Daily Art Fixx

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Grant Wood: 1891-1942

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Grant Wood PortraitBorn on February 13, 1891, in Anamosa, Iowa, Grant Wood was an American artist best known for his paintings of the rural American Midwest. Wood studied at the State University of Iowa, the Minneapolis School of Design, and the Academie Julian in Paris.  Aside from painting, he worked in a variety of media, including lithography, ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects.

In the 1920s Wood traveled to Europe four times, visiting Paris, Italy, and Germany. He was impressed by the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement in Germany as well as the primitive Flemish and German painters. Specifically, he admired their depiction of mythological and biblical stories in contemporary costumes and settings, making them relevant to the viewer. Wood then applied these ideas in his own paintings of ordinary life.

Wood first gained recognition 1930, when his painting “American Gothic” won a medal from the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting received a great deal of public and critical attention and Wood quickly became known across the  United States. In 1934 he was hailed by Time Magazine as the “chief philosopher” of Regionalism.

“American Gothic” depicts a farmer and his spinster daughter posing before their house, whose gabled window and tracery, in the American gothic style, inspired the painting’s title. The models were actually Grant’s sister Nan and their dentist. Wood was accused of creating this work as a satire on the intolerance and rigidity that the insular nature of rural life can produce; he denied the accusation. American Gothic is an image that epitomizes the Puritan ethic and virtues that he believed dignified the Midwestern character.”

In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to help artists get through the Great Depression. He became a great advocate of Regionalism,  and gave lectures throughout the United States on this art movement.

Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa’s School of Art from 1934. During that time, he continued to produce his own works as well as supervising mural painting projects, and mentoring students.

Grant Wood died of liver cancer on February 12, 1942 – the day before his 51st birthday.

Related Books:
Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace Of American Gothic
Grant Wood
Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry

Sources: Art Institute of Chicago, Met Museum, Wikipedia,

Franz Marc: 1880-1916

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Franz MarcBorn on February 8, 1880 in Munich, Germany, Franz Marc was a principal painter of the German Expressionist movement. The son of a professional landscape painter, Marc chose to become an artist after a year of military service interrupted his plans to study philology. Marc studied at the Kunstakademie in Munich under Gabriel von Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez from 1900-1902. In 1903 and in 1907  he visited Paris where he was introduced to Japanese woodcuts and the work of Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, the Cubists, and the Expressionists. During this period, Marc also made a steady income by giving animal anatomy lessons to art students.

Marc had his first solo show at the Kunsthandlung Brackl, Munich in 1910.  He supported the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (Munich New Artist’s Association), and became a member of the group early in 1911. After the split of the NKVM, Marc formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), artist circle with August Macke,  Wassily Kandinsky, and other artists. The group’s first exhibition was held on December 1911 at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in Munich.  “Der Blaue Reiter Almanac” was published with lead articles by Marc in May 1912.

Marc’s paintings were concerned with the need for harmony and union with nature. “Believing that animals achieved this harmony more successfully than human beings, he used them for the subject matter of his paintings. Early in his career he painted graceful and lyrical horses, cows, and deer inhabiting beautiful and peaceful landscapes. The scenes were painted with bright pure colors and filled with light.”

In 1912, Marc met Robert Delaunay, whose use of color and futurist method affected his work greatly. He became influenced by Futurism and Cubism, and his art became stark and abstract in nature.

Marc was conscripted during World War I and was sent to the front lines. The great loss of life deeply affected him, including the many animals that were killed in the war.  One of his best known paintings, Tierschicksale (Fate of the Animals), was completed in 1913 when “the tension of impending cataclysm had pervaded society”. On the back of the canvas, Marc wrote, “Und Alles Sein ist flammend Leid” (“And all being is flaming agony”). Marc wrote to his wife of the painting, it “is like a premonition of this war – horrible and shattering. I can hardly conceive that I painted it.”

Franz Marc was killed on March 14, 1916 at the Battle of Verdun.

Sources: Guggenheim, Wikipedia, Albright-Knox Art Gallery,

Norman Rockwell: 1894 – 1978

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Rockwell-Norman-portraitBorn on February 3, 1894, in New York City, Norman Rockwell was one of the most popular and recognized American artists of his time.

Rockwell had an interest in art early in life  and at age 14, he  enrolled at The Chase School of Art (currently The New York School of Art). In 1910, he left high school and studied art at The National Academy of Design and then transferred to The Art Students League of New York.

Rockwell achieved success quickly and while still in his teens, was hired as the Art Director of  “Boy’s Life” Magazine (Boy Scouts publication). When he was 21, Rockwell and his family moved to New Rochelle, New York where he shared a studio with cartoonist Clyde Forsythe and worked for magazines including Life, Literary Digest, and Country Gentleman.   In 1916, Rockwell created his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post. During his early career, Rockwell was influenced greatly by popular illustrators including  N.C. Wyeth, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish and Howard Pyle.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Rockwell developed further depth and character in his paintings and illustrations. “His use of humor became an important part of his work. It was a technique he used effectively to draw the viewer into the composition to share the magic. Rockwell was constantly seeking new ideas and new faces in his daily life. He painted not only the scenes and people close to him but, in a quest for authenticity, would approach total strangers and ask them to sit for him. His internal art of ‘storytelling’ became integrated with his external skills as an artist. What emerged was what we know today as an incredible facility in judging the perfect moment; when to stop the action, snap the picture…when all the elements that define and embellish a total story are in place.” (NMAI)

The 1930s and 1940s are considered the most successful decades of Rockwell’s career. In 1930 he married Mary Barstow, a schoolteacher, with whom he had three sons, Jarvis, Thomas, and Peter. In 1939, the family moved to Arlington, Vermont and Rockwell began to produce full canvas paintings depicting small-town American life.

During World War II, Rockwell became involved in the war effort to help boost the sale of savings bonds.  The result was his extremely popular The Four Freedoms, at first rejected by the U.S. Government but then printed as posters to sell war bonds. “The works toured the United States in an exhibition that was jointly sponsored by The Post and the U.S. Treasury Department and, through the sale of war bonds, raised more than $130 million for the war effort.”

Unfortunately in 1943, a  fire in Rockwell’s Arlington studio, destroyed numerous paintings and his collection of historic costumes and props. Rockwell would spend countless hours searching for the costumes and items to create his scenes, and the loss of this collection was particularly painful for the artist.

In the late 1940s and 1950s Rockwell continued to be one of the most prolific and recognized illustrators in the country. In his 47 years with The Saturday Evening Post, he created 322 covers.  He also produced work for Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, Literary Digest, and LOOK magazine.

In 1953, the Rockwells moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Six years later, Mary Barstow Rockwell died unexpectedly.

In 1960, Rockwell (in collaboration with his son, Tom),  published his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator. The Saturday Evening Post published parts of the best-selling book in a series of excerpts.

In 1961, Rockwell married Molly Punderson, a retired teacher. Two years later, he ended his 47-year affiliation with The Saturday Evening Post and began to work for Look magazine. During his 10-year relationship with Look, Rockwell’s work addressed American social issues including civil rights, poverty, and the exploration of space.

In 1962, Rockwell told Esquire magazine: “I call myself an illustrator but I am not an illustrator. Instead, I paint storytelling pictures which are quite popular but unfashionable. No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations. He’s got to put all of his talent, all of his feeling into them. If illustration is not considered art, then that is something that we have brought upon ourselves by not considering ourselves artists. I believe that we should say, ‘I am not just an illustrator, I am an artist’.” (NMAI)

In 1973 Rockwell established a trust placing his works under the custodianship of Stockbridge’s historic Old Corner House. The trust now forms the core of the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. In 1976, Rockwell added his Stockbridge studio and all its contents to the bequest. In 1977, Rockwell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his “vivid and affectionate portraits of our country.”

Norman Rockwell died at his home in Stockbridge on November 8, 1978, at the age of 84.

Sources: Norman Rockwell Museum, Saturday Evening Post, PBS, National Museum of American Illustration

Norman Rockwell on Amazon

Jackson Pollock: 1912-1956

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Jackson Pollock portraitBorn on January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, Paul Jackson Pollock was a key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Pollock grew up in Arizona and California and began his painting studies at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles in 1928.  In 1930, he moved to New York where he studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. During this early time in his studies, Pollock was influenced by the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. From 1935 to 1942, Pollock worked on the WPA Federal Art Project as a mural assistant to David Alfaro Siqueiros, and as an easel painter.

Pollock’s paintings during this time were inspired by Navajo sand painting, Asian calligraphy, and personal revelations stemming from four months of Jungian psychotherapy to treat his alcoholism. “This resulted in an obsessive exploration of his unconscious symbolism, mediated through the stylistic influence of Picasso, Orozco, Joan Miró and the theories of John Graham. The works he created parallel to his psychotherapy contain the elements of what became a personal iconography.”

By 1947, Pollock was creating densely layered compositions that brought both praise and criticism. Some critics viewed them as “meaningless and chaotic”, while others saw them as “superbly organized, visually fascinating and psychologically compelling.”

Pollock’s first solo show was held in 1943 at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in New York. Guggenheim gave him a contract that lasted through 1947, allowing him to devote all his time to painting. Prior to 1947 Pollock’s work was influenced by Pablo Picasso and Surrealism, and in the early 1940’s, he participated in several Surrealist and Abstract art exhibitions.

In 1945, Pollock married artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy. In the fall of that year, the couple moved to what is now known as the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Long Island, New York.

From 1947 to 1952 Pollock created his most famous “action paintings“. “Pollock’s technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term action painting. With this technique, Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating art, the paint now literally flowing from his chosen tool onto the canvas. By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension, literally by being able to view and apply paint to his canvases from all directions.” These works were also larger in scale and were given numbers instead of titles.

A profile in the 8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine introduced Pollock’s  art to Americans and secured his growing reputation as one of the foremost modern painters of the time. During this intensely creative time, Pollock was treated by a doctor who substituted his drinking with tranquillizers. In 1951, he began drinking heavily again.

In 1952, Pollock’s first solo show in Paris opened at the Studio Paul Facchetti and his first retrospective was organized by Clement Greenberg at Bennington College in Vermont. His work was shown in many group exhibitions, including the Whitney Annuals, the Museum of American Art, New York, from 1946 and the Venice Biennale in 1950. Although his paintings were widely known and exhibited internationally, Pollock never traveled outside the United States.

By 1955, Pollock’s alcoholism and depression had overtaken his life and he stopped painting altogether. He was also becoming increasingly estranged from his wife and in the summer of 1956 she traveled to Europe to re-evaluate their relationship.

On August 11, 1956, Jackson Pollock  died in an automobile accident. Driving drunk, he overturned his convertible, killing himself and an acquaintance, and seriously injuring his other passenger. After Pollock’s death, Krasner, managed his estate and ensured that his reputation remained strong. They are buried together at Green River Cemetery in Springs, Long Island.

 

Sources: Ciudad de la Pintura (images), Wikipedia, Guggenheim Collection, MoMA, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center

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Paul Cézanne: 1839-1906

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Les Joueurs de Carte (The-Card-Players) - Paul CezanneBorn on January 19, 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, France, Paul Cézanne is considered by many to be one of the most important painters of the second half of the 19th century. From 1849 – 1852,  he studied at the Ecole Saint-Joseph and from 1852 to 1858 at the Collège Bourbon. In 1857 he attended  the Ecole Municipale de Dessin in Aix-en-Provence, where he studied under Joseph Gibert. In 1859,  to satisfy his father’s wishes, he began to study law at the Université d’Aix. He also attended the Ecole Municipale de Dessin again from 1858 – 1861. In 1861 Cézanne abandoned his law studies and moved to Paris to pursue his career as a painter.

In 1862 Cézanne met Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir with whom he formed lasting friendships. In 1863, his paintings were shown in the Salon des Refusés, which exhibited works rejected by the Paris Salon.  The Salon rejected all of Cézanne’s submissions between 1864 to 1869.

With the onset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Cézanne returned to Aix-en-Provence and then L’Estaque, where he continued painting. In the 1870’s he was influenced by Impressionism, particularly the work of Camille Pissarro.   Like the Impressionists, Cézanne considered the study of nature essential to painting, however, he opposed many aspects of the Impressionist aesthetic. “Believing colour and form to be inseparable, he tried to emphasize structure and solidity in his work, features he thought neglected by Impressionism. For this reason he was a central figure in Post-impressionism.” In 1874, he participated in the first Impressionist Exhibition, as well as the third in 1877.

In 1882 the Salon accepted his work for the first and only time. Beginning in 1883 Cézanne lived in the South of France, returning to Paris occasionally.  Cézanne’s first solo show was held at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery in Paris in 1895. Following that exhibition,  his recognition increased, and in 1899 he participated in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In 1900 he participated in the Centennial Exhibition in Paris and, in 1903, the Berlin and Vienna Secessions. In 1904 he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, Paris and had a solo exhibition at the Galerie Cassirer in Berlin.

Between 1883 and 1895, Cézanne’s paintings accented mass and structure, and his composition therefore became more architectural. His move away from Impressionism stemmed from his belief that a painter must interpret as well as record the scene before him. His brushstrokes became broader and thicker, and the use of a palette knife was sometimes evident.

In the final years of Cézanne’s life,  many of his landscapes “emphasized the rough appearance of sites, mixing wild vegetation with rocks in unusual, asymmetric framing. His composition became less serene and his colour more violent.” In several works, parts of the canvas were left bare and were painted with highly diluted oils. His fascination with nature continued but “the objective sought is no longer to describe reality but to express a spiritual concept”.

Cézanne rarely dated and often did not sign his paintings making it difficult to determine the chronology of his works with any precision.  In his last years his work began to influence many younger artists, including the Fauvists and the Cubists. His influence reached well into the 20th century as well.

Paul Cézanne died of pneumonia on October 22, 1906. He was buried in his hometown of Aix-en-Provence.

For a more detailed biography of Cézanne, visit the MoMA website.

Paul Cézanne on Amazon

Sources: Guggenheim Collection, MoMA, Wikipedia

Berthe Morisot: 1841-1895

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BBerthe Morisot - photograph by Charles Reutlingerorn to a prosperous family on January 14, 1841, in Bourges, Cher, France, Berthe Morisot was a central member of the Paris Impressionists.  Morisot, as well as her sisters, were encouraged at an early age to pursue art and studied with neoclassical painter Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne. In 1858 she and her sister Edma studied at the studio of Joseph-Benoît Guichard, and through him met the leading landscape painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot who encouraged the siblings to paint outdoors.

Morisot exhibited at the Salon from 1864 to 1873.  Around 1867, she met Édouard Manet with whom she developed a close friendship. Morisot modeled for Manet numerous times and in 1874 she married his brother, Eugène.  That same year she refused to show her work at the Salon and instead participated in the first independent show of Impressionist paintings. In 1878, Morisot had a daughter Julie who became a main source of inspiration for her paintings.

Morisot painted her daily experiences and reflected 19th century cultural expectations of her class and gender. Her works included landscapes, family and domestic life, portraits, garden settings and boating scenes. She avoided urban and street scenes as well as the nude figure. Morisot worked with pastels, watercolors, and oil, and in her later years, she experimented with lithography and drypoint etching.

Morisot became an important member of the Impressionist group. Painters and writers would meet at her home including Renoir, Degas, and Mary Casssatt. Morisot was never commercially successful in her lifetime. At the time however, her paintings sold for slightly higher prices than those of Renoir, Monet, and Sisley.

Berthe Morisot died of pneumonia on March 2, 1895 in Paris at the age of 54. She was interred in the Cimetière de Passy.

Sources: Wikipedia, Cleveland Museum of Art, Biography.com

Henri Matisse: 1869-1954

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Henri-Matisse-PortraitPainter, sculptor, printmaker, designer, draughtsman, and writer, Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was born on December 31, 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France. Before studying art, Matisse worked as a solicitor’s clerk in Saint-Quentin and took a law degree from 1887 to 1889 in Paris.

Matisse studied drawing at Ecole Quentin Latour and began painting in the winter of 1889 while recovering from appendicitis. He gave up law to study painting at the Académie Julian in 1891 under painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and took drawing and perspective courses at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Matisse joined the studio of Gustave Moreau in 1892 and passed the entrance examination of Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1895. In 1898, he married Amélie Parayre with whom he had two sons.

Matisse’s early works were essentially based on the study of the Old Masters “firmly based on reality, in a restricted tonal palette influenced above all by his copies after Dutch masters and Chardin and by exhibitions he had seen of the work of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot and Edouard Manet.”

Matisse exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1901 and had his first solo show at the Galerie Vollard in 1904.

Matisse, along with André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck  became one of the principal figures of Fauvism, which has its base in Impressionism. “In reviving the study of the nude human figure, Matisse’s work was partially a reaction against what he perceived as Impressionism’s neglect of this traditional subject.”

Like other avant-garde artists in Paris at the time, Matisse was interested in influences beyond the realist tradition. In 1904 and 1905, he spent summers painting in the Mediterranean which resulted in his abandonment of the traditional Impressionist palette in favour of what would become his characteristic style of “flat, brilliant colour and fluid line”.

From 1906 to 1910, Matisse became increasingly successful and his art began to be exhibited and published outside of France. Writer and art collector Gertrude Stein, as well as art collectors Etta and Claribel Cone, began acquiring Matisse’s work. During this time, he was also introduced to Picasso with whom he would have an “intermittent rivalry”.

“Matisse’s work during this period falls into three categories: figure compositions, still-lifes and interiors, and portraits. He moved away from the Fauve style and experimented with a new language of the human figure stimulated primarily by Gauguin’s primitivism, but also by Cézanne’s compositions of bathers, by classical decorations, by African tribal sculpture and by the challenge of Picasso.” (MoMA)

Between 1010 and 1917, Matisse created what many critics say are the best works of his career. Inspired by his travels to Spain, Russia, Morocco, his further response to Cubism was to create larger, more exotic and colourful paintings.

In 1918, Matisse relocated to Nice, France where creatively he focused on the female form, landscapes, interiors, still-lifes of flowers, and light itself. During this period, he maintained a habit of working outdoors but this production did not result in major works.  In 1925, Matisse traveled to Italy and Sicily after which he painted fewer canvases and seemingly gave himself the “task of resolving in drawings, sculptures, prints and paintings the articulation and balance of mass of the seated and reclining female nude.”

Matisse virtually gave up painting in 1929 to focus on a series of over 200 etchings, drypoints and lithographs. “Drawing was essential to Matisse’s paintings of the later 1930s, as was an expressive distortion of the female form in order to capture the mood or personality of the model, for example by exaggerating the length of her body in languid repose.”

In 1928, Matisse moved to Cimiez, a suburb above Nice. In 1941, surgery for a tumor left him disabled and unable to travel. This led to his grand interior paintings between 1946 and 1948, the decoration of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence from 1948 to 1951, and to his final works – a series of paper cut-outs.

Matisse died of a heart attack on November 3, 1954 at the age of eighty-four. He is buried at the cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, near Nice.

For an in depth biography, visit the MoMA website.

Sources: MoMA, Guggenheim, Wikipedia (images) 

Paul Klee: 1879-1940

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Paul KleeBorn on December 18, 1879, in Münchenbuchsee, Paul Klee was a German-Swiss painter, draftsman, printmaker, teacher and writer. He is regarded as a major theoretician among modern artists,  a master of humour and mystery, and a major contributor to 20th century art.

Klee was born into a family of musicians and his childhood love of music would remain very important in his life and work. From 1898 to 1901, he studied in Munich under Heinrich Knirr, and then at the Kunstakademie under Franz von Stuck. In 1901, Klee traveled to Italy with the sculptor Hermann Haller and then settled in Bern in 1902.

A series of his satirical etchings called The Inventions were exhibited at the Munich Secession in 1906. That same year Klee married pianist Lily Stumpf and moved to Munich. In 1907, the couple had a son, Felix. For the next five years, Klee worked to define his own style through the manipulation of light and dark in his pen and ink drawings and watercolour wash. He also painted on glass, applying a white line to a blackened surface. During this time Klee paid close attention to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting and became interested in the work of van Gogh,  Cézanne, and Matisse.

In 1911, Klee met Alexej Jawlensky, Vasily Kandinsky, August Macke, Franz Marc, and other avant-garde figures. He participated in art shows including the second Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) exhibition at Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich, in 1912, and the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon at the Der Sturm Gallery, Berlin, in 1913. Klee shared with Kandinsky and Marc a deep belief in the spiritual nature of artistic activity. He valued the authentic creative expression found in popular and tribal culture and in the art of children and the insane.

Klee’s main concentration on graphic work changed in 1914, after he spent two weeks in Tunisia with the painters August Macke and Louis Moilliet. He produced a number of stunning watercolours, and colour became central to his art for the remainder of his life.

During World War I, Klee worked as an accounting clerk in the military and was able to continue drawing and painting at his desk. His work during this period had an Expressionist feel, both in their brightness and in motifs of enchanted gardens and mysterious forests.

In 1918, Klee moved back to Munich and worked extensively in oil for the first time, painting intensely coloured, mysterious landscapes. During this time, he also became interested in the theory of art and published his ideas on the nature of graphic art in the ‘Schöpferische Konfession’ in 1920. Klee also became interested in politics and joined the Action Committee of Revolutionary Artists, an association that supported the Bavarian Socialist Republic. Like other artists at the time, Klee had envisioned a more central role for the artist in a socialist community.

In 1920, Klee was appointed to the faculty of the Bauhaus in Weimar where he taught from 1921 to 1926, and in Dessau from 1926 to 1931. During this time Klee developed many unique methods of creating art. The most well-known is the oil transfer drawing which involves tracing a pencil drawing placed over a page coated with black ink or oil, onto a third sheet. That sheet receives the outline of the drawing in black, in addition to random smudges of excess oil from the middle sheet.

During his years in Weimar, Klee achieved international fame. However, his final years at the Dessau Bauhaus were marked by major political problems. In 1931, Klee ended his contract shortly before the Nazis closed the Bauhaus. He began to teach at the Düsseldorf art academy, commuting there from his home in Dessau.

In Düsseldorf, Klee developed a divisionist painting technique that was related to Seurat’s pointillist paintings. These works consisted of layers of colour applied over a surface in patterns of small spots. His time in Düsseldorf however, was affected by the rise of the Nazis. In 1933, he became a target of a campaign against Entartete Kunst. The Nazis took control of the academy, and in April Klee was dismissed from his post. In December, he and his wife left Germany and returned to Berne.

In 1935, Klee developed the first symptoms of scleroderma, a skin disease that he suffered with until his death. Despite his personal and physical challenges, Klee’s final years were some of his most productive times. Several hundred paintings and 1,583 drawings were recorded between 1937 and May 1940. Many of these works depicted the subject of death and his famous painting, Death and Fire, is considered his personal requiem.

Paul Klee died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on June 29, 1940. He was buried at Schosshalde Friedhof, Bern, Switzerland. A museum dedicated to Klee was built in Bern, Switzerland, by Italian architect Renzo Piano. Zentrum Paul Klee opened in June 2005 and holds a collection of about 4,000 works.

Sources:  MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Wikipedia,

Remedios Varo: 1908-1963

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 Remedios VaroBorn on December 16, 1908,  in Anglés, near Girona, Spain, Remedios Varo is often overlooked as an important surrealist painter. As a child, Varo moved frequently with her family, following her father’s work as a hydraulic engineer.

Varo studied art in Madrid and moved several times between Paris and Spain where she met and exhibited with other leading Surrealist artists. She met her husband, the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, in Barcelona. In 1941, Varo and Péret fled the Nazi occupation in Paris and moved to Mexico City where many other Surrealists had sought exile.

Varo separated from Péret, and initially worked as a commercial artist and illustrator in Mexico City. At the encouragement of Walter Gruen, Austrian exile and businessman, she was able to devote herself full-time to painting for the last eleven years of her life. Her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Diana in 1955 was a great success and earned her international recognition.

Varo became skilled in Surrealist Automatism, a practice where several artists work together to devise unforeseen subjects with smoke or wax on paper or canvas. Varo’s palette consisted mainly of somber oranges, light browns, shadowy grays and greens. Her paintings were carefully drawn, and depicted stories or mystic legends. She often painted heroines engaged in alchemical activities. “A delicate figure may spin and weave tiny threads transforming them into musical instruments or fashion them into paintings of small birds. The settings are often medieval tower rooms equipped with occult laboratory devices.”

Varo was influenced by artists such as Francisco Goya, El Greco, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Georges Braque, pre-Columbian art, and the writing of André Breton. She also borrowed from Romanesque Catalan frescoes and medieval architecture, mixed nature and technology, and combined reality and fantasy to create paintings that defied time and space.

Varo was also influenced by a variety of mystic and hermetic traditions. She was interested in the ideas of C. G. Jung and the theories of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart, and the Sufis. She was also fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail, sacred geometry, alchemy and the I-Ching. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.

Remedios Varo died of a heart attack at the height of her fame in her home in Mexico City on October 8, 1963. Since that time, her works have been seen in over a dozen solo exhibitions and nearly one hundred group shows worldwide.

Sources: Ciudad de la Pintura (images), Wikipedia, NMWA

Wassily Kandinsky: 1866-1944

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Wassily KandinskyBorn on December 16, 1866 in Moscow Russia, Wassily Kandinsky was a painter, printmaker, stage designer, art theorist, and a central artist in the development of 20th century abstract art.

Kandinsky studied economics, ethnography and law in Moscow from 1886 to 1893, and wrote a dissertation on the legality of labourers’ wages. In 1896, Kandinsky decided to become an artist and traveled to Munich, Germany  where he studied at the art school of Anton Ažbe. In 1900, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich under Franz von Stuck.

In Munich, the early 1900s was a centre for Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), and Kandinsky’s art grew out of this movement as well as Russian art. His early works included figure studies, scenes with knights and riders, romantic fairytale subjects and other Russian scenes. He worked with tempera and gouache on black backgrounds and later used printmaking techniques including etching and drypoint. Also at this time, Kandinsky began creating small oil sketches using a palette knife on canvas board.

Between 1903 and 1909, he and his companion Gabriele Münter traveled to the Netherlands, Tunisia, Italy, France and throughout Germany. While in France, Kandinsky stayed in Sèvres, outside Paris, where paintings by Paul Gauguin, les Nabis, Henri Matisse and other Fauvists were exhibiting. He was influenced by these artists and his colours became more vibrant.

Between 1904 and 1908, Kandinsky participated in art exhibitions in Moscow and St Petersburg, the Berlin Secession, and the Salon d’Automne in Paris. He was a co-founder of the Neue künstlervereinigung münchen (Munich New Artist’s Association) in 1909, and exhibited with them at the Moderne Galerie Thannhauser in Munich. Kandinsky had developed a distinctive style of painting and his shift from representational painting towards abstraction, focusing on the synthesis of colour line and form began.

Kandinsky was forced to leave Munich after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and he and Münter stayed for several months in Switzerland. At the end of 1914, he went back to Russia and in December 1915, he traveled to Stockholm, to meet Münter.  He returned to Russia in 1916, where he met Nina von Andreyevskaya, whom he married in February 1917.

Between 1915 and 1919, Kandinsky produced numerous drawings and watercolours, as well as prints and paintings on glass. At times he returned to a more representational style, painting realistic landscapes, views of Moscow, figure paintings, and fairytale scenes. However, his work also included completely abstract ink drawings, and geometric shapes became more prevalent.

Between 1918 and 1921, Kandinsky’s activities as a teacher, writer, administrator and organizer occupied much of his time. He played an active role in Narkompros, where he was director of the theatre and film sections and was an editor of a journal for the publication IZO.  He was also head of a studio at Moscow Svomas art school. Kandinsky still found time to produce large canvases and many watercolours and drawings.

Kandinsky returned to Germany in 1921 and accepted an offer of professorship at the Bauhaus in Weimar. He became master of the wall painting workshop and taught a course on the theory of form. The faculty, which included Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer, developed theoretical courses, led workshops and instruction in crafts and sought to reunite all artistic disciplines.

At the Bauhaus, Kandinsky created about three hundred oils and several hundred watercolours. From the beginning, he had systematically recorded his paintings, and after 1922, he catalogued the watercolours as well. He also produced many drawings which often related to his teaching theories.

During the Bauhaus period, Kandinsky used circles, squares, triangles, zigzags, checker-boards and arrows as components of his abstract works. The shapes became just as meaningful as the abstract images of towers, horses, boats and rowers had been in his art in earlier years.

In 1933, Kandinsky and his wife moved to Paris after the Nazis closed the Bauhaus school. During this time, his art included biomorphic forms, the incorporation of sand with pigment, and a new delicacy and brightness in his colour harmonies. He preferred pastels to the primary colours he had used in the 1920s, and he favoured images derived from biology, zoology and embryology.

Between 1934 and 1944, Kandinsky created 144 oil paintings, about 250 watercolours, and several hundred drawings. His work during this time revealed his personal response to prevailing artistic fashions – the free, organic shapes of Surrealism and the geometric abstraction of Art concret and Abstraction–Création.

Kandinsky became a French citizen shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. He continued working during the period of German occupation and died on December 13, 1944 at Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Sources: MoMA, Wikipedia