant. In 1969 he published a number of polemical articles defending freedom in art and in his essay, Nothing Is Mean, published in 1979, he went on to defend his reasons for incorporating everyday items into his work. He has worked in a variety of media including sculpture and lithography. His strong ideas have been enormously influential and his art has been highly acclaimed, winning a number of top prizes in international competitions. Wayne Thiebaud Born: 1920 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American Wayne Thiebaud was born at Mesa in Arizona. He spent over ten years working in New York and Hollywood as a cartoonist and advertisement designer, a period interrupted by four years serving with the US Army Air Force from 1942 to 1946. He graduated from Sacramento State College in 1951 and began teaching in the Art Department of Sacramento City College where he remained for eight years, after which he joined the University of California at Davis as professor of art. He is best known for his paintings of production line objects found in diners and cafeterias such as pies and pastries. He was associated with the Pop Art painters in his interest with objects of mass culture but his technique differed in that he used very thick paint. He later went on to paint popular characters such as Mickey Mouse and recent paintings such as 'Sunset Streets' (1985) and 'Flatland River' (1997) are notable for their hyper realism, in some ways similar to Edward Hopper in his fascination with the mundane scenes from everyday American life. Louis Comfort Tiffany Born: 1848 Died: 1933 Gender: Male Nationality: American Louis Comfort Tiffany was born in New York, the son of a wealthy jeweller, Charles L. Tiffany. He began studying painting first with George Inness in the United States and later in Paris. In the 1870s he became interested in the decorative arts which led him to set up his own interior design business in 1879. Six years later he set up the Tiffany Glass Company in 1885 specialising in experimental glass making in which he made a virtue out of the natural flaws associated with glass making such as the bubbles which formed in the glass when blown at very high temperatures. The firm intended to produce works of art such as lamps and vases which were affordable to the general public, yet the majority of the work, including stained - glass windows and mosaics, was created for upper class New Yorkers. One of his most impressive commissions was the loggia of the main entrance to the Laurelton Hall now exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. His store became world famous and Tiffany & Co is still present on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The opalescent glass, known as Tiffany fevrile glass remains highly sought after. Tiffany was also a patron of the arts and established a foundation to provide grants for students to study and travel. Walasse Ting Born: 1929 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: Chinese Walasse Ting was born just outside of Shanghai. He moved to Pairs in 1950and remained for 11 years. His paintings can be characterised by their vivid colours particularly his use of strong shades of red. His favourite subjects include deeply sensuous women, animals such as cats, birds and fishes and a broad range of flora and fauna. He has been based in New York since 1961 making frequent trips to Europe, South America and the Far East. Joseph Mallord William Turner Born: 1775 Died: 1851 Gender: Male Nationality: English "He seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy..." John Constable. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in Maiden Lane, off Covent Garden in London. Turner showed talent early on and by the age of 13 his father, realising his son was a potentially lucrative asset, apprenticed him to Thomas Malton, a watercolourist. After a year Turner enrolled at the Royal Academy to study painting. By 1793 with the help of his father, Turner had his own studio. His early work consisted of precise drawings of landscapes, churches and country houses, while his main income came from work as a copyist. In 1794 one Dr Monro alongside Thomas Girtin, commissioned Turner to produce a series of watercolours taken from J.R. Cozen's travel sketches. In the resulting pictures, Turner shifted from the exact reproductions of a scene to more intuitive depictions. Three years later his first oil painting, 'Bridgewater Sea Piece' (1797) was exhibited at the Royal Academy, and in the same year he completed his acclaimed 'Norham Castle'. However, he soon turned to more grandiose themes in paintings such as 'Shipwreck' (1805) showing a more Romantic vein to his work. In its more dramatic subject matter and classical execution it owed a lot to the work of Poussin and Claude Lorrain. In 1802 Turner travelled to the Continent and was inspired by the Alpine landscape; later on in 1817 he was impressed by Belgium and Holland and two years on visited Italy for the first time. Venetian scenes formed the subject matter of many hundreds of Turner’s works. In the 1830s Turner's work became freer with intricate detail being replaced by a more dramatic use of colours and lighting for example in 'Snowstorm: Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth' (1842).Turner's work became increasingly abstract as he explored the power, beauty and mystery of nature. During this period his works were concerned with the painting of light, to which the ostensible subject matter was almost secondary. Turner achieved great success during his lifetime, including becoming the youngest ever Associate of the Royal Academy at the age of 24, three years later being made a full Academician, and also winning considerable praise from the likes of John Constable and the writer John Ruskin. He produced close to 20,000 works during his career many of which today are regarded as masterpieces. Vincent van Gogh Born: 1853 Died: 1890 Gender: Male Nationality: Dutch "I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things, which I happen to repent more or less afterwards... But the problem is to try every means to put those selfsame passions to good use... In the surroundings of pictures and works of art, you know how I had a violent passion for them, reaching the highest pitch of enthusiasm." Vincent van Gogh. Vincent van Gogh was the eldest of six children born to a Dutch pastor. As a child he was very quiet and would rather be alone than play with his brothers and sisters. At 16, van Gogh's father arranged for him to work for his uncle at a firm of art dealers in the Hague. He approached the job with enthusiasm and in time was transferred to London. Although from a well-educated family, van Gogh preferred the company of peasants to that of the well-to-do of London, and he attempted several unsuccessful careers as both schoolmaster and missionary in England and Belgium. In 1880 he became a full-time artist. His first pieces were sombre in tone and depicted his much loved peasants working on the land. In 1886 he left Holland for Paris where his younger brother Theo was working as an art dealer. The experience was undoubtedly influential as the works of Bernard, Degas, Gauguin and Seurat soon changed van Gogh's palette. However, the relationship between Theo and his brother became strained and Vincent moved out. Van Gogh conceived the idea of founding a 'Studio of the South' at Arles as a working community for progressive artists. Early in 1888 he moved to Arles but the only other artist he eventually persuaded to join him was Gauguin - a man whom he greatly admired. It was after a quarrel with Gauguin that van Gogh was reputed to have cut off part of his ear. As with much of van Gogh's life, his insane behaviour and his final chronicled 'suicide' can all be accounted for by presently understood health conditions. It is true though that Vincent saw very little success with his work during his lifetime. This never deterred his belief that one day people all over the world would enjoy his work. Van Gogh's early work, during his Dutch period was heavy and rich but subdued in colour, for example 'The Potato Eaters' (1885). After his contact with other painters in Paris, with Japanese prints and the work of such original colourists as Delacroix and Monticelli, van Gogh's style changed radically culminating in the brilliant, expressive colour and frenzied, thick brushmarks of his Arles period. The final two and a half years of his life in Arles saw Vincent at his most prolific capturing his exuberance and passion for the surrounding countryside. Among hundreds of paintings from this era are the famous 'Starry Night' (1889), 'Sunflowers' (1888), 'Cafe at Night'(1888) and 'Cornfield and Cypress Trees' (1889). His watercolours, such as 'Fishing boats at Santeo Maries' and drawings are of equal intensity, while the letters he wrote to his brother Theo are important literary and human documents in their own right. Francine van Hove Born: Died: Gender: Female Nationality: Unknown "My main theme is, without a doubt, that intimacy and peace which women know when they are alone, when they enjoy such simple pleasures as reading during breakfast, or losing themselves staring into the eyes of a cat, or just sleeping." Francine Van Hove. Based in Paris, Van Hove uses models to create intimate portraits of women. Her subjects are frequently depicted in meditative states such as 'Stretched Arm' and 'The Odalisk'. Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn Born: 1606 Died: 1669 Gender: Male Nationality: Dutch "Rembrandt's world and his humanity are all his own. No other master poses so clearly the problem of the relationship between Man and the world, between the creative artist and his period, between style and subject - I mean the exact relationship between a definition that is right for a particular group and that which will serve for an individual." Henri Focillon. Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn was born in Leiden, the son of a successful miller. After seven years at Latin school, Rembrandt entered Leiden University in 1620 but dropped out almost immediately. Over the next four years he was apprenticed to a number of painters, of whom Pieter Lastman was probably the most influential. Rembrandt learnt the dramatic use of lighting from Lastman and picked up his interest in religious themes. By 1625 Rembrandt set himself up as an independent painter in Leiden. Three years later he found his first pupil in Gerard Dou who remained with him until the early Thirties. Rembrandt concentrated mainly on figurative subjects during these early years, including the first of a number of self-portraits. In 1631 he settled in Amsterdam and received his first commissioned portrait depicting Nicolaes Ruts, a wealthy Amsterdam merchant. Amongst the 50 or so paintings he produced over the next two years, the 'Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp' (1632) probably stands out as one of his most impressive. Prince Frederick Henry of Orange commissioned Rembrandt to produce five paintings depicting scenes from the Passion and the resulting works including the 'Blinding of Samson' (1636) were highly commended. By the Forties, after painting one of his most dramatic and celebrated works, 'The Night Watch' (1642), tragedy struck, for his beloved wife of eight years, Saskia, died in 1642. His style became less exuberant and far more introspective afterwards. He produced very few portraits, instead concentrating on religious scenes and landscapes. He eventually met a woman, 20 years his junior, Hendrickje Stoffels, who took Saskia's place as a model for many of his portrayals. Financial difficulties hit Rembrandt hard, however, in 1656. He was forced to request the liquidation of his property to avoid being declared bankrupt. By 1660 Rembrandt and his family were forced to move to a much smaller house in Rosengracht. In the last decade of his life, painting as an employee of his son Titus's and Hendrickje's art firm (set up to protect him from creditors), Rembrandt was highly prolific and produced some of his most masterful works, among them, 'The Sampling Officers of the Cloth-Makers' Guild' or 'The Syndics' (1662) and 'The Conspiracy of Julius Civilis: The Oath' (1661-1662). Up until his death he continued to paint self-portraits and through these one can see a dignified man who had been faced with considerable hardship in his life but remained strong-willed. Rembrandt is generally seen as one of the finest Dutch painters. As well as being a master of technique, particularly in his use of light and shade, he was admired for the emotional depth he conveyed in his work. Although he concentrated on his religious works and portraits, he was also a skilled artist working in still-life, etching and draughtsmanship. His reputation was considerable in his lifetime but it has grown enormously since his death. His works now sell for huge sums and are exhibited widely. Richard Walker Born: 1954 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: English "In my work, I try to communicate not only the positive energies and excitement of city life, but also, the underlying dangers and feeling of unease that are also present." Richard Walker. Richard Walker is a successful British artist who has achieved considerable success from the mid-Seventies onwards. Working with acrylics, pastels and spray paint, he specialises in cityscapes, having a particular interest for the neon lights and electrified night skies of urban America. He has received numerous commissions and his work is held in a number of galleries. Since 1976 he has split his time between painting and teaching printmaking, drawing and design. Andy Warhol Born: 1928 Died: 1987 Gender: Male Nationality: American "...Famous for fifteen minutes..." Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents. He studied painting and design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh before settling in New York in 1950. He achieved enormous success as a commercial artist, specialising in shoe advertisements, winning the prestigious Art Directors' Club Medal twice in1952 and 1957. In 1960 Warhol began to replicate a range of mass-produced images, beginning with newspaper advertisements and comic strips before turning to packaging, dollar bills and more. He is probably the most famous member of the Pop Art movement. Virtually any image that was in the public domain was a prime target for the Warhol treatment. In 1962 he had his first one-man show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and in the same year exhibited at the Stable Gallery in New York. This was the year of '32 Campbell's Soup Cans' (1961-1962). Soon after his sculptures of Brillo soap pad boxes, Coca-Cola bottles and replications of popular icons such as Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and most famously Marilyn Monroe were to appear and secure his reputation. The silk-screen process he favoured allowed for infinite replication, and he was opposed to the concept of a work of art as a piece of craftsmanship executed purely for the connoisseur; in Warhol's own words, "I want everybody to think alike. I think everybody should be a machine." Thus Warhol's work was intent on dehumanising his subjects whether they be images purloined from mass-culture or depictions of atrocities such as car crashes. He turned out his works/products like a manufacturer, going as far as naming his studio 'The Factory'. As well as paintings, he published the long-running celebrity magazine 'Interview', managed the rock group 'The Velvet Underground' and achieved great notoriety as an underground filmmaker with lengthy films such as 'Sleep' (1963) and 'Empire' (1964). In their silent and almost completely static images Warhol raised monotony to new heights, as he said at the time, "I like boring things". Andy Warhol has become one of the icons of the 20th Century, putting as much effort into publicising himself as promoting his work. He was finely tuned to the tedium of modern mass-culture, conveying and indeed revelling in the banality of the images proliferating around him. His stance was on the one hand distant and voyeuristic and on the other totally immersed in the culture of spectacle. He was able to both comment upon and completely embrace the materialism of the Sixties. Bernard Levin sums up the essence of Andy Warhol perfectly, "[He was a} one-man demonstration of the triumph of publicity over art." John William Waterhouse Born: 1849 Died: 1917 Gender: Male Nationality: English "Waterhouse's career was a progression from classical restriction to a free application of plein-air techniques to subjects drawn from mythology. "Jeremy Maas, Victorian Painters. John William Waterhouse was born to English parents in Rome, Italy but returned to England to attend the Royal Academy Schools. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was one of his earliest influences and he painted Graeco Roman subjects along the lines of Edwin Long, a painter of portraits, historical and biblical genre. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a major inspiration on Waterhouse and he adapted many of their classical and literary themes for his own compositions. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 and went on to exhibit there many times throughout his career. Some of his most distinctive paintings depicting romantic and poetic subjects include 'The Lady of Shallot' (1888) and 'St. Cecilia' (1895) for example. As well as these Pre-Raphaelite works he also produced a number of large scale historical and biblical paintings. Waterhouse enjoyed considerable success with frequent exhibitions and support from many distinguished patrons. He worked prodigiously right up until his death, leaving his final work 'The Enclosed Garden' unfinished. Frank Lloyd Wright Born: 1867 Died: 1959 Gender: Male Nationality: American Born in Wisconsin to Unitarian parents of Welsh heritage, Wright was to become the most admired American architect of the20th Century. The landscapes of his youth were to inspire much of his work with the layers of eroded rock bluffs on the Wisconsin coast visible in his 'Prairie Style' for example. His fascination with architecture developed early on. After an apprenticeship to a minor architect named Silsbee, he found a draftsman post with Adler & Sullivan in Chicago at the age of 18. The chief partner, Louis Sullivan was to become his mentor, fostering in Wright a fine eye and a resistance to technological progress as opposed to traditional handicraft. He remained with Adler & Sullivan for six years after which he went into business on his own and began work on his 'Prairie Houses'. The Robie House (1909) in Chicago was a notable early success, a design he modestly described as 'the cornerstone of modern architecture'. Between 1893 and 1901, 49 of Wright's building designs were built. Wright was an enormously important designer and theorist whose views had considerable influence on the Arts and Crafts Movement. He believed architecture to be intimately connected to the land on which it was built, an idea he described as 'Organic Architecture'. This is best illustrated by his masterpiece 'Fallingwater' (1936-1939), a building that was built into a natural rock outcrop above a pristine waterfall giving the impression that it evolved from the cliffs and trees rather than having been constructed by man. The influence of Japanese design is clearly shown here with its lack of rigidity and profound understanding of the internal (culture) and the external (nature). From the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Wright's designs were monumental. He has become the godfather of modern architecture with a multitude of deeply impressive buildings allover the world. Andrew Wyeth Born: 1917 Died: Gender: Male Nationality: American "...I happen to paint things that reflect the basic truths of life: sky, earth, friends, the intimate things." Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth was taught by his father Newell Convers Wyeth, a successful illustrator of children's books. Yet it was the people and places he knew best that provided his main motivation, namely the Brandywine Valley around his native Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Port Clyde region off the Maine coast. He had his first one-man exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York in 1937 aged 20. Specialising in watercolour or tempera his paintings were a huge success. He is best known for 'Christina's World' (1948), a painting that rivals Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' (1930) as one of the most popular American paintings of the 20th century. It depicts one Christina Olson, a friend of the artist, who was crippled with polio, gazing at a farmhouse in the distance. It is charged with a sense of loneliness and portentousness that became typical of Wyeth's work. He went on to win numerous awards and in 1976 became the first native born living American to receive a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Despite his enormous success, Wyeth's paintings tend to polarise critics' opinions. Of 'Christina's World', Sir David Piper wrote, "It seems to express both the tragedy and the joy of life with such vivid poignancy that the painting becomes a universal symbol of the human condition." At the other extreme lies Professor Sam Hunter, one of the leading authorities on 20th century American Art who has described Wyeth's oeuvre thus; "What most appeals to the public, one must conclude, apart from Wyeth's conspicuous virtuosity, is the artist's banality of imagination and lack of pictorial ambition. He comfortably fits the common-sense ethos and non-heroic mood of today's popular culture, despite his occasional lapses into gloomy introspection." His haunting paintings of reclusive New Englanders, run through with a deep sense of nostalgia (his works rarely feature such modern attributes as motor cars) have had an enormous impact on the American consciousness.