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Alberto Giacometti: 1901 – 1966

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Alberto Giacometti - Life MagazineBorn on October 10, 1901 in Borgonovo, Switzerland, Alberto Giacometti was a sculptor, painter, draughtsman and printmaker.   His father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a Post-Impressionist painter. From 1919 to 1920, Giacometti studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and sculpture and drawing at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers in Geneva. Between 1922 and 1927, he studied sculpture off and on in Paris under Emile-Antoine Bourdelle at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1927, Giacometti and his brother Diego, his lifelong companion and assistant, moved into a studio in Montparnasse, returning annually to Switzerland to visit family.

Giacometti made few noteworthy sculptures before 1925 when he turned to Cubism and was influenced by the works of Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens. He was also influenced by African art which resulted in his first important sculptures, Man and Woman and Spoon Woman. “These totemic sculptures consist of radically simplified forms; their rigid frontality and use of male and female nudes as sexual types or symbols were to have long-lasting implications for Giacometti’s later work.”

Giacometti’s first period of significant creativity began in 1927 and over the next seven years, he created sculptures in a wide variety of styles. During this year, he exhibited his sculptures for the first time at the Salon des Tuileries in Paris and in Switzerland at the Galerie Aktuaryus in Zurich. In 1928, Giacometti met André Masson and from 1930 to 1935, he was a participant in the Surrealist circle. His first solo show took place in 1932 at the Galerie Pierre Colle, Paris and in 1934, he had a solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.

“Giacometti emerged as the Surrealists’ most innovative sculptor, extending the parameters of sculpture both conceptually and stylistically. In addition to modelling in plaster, he made constructed sculptures with varied and fragile materials, for example suspending elements such as plaster or glass in delicate structures of extremely thin wood and string. In nearly all his Surrealist sculptures, empty space plays an active role, both compositionally and psychologically.”

From 1930 to 1936 Giacometti participated in many exhibitions around the world, including Galerie Pierre, Paris, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New Burlington Galleries, London, and others in Brussels, Zurich and Copenhagen. However, in 1935 he rejected Surrealism to return to representational art based on study from life.

In the early 1940s, Giacometti became friends with Simone de Beauvoir, Pablo Picasso, and Jean-Paul Sartre. From 1942, Giacometti lived in Geneva, and associated with the publisher Albert Skira. In late 1945, he returned to Paris where he began his second period of intense creativity. His best-known post-war sculptures portray single or grouped figures, all startlingly skeletal in proportions and often mounted on large or heavy bases.

“Giacometti’s figures, with their seeming emaciation, anonymity and isolation in space, immediately struck a responsive chord in critics and collectors. His sculptures were perceived as appropriate metaphors for the human condition of post-war Europe: the horror of the concentration camps, displaced persons, destroyed lives. On a more philosophical level, critics also viewed Giacometti’s art as Existentialist, an interpretation introduced by Sartre in his two essays on Giacometti’s art.”

During this period,  Giacometti drew constantly and painted regularly. “His drawing style consisted of rapidly executed, often continuous lines that swirl around, over, and through his subject, never quite defining it yet conveying a sense of its mass and mystery. The earliest post-war drawings have heavy reworkings, often obscuring facial features in an expressionist vortex of lines. Around 1954, he expanded his drawing scope. His pencil drawings of portraits, nudes, still-lifes and interiors from the mid-1950s display a fusion of power and delicacy, as lines interweave in geometrically structured traceries overlaid with darker smudgings and greyed shadows in a ceaselessly moving realm where nothing appears solid or stable.”

Giacometti’s post-war work brought him international acclaim. Between 1948 and 1958, he exhibited several times at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York and at Galerie Maeght in Paris. Museums acquired his work, and the Kunsthalle in Berne held a one-man show in 1954. In 1955, he had separate retrospectives at the Arts Council Gallery in London and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Public fame took up a great amount of Giacometti’s time in the last years of his life. Collectors, dealers, young artists, curators and the media flocked to his studio. He received the Sculpture Prize at the 1961 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh and the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the 1962 Venice Biennale. In 1965, exhibitions were held at the Tate Gallery, London, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. That same year, he was awarded the Grand Prix National des Arts by the French government.

On January 11, 1966, Alberto Giacometti died of complications from pericarditis (heart disease)  in Chur, Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace of Borgonovo, Swizterland where he was interred close to his parents.

Sources: Guggenheim, MoMA

Faith Ringgold: Painting, Fiber Art, Sculpture

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Faith Ringold - photo © Katherine McMahon 2015

photo © Katherine McMahon 2015

Born on October 8, 1930, in Harlem, New York, Faith Ringgold is considered to be one of the most important living African American artists. Working in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, and performance, Ringgold is best known for her “story quilts” that combine narrative paintings with quilted borders and text.

Ringgold’s mother, a fashion designer and seamstress, nurtured her daughter’s creative abilities from a young age. Ringgold attended City College of New York where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and Education in 1955. She taught art in New York’s public schools from 1955 to 1973 and earned her Master’s degree in art in 1959. During this time, Ringgold also married and divorced jazz pianist Robert Earl Wallace with whom she had two daughters. In 1962, she was remarried to Burdette Ringgold.

Ringgold’s oil paintings and posters of the mid-to-late 1960s carried strong political messages and were supportive of the civil-rights movement. In 1970, she participated in a demonstration against the exclusion of black and women artists by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. This resulted in the inclusion of Betye Saar and Barbara Chase-Riboud in the Whitney Sculpture Biennial, making them the first black women ever to exhibit at the Museum.

In the early 1970s, Ringgold abandoned traditional painting and began making unstretched acrylic paintings on canvas with soft cloth frames after viewing an exhibition of Tibetan art at the Rijk Museum in Amsterdam. During this time, Ringgold also began lecture tours and traveling exhibitions to colleges and universities around the United States. In 1973, she retired from teaching altogether to continue touring and create art full time.

In 1983, Ringgold began to combine images and handwritten text in her painted “story quilts,” which conveyed imaginative narratives. In 1984, a 20-year retrospective of her work was held at The Studio Museum in Harlem. That same year, Ringgold also became a professor at the University of California, San Diego, a position that she still holds today.

Over the course of her career, Ringgold has published 12 children’s books including the award winning “Tar Beach” which is based on her story quilt.  As well, a book of her memoirs was published in 1995.  She has exhibited in major museums in the U.S., Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ringgold is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art.

Retrospectives of Ringgold’s work have been held by Rutgers University, New Brunswick (1973), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1984), and the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead (1990). Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions devoted to political art, women’s art, contemporary quilts, and African-American art, as well as in the Whitney Biennial (1985). Ringgold has received many honours, including the National Endowment for the Arts awards in sculpture (1978) and painting (1989), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1987), and fifteen honorary doctorates.

Ringgold currently lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey. To learn more, visit Faith Ringgold.com.

Sources: Guggenheim, Faith Ringgold.com

Annie Leibovitz: Photography

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Born on October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut, Annie Leibovitz has been documenting American popular culture since the 1970s and is one of the most sought-after portrait photographers today.

The Leibovitz family moved frequently with her father’s duty assignments in the U.S. Air Force and Annie took her first photos when they were stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Leibovitz studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and after a summer trip to Japan with her mother, she began taking night classes in photography and developed her skills as a photographer. Early influences include Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In 1970, Leibovitz approached the editor of the recently launched Rolling Stone Magazine for  employment. Her first assignment was a photo shoot with John Lennon and her photo appeared on the January 1971 issue. Leibovitz was named chief photographer two years later.

In 1980, Leibovitz was sent to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono and created the now-famous Lennon nude curled around a fully clothed Ono. Several hours after the photo shoot, Lennon was shot and killed. The photograph ran on the cover of Rolling Stone Lennon commemorative issue and in 2005 was named best magazine cover from the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

In 1983, Leibovitz became a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair magazine and became known for her provocative celebrity portraits including Whoopie Goldberg, Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres, Queen Elizabeth II, and countless others. Her portraits have also been featured in national media including Vogue, The New York Times, The New Yorker, as well as media ads for American Express, the Gap, and the Milk Board.

Leibovitz began a long-term romantic relationship with writer Susan Sontag in 1989. Sontag had a strong influence on her work including her photos documenting the Balkan war in Sarajevo and Women, a book they published together in 2000. The couple lived apart but maintained a close relationship until Sontag’s death in 2004.

Leibovitz has received numerous awards including a Commandeur des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government as well as designation as a living legend by the Library of Congress. In 1991, she had her first museum show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. – a show that toured internationally for six years.

With several book publications under her belt, Leibovitz’s most recent book A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 features her trademark celebrity portraits as well as personal photographs from her own life.

Leibovitz has three children, Sarah Cameron who was born when Leibovitz was 51 years old, and twins Susan and Samuelle who were born to a surrogate mother in May 2005.

To see more of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs visit Contact Press.  There is also a PBS documentary called Annie Leibovitz, Life Through a Lens that features interviews from celebrities and with the photographer about the her work over the last few decades.

Sources: PBS, Wikipedia

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: 1571-1610

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Michelangelo Merisi da CaravaggioBorn in Milan, Italy on September 29, 1571, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is considered one of the first great painters of the Baroque school and a revolutionary figure in European art.

Caravaggio trained in Milan under the Lombard painter Simone Peterzano, a pupil of Titian – the leading painter of the 16th century Venetian school of the Italian Renaissance.

In 1592, Caravaggio fled Milan for Rome after becoming involved in a quarrel that resulted in the wounding of a police officer. With next to no money to survive, he found work with Giuseppe Cesari – Pope Clement VIII’s favourite painter. Here, he painted flowers and fruit in a factory-like workshop until 1594.

Carvaggio’s luck changed in 1595 when Cardinal Francesco del Monte became his patron, taking him into his house, where Caravaggio received his first public commissions. These made him popular in a short period of time.

Carvaggio preferred to paint his subjects with intense realism with all of their flaws and defects in contrast to the typical idealized representations produced by Italian Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo. He also differed in his method of painting, preferring the Venetian practice of painting his subjects directly without any traditional lengthy preparatory drawings.

From 1600-1606, Caravaggio received numerous prestigious commissions for religious works, increasing his fame over this period. But for all his success, Caravaggio led an unruly life. He was known for brawling and was arrested and imprisoned numerous times. In May of 1606, Caravaggio killed (possibly by accident) a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni. Wanted for murder, he fled Rome for Naples where he also became well known, receiving several important church commissions.

Caravaggio stayed in Naples for only a few months before traveling to the headquarters of the Knights of Malta where he hoped to gain the patronage of the Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt, who could help him obtain a pardon for his murder charge. The Grand Master was so impressed with Caravaggio that he made him a knight.

In August 1608, Carvaggio was in trouble again after a brawl and was arrested and imprisoned. It was not long after that he was expelled from the Knights and was on the move again – this time to Sicily where his friend Mario Minniti was living.

Caravaggio returned to Naples after nine months in Sicily, still hoping to secure a pardon from the Pope and return to Rome. In 1610, believing his pardon would be granted, he began his journey by boat back to Rome. With him were his final three paintings which he planned to give to Cardinal Scipione, who had the power to grant or withhold his pardon. Caravaggio never made it home.

Carvaggio’s death is the subject of much debate. No body was found and there were several accounts of his death including a religious assassination and malaria. A poet friend of the artist gave July 18, 1610 as his date of death. In 2001, an Italian researcher claims to have found the death certificate which says that he died on that same date in S Maria Ausiliatrice Hospital of an illness.

For a full biography and to view Caravaggio’s complete works, visit Caravaggio-Foundation.org.

Sources: Caravaggio Foundation, MET Museum, BBC, Wikipedia

Mark Rothko: 1903-1970

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Mark RothkoBorn on September 25, 1903, Mark Rothko (Marcus Rothkowitz), was a major Abstract Expressionist artist and had an important influence on the development of colour field painting. Latvian by birth, Rothko emigrated with his mother and sister to the United States in 1913, joining his father and two brothers who had come a few years before. Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Rothko did well in school and upon completion was awarded a scholarship to Yale which he attend from 1921-1923.  He found the Yale community to be elitist and racist and dropped out after two years of study.

Rothko moved to New York in 1923 where he worked in the garment district. He studied sporadically at the Arts Students League but was essentially a self-taught artist, educating himself by visiting exhibitions and the studios of other artists. In 1929, Rothko began teaching children at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, a position he retained for more than twenty years.

Rothko’s first paintings were typically of Expressionist landscapes, still-lifes, and bathers. He was also commissioned to illustrate for Rabbi Lewis Browne’s The Graphic Bible (1928) which included maps, sphinxes, lions, serpents, and other symbols and scenes that reflected the book’s content.

Rothko’s paintings of the 1930s had an eerie mood and created a sense of mystery with tragic figures in apartments, on city streets and subway platforms. From 1935-1940 Rothko, along with other artists including Ilya Bolotowsky and Adolph Gottlieb, was a part of an independent group called “The Ten” that held exhibitions in New York and Paris.

In the early 1940s Rothko abandoned Expressionism and, under the influence of Surrealism and Jung’s ideas on the collective unconscious, began to use archaic symbols as archetypal images. The first of these paintings were based on mythic subjects and were composed of humans, animals and plants arranged in a manner similar to archaic friezes. By the mid-1940s Rothko was also painting organic forms that were close to abstraction. During this time, he also developed his technique of applying watercolour, gouache, and tempera to heavy paper. Rothko’s paintings during this time were well received and he exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, the Betty Parsons Gallery, and the San Francisco Museum of Art.

Between 1947 and 1949, Rothko sought to create an original approach of abstraction by replacing the figure with shapes. His large canvases with bold colour and form were intended to create the impression of constant movement. His goal was to express profound human emotions as directly as possible stating: “The progression of a painter’s work…will be toward clarity; toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.”

Beginning in 1958, in conjunction with three major commissions, Rothko darkened his colour palatte painting with maroon, black, and olive green. He believed his view of the tragic human condition would be conveyed more clearly than with his earlier brightly coloured works.

Despite his success, Rothko felt he was misunderstood as an artist and feared that people purchased his paintings out of fashion. He rejected the label of an abstractionist and colourist saying that his interest was “only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. . . The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point.”

In 1968, as a result of chronic high blood pressure, Rothko suffered an aneurysm of the aorta. Despite his physicians advice, he continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoided exercise, and maintained an unhealthy diet. He did however focus his efforts on smaller format works that required less physical exertion. On February 25, 1970, Mark Rothko committed suicide. He was 66 years old.

For a more detailed biography,  visit the MoMA site as well as the National Gallery of Art (USA) website which has a large collection of Rothko’s works online.

Sources: Ciudad de la Pintura (images), MoMA, National Gallery of Art, Wikipedia

Alma Thomas: 1891-1978

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Alma ThomasBorn on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia, Alma Woodsey Thomas grew up in a family that encouraged education and appreciation of literature and the arts. In 1907, the family moved to Washington D.C., partly due to the Atlanta race riots, but also because Washington had better education and employment opportunities for African Americans than most other cities at the time. That same year, Thomas enrolled at Armstrong Manual Training High School where she excelled at math, and was exposed to the visual arts.

Thomas attended Miner Normal School (today, the University of the District of Columbia) in 1911 studying kindergarten education. She received her teaching certificate in 1913 after which she taught for four years at Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington Delaware. Thomas returned to Washington in 1921 to study home economics at Howard University. Initially intending to pursue a career as a costume designer, she switched her studies to the newly created Fine Arts department and in 1924, became the first graduate of the program.

In 1925, Thomas began working as an art instructor at Shaw Junior High School in Washington D.C. – a career which she would remain at for 35 years. With a desire to cultivate appreciation for art in young people, Thomas organized the School Arts League based at Shaw as well as organizing the school’s first art gallery.

Between 1930 and 1934, Thomas earned her masters degree in Fine Arts Education from the teachers college at Columbia University. In 1943, she was vice-president of the Barnett Aden Gallery – the first private gallery to welcome art created by artists of any race, colour, or creed. While there, Thomas was able to increase her awareness of art trends and directions. As well, she was involved with the Little Paris Studio where artists met and worked together, improving their skills, exchanging critiques, and holding exhibitions.

Thomas initially painted realistic images but moved toward abstract painting in 1950, when at the age of 59, she returned to school, taking art classes at the American University.  She studied with Robert Gates, Ben Summerford, and well-known painter Jacob Kainen with whom she became close friends. A passion for learning, Thomas continued her evening and weekend classes for ten years.  During that time, her painting evolved from realism to cubism, abstract impressionism, and finally her own style of abstract art.

In 1960, Thomas retired from teaching to focus exclusively on her art.  Her primary inspirations were her observations of nature and the abstract patterns of light created when shining through flowers and plants. Her paintings reflected this with their bold colours and short jagged brush strokes.

Thomas’s work began receiving recognition in the late 60s and early 70s. She had solo exhibitions at Howard and Fisk Universities, at the Franz Bader Gallery in Washington, and was included in the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program. In 1972, she was the first African American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

From the 1970s onward, Thomas minimized the number of colours in her paintings and experimented with optical effects. Her brush strokes had the appearance of wedges and commas and created rhythmic patterns that often resembled mosaics. During these last years of her life, Thomas was challenged by arthritis and deteriorating eyesight, but she continued painting, drawing on nature and music for inspiration, up until her last days.

Alma Thomas died on February 24, 1978 in Washington D.C. from complications following surgery. Today, her paintings are on display in major art museums and university galleries across the United States. Her 1966 painting, Resurrection, currently hangs in the White House.

Sources: Alma W. Thomas: A Retrospective of the Paintings, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Daphne Odjig: Painting

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Daphne OdjigAward-winning First Nations Canadian artist Daphne Odjig (September 11, 1919 – October 1, 2016) was born and raised on the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island (Lake Huron), Ontario, Canada. As a child, art was a favourite subject and she developed the habit of sketching with her grandfather and father who were both artistic.

In 1942, Odjig moved to Toronto with her sister Winnie where she worked at the John Inglis Munitions, Planters Peanuts and Dr. Ballards dog food factories. Over the next ten years, Odjig taught herself to paint by trial and error. In 1945, she moved to British Columbia and married Paul Somerville, a Mohawk/Metis Second World War veteran she met in Toronto. In 1948, their son Stanley was born.

Odjig continued her art explorations, experimenting in oils on homemade stretchers and recycled tent canvas. Influenced by Canadian painter Cornelius Krieghoff, she painted naturalistic landscapes. In 1950, Odjig discovered the work of Picasso and began experimenting with Cubism and Abstract Expressionism.

In 1958, Odjig and her family purchased a thirty-acre farm at Columbia Valley, British Columbia with a plan to grow strawberries. Despite her husband’s death in 1960, Odjig planted the crop as planned and continued to farm in the summer, focusing on painting in the winter months. In 1961, Odjig began a period of intense artistic experimentation. She learned by copying works in books borrowed from the library and by visits to the Vancouver Art Gallery to study painting techniques up close. Influenced by the Impressionists, Odjig experimented with light effects, broken brush strokes and Cloisonnism.

In 1967, Odjig had her first public solo exhibition at the Lakehead Art Centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The exhibition consisted of seventy-eight drawings, pastels and acrylics. By 1971, Odjig had moved to Winnipeg with her second husband Chester Beavon, where she opened a small craft store and taught at Manitou Art Foundation on Schreiber Island.

In 1973, Odjig co-founded the Professional Indian Artists Inc. (the Indian Group of Seven), a group of professional aboriginal artists who came together to promote their work and change the way the western art world looked at native art. In that same year, she was commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum to create From Mother Earth Flows the River of Life for the Canadian Indian Art’74 exhibition.

“Odjig has a unique Native style blended with a modern graphic approach. Influenced by Northwest Coast art during her time in British Columbia and by the developing Anishinaabe style, her paintings focus on the importance of womanhood and sense of family. Central to her work is the circle, which to the Ojibwa signifies completion and perfection and is symbolic of women.”

Odjig has received numerous awards and honours including the first (and as of November 2009, the only) First Nation woman artist to show at the National Gallery of Canada, the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, seven honorary degrees, the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, the Governor General’s Laureate for Visual and Media Arts, and the Expression Award from the National Film Board of Canada.

Daphne Odjig died on 1 October 2016 in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. For more information, visit DaphneOdjig.com.

Sources: Preview Gallery Guide, Art History Archive, Odjig.com

Grandma Moses – Anna Mary Robertson Moses: 1860-1961

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“If I hadn’t taken up painting, I would have raised chickens…it’s all art.” —Grandma Moses

Grandma MosesBorn on September 7, 1860, Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka Grandma Moses) was one of the most successful and renowned artists in America and possibly the best-known American artist in Europe. Born in a farming community in Greenwich, New York, Moses had little formal education and left home at the age of 12 to work as a hired girl on a nearby farm. She worked in this capacity until the age of 27 when she married Thomas Salmon Moses, a worker at the farm .

Anna and Thomas invested in a farm in Virginia where they remained for twenty years. During that time, Moses had ten children (five died in infancy). The couple returned to New York in 1905 and settled on a farm in Eagle Bridge.  Thomas died in 1927 and Anna remained on the farm until 1936 when she retired and went to live with her daughter.

Moses’ earliest works were in embroidery which she began making in the 1930s. It was not until her late 70s, when arthritis prevented her from continuing with her craft, that she took up painting. A self-taught artist, her first paintings were copies of prints and postcards. Moses soon began painting her own scenes with subject matter based on her memories of the rural countryside and farm life. In 1938, Moses’ paintings were on display at Thomas’s Drugstore, Hoosick Falls, NY when engineer and art collector, Louis J. Caldor discovered them and bought them all.

The following year, Moses’ work was included in an exhibition of “contemporary unknown painters” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1940, Moses had her first successful solo show What a Farmwife Painted at the Galerie St. Etienne. Media and viewers alike were charmed by Moses’ “down-home” personality and the simple realism and nostalgia of her paintings. Her ability to capture optimistic scenes of rural activities such as maple sugaring, soap and candle making, haying, etc., were welcomed by a world recovering from WWII and facing the new threat of the Cold War. Soon, other solo shows followed in the US and abroad and Moses developed a large international following. European critics described her work as “lovable,” “fresh,” “charming,” “adorable” and “full of naive and childlike joy.”

Moses was a prolific painter and created more than one thousand paintings in her lifetime. Her works have been reproduced on holiday greeting cards, tiles, fabrics, and in books. In 1949, President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women’s National Press Club Trophy Award for outstanding accomplishment in art. In 1951, Moses appeared on the Edward R. Murrow television show See It Now, and in 1952, she published her autobiography Grandma Moses: My Life’s History.  In 1953, Moses was on the cover of TIME magazine, and in 1960 on the cover of LIFE magazine celebrating her 100th birthday. Moses also received honorary doctoral degrees from Russell Sage College in 1949, and from the Moore Institute of Art, Science and Industry in 1951.

Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses died on December 13, 1961 at the age of 101. Of her death, her physician, Dr. Clayton E. Shaw, said “she had died of hardening of the arteries, but the best way to describe the cause of death”, he suggested, was to say “she just wore out.”

Sources: New York Times, Orlando Museum of Art, Galerie St. Etienne

Romare Bearden: 1911 – 1988

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Romare BeardenThe artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos? —Romare Bearden

Born on September 2, 1911 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Romare Bearden was a multi-talented artist and one of America’s foremost collagists.  Bearden’s family moved to New York City in 1914 in an attempt to distance themselves from Jim Crow’s “separate but equal” laws.

Bearden initially studied at Lincoln University but transferred to Boston University where he was the art director of Beanpot, a student humour magazine. He then completed his degree in education at New York University. At NYU, Bearden was enrolled in art classes and was a lead cartoonist and art editor for the monthly journal The Medley.  During his university years, he published numerous journal covers and wrote many texts on social and artistic issues. Bearden also attended New York’s Art Students League, studying under German artist George Grosz. Bearden served in the United States Army between 1942 and 1945. He then returned to Europe in 1950 to study art and philosophy at the Sorbonne with the support of the GI Bill.

From the 1930s to the 1960s Bearden was a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services and worked on his art in his free time. He had his first successful solo exhibitions in Harlem in 1940 and in Washington DC in 1944. In 1954, he married dancer and choreographer Nanette Rohan, with whom he shared the rest of his life. During this time, Bearden was active in Harlem’s art scene and was a member of the Harlem Artists Guild.

Bearden was a prolific artist who experimented with numerous mediums including watercolours, oils, collage, photo montage, prints, and costume and set design. His inspiration was gathered from his lifelong study of art from the Western masters, African art, Byzantine mosaics, Japanese prints, and Chinese landscape paintings. Bearden is best known for his collages which were featured on the covers of Time and Fortune magazines in 1968.

Bearden was active in numerous arts organizations and was a respected writer and spokesperson for the arts and for social causes. In 1964, he was appointed as art director of the African-American advocacy group, the Harlem Cultural Council. He was also involved in the establishment of art venues such as The Studio Museum and the Cinque Gallery that supported young minority artists. Bearden was also a founding member of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters and was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1972.

Bearden’s work is on display in major museums and galleries in the United States including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Bearden received numerous honorary degrees including doctorates from the Pratt Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Davidson College, Atlanta University, and others. He received the 1984 Mayor’s Award of Honour for Art and Culture in New York City, and the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Ronald Regan in 1987.

Romare Bearden died in New York on March 12, 1988 from complications of bone cancer. His estate provided for the Romare Bearden Foundation which was established in 1990 and whose purpose is “to preserve and perpetuate” his legacy. The foundation also supports the “creative and educational development of young people and of talented and aspiring artists and scholars”.

Sources: Romare Bearden Foundation, National Gallery of Art, Artcyclopedia, New York Times, Wikipedia

Jacques-Louis David: 1748-1825

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Jacques-Louis David - Death of Marat -1793Born on August 30, 1748, Jacques-Louis David was the leading painter of the Neoclassical movement – a reaction against the Rococo art and interior design in France. Preoccupied with drawing from an early age, David studied under Joseph-Mari Vien at the Académie Royale in 1766 and won the Prix de Rome art scholarship to the French Academy in Rome in 1774.

David returned to Paris in 1780 where he prospered. He was made a member of the Royal Academy and exhibited successfully at the Salon. His paintings were interpreted as moral allegories of the political events and the corruption of the aristocracy of the time. His neoclassical style – rigorous contours, sculpted forms, even lighting, polished surfaces, and pure colours, were admired and would set the standard for academic painting for decades to come.

In the 1790s, David’s paintings served the aims of the French Revolution by glorifying its leaders and martyrs. He painted portraits of the Revolutionary government’s leaders and designed their festivals and funerals. He was active in the Jacobin Club – the largest and most powerful political club of the Revolution. He was closely allied with Maximilien Robespierre, one of the Revolution’s most influential figures. He was also president of the National Convention and voted for the execution of Louis XVI. David was a key figure in the attack against the Académie Royale that in part led to its abolishment in 1794. After Robespierre’s loss of power, David was denounced as “tyrant of the arts” and was imprisoned.

In the late 1790’s, David formed a new alliance with Napoléon Bonaparte who supplied David with large commissions and in 1804, was appointed first painter to the Emperor. After Napoléon’s defeat in 1816, and the reinstatement of the Monarchy, David chose exile over court painter and spent the last years of his life in Brussels, Belgium where he painted portraits and mythological subjects.

Although David’s political allegiances shifted over the course of his life, he remained faithful to the style of Neoclassicism which he passed on to a generation of students, as well as to most 19th century painters.

Jacques-Louis David died on December 29, 1825.  He was denied a burial in France.

Sources: Met Museum, Wikipedia, Louvre