Sculpture Archives – Page 6 of 35

DAF Group Feature: Vol. 153

April 26, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Your Weekly Mixx – Enjoy! DAF’s Weekly Mixx is a selection of nine contemporary artworks and/or art related videos chosen from artist and gallery submissions and from our own search for new and interesting works. Visit the Submissions page for information on how to have your art featured in the Weekly Mixx.

Joan Miró: 1893-1983

April 20, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born on April 20, 1893 in Barcelona, Joan Miró Ferra was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and decorative artist and a key figure in the history of abstract art.

Miró studied business at the Escuela de Comercio and art at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios de la Lonja in Barcelona from 1907 to 1910. In 1911, an attack of typhus, as well as nervous depression, enabled him give up his business course and resume his art studies. From 1912-15 he attended Francesc Galí’s Escola d’Art in Barcelona.

Between 1915 and 1918 Miró painted in a style that he described as Fauve, using strong, bright colours. During this period he painted portraits as well as landscapes and views of villages in the province of Tarragona. In 1918 Miró had his first solo exhibition in the Barcelona gallery run by Lluís Dalmau, a key figure in the Catalan avant-garde.

From 1918 to 1922 Miró’s paintings became meticulous and precise with a stylization and flatness akin to the Romanesque paintings that had impressed him in the Museu d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. In 1920, he traveled to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso. From this time on, he divided his time between Paris and Montroig, Spain. In Paris, he associated with the poets Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, and Tristan Tzara and participated in Dada activities. Miró had his first solo show in Paris at the Galerie la Licorne in 1921 and his work was included in the Salon d’Automne of 1923.

In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealist group. In 1925, his solo show at the Galerie Pierre in Paris was a major Surrealist event. That same year, Miró was included in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre. In 1928, he visited the Netherlands and began a series of paintings inspired by Dutch masters. It was during this that that he also produced his first papiers collés and collages.

In 1929, Miró began experimenting with lithography, and his first etchings date from 1933. From 1934 to 1936 Miró produced a series of Wild Paintings, which manifested a violence that had previously been unseen. “Aggression, sexuality and drama here took a deformed and grotesque human form which was emphasized by strange and unexpected materials and surfaces; in some cases paint was mixed with sand and applied to cardboard, while in others he scrawled graffiti on masonite or over paper prepared with tar.”

Miró’s first major museum retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. That same year, he began working in ceramics with Josep Lloréns y Artigas and started to concentrate on prints. From 1954-58, Miró worked almost exclusively in these two mediums. In 1958, Miró received a Guggenheim International Award for his murals for the UNESCO building in Paris.

In 1960, Miró’s work underwent a dramatic change when he began to use black to outline shapes and to fill them in. This work is “dramatic, even tragic, with colour often suppressed or counteracted by the weight accorded to black. His faith in abstraction was expressed during this period with particular eloquence in large canvases in which broad strokes of colour were set against sensuously painted backgrounds, as in his paintings of the mid-1920s; the simplicity of gesture and boldness of scale and handling make these among his most impressive and influential later works.”

From 1966 onward, Miró worked intensely in sculpture. These works were based mainly on small objects, which he joined in unique ways. Stones, branches and other objects as well as manufactured items, were joined in a Surrealist style but in a way that also revealed his desire for contact with nature and simple things.

A Miró retrospective took place at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1974. In 1978, the Musée National d’Art Moderne exhibited over 500 works in a major retrospective of his drawings.

Joan Miró died December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. His final work, completed after his death, was the large sculpture Woman and Bird, which was installed in the gardens on the former site of the Barcelona abattoir.

Sources: Guggenheim Venice, MoMA,

DAF Group Feature: Vol. 152

April 19, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

DAF Group Feature: Vol. 151

April 11, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Your Weekly Mixx – Enjoy! DAF’s Weekly Mixx is a selection of nine contemporary artworks chosen from artist and gallery submissions and from our own search for new and interesting works. Visit the Submissions page for information on how to have your art featured in the Weekly Mixx.

DAF Group Feature: Vol. 150

April 3, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Max Ernst: 1891-1976

April 2, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Max Ernst was born on April 2, 1891 in Brühl, Germany. A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.

Ernst studied philosophy at the University at Bonn in 1909 and was influenced by the ideas of Freud, Nietzsche and the Max Stirner. In 1911 Ernst became associated with August Macke and joined the Rheinische Expressionisten group in Bonn. He exhibited for the first time in 1912 at the Galerie Feldman in Cologne. In 1913 he met poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay and traveled to Paris. In 1914 he met Jean Arp, who was to become a lifelong friend.

From 1914-1918, Ernst served in the German Army. He continued to paint, influenced semi-Cubist, semi-abstract motifs following Delaunay, Arp and Apollinaire. “Like many German writers and artists he was scarred by his experience of the war; it led him to reject the values of his family and class and to join in with the provocative, critical stance of the Dada movement.”

Ernst married art historian Louise Strauss in 1918. Between 1919 and 1920, he collaborated with Johannes Baargeld in Cologne on an exhibition and a series of publications similar in style of the Dada activities in Zurich and Berlin. In 1922, Ernst left his wife and child and moved illegally to Paris, where he lived and collaborated with French poet Paul Elouard and his wife Gala.

“After 1918 Ernst rarely employed conventional techniques in his paintings. His early work shows that he was a technically skilled painter and draughtsman. Between 1918 and 1924 virtually all his paintings and prints were based on the principle of collage, and this practice remained central to his later work. Ernst’s major paintings of 1921–4 do not employ collage, but their composition is based on the collage principle. Ernst’s definition of collage as ‘the culture of systematic displacement’ and ‘the exploitation of the chance meeting of two distant realities on an unfamiliar plane’”

From 1925-1927, Ernst developed the frottage technique which he said was a form of automatism. In 1926, he produced a series of drawings called Histoire naturelle that he exhibited and published. “The drawings were made by placing sheets of paper over different objects such as floorboards and leaves, and rubbing with a stick of graphite. Through precise selection, combination, control of texture and some discreet additions, he was able to build up delicate, surprising images of fantasy landscapes, plants and creatures. He adapted this fundamentally simple technique to painting in the form of grattage, by which textures and patterns were made through simultaneously rubbing and scraping off layers of paint. Representational forms were then extracted from the whole by means of overpainting.” Ernst used variations on the technique in most of his paintings for the next several years, especially in the Forest series.”

Ernst held successful exhibitions between 1925 and 1928, and became a “fashionable” artist in Paris. In 1926 he painted sets for Diaghilev’s production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in collaboration with Joan Miró. In 1927, Ernst married Marie-Berthe Aurenche and painted After Us—Motherhood, using calm, harmonious forms and warm colours. “This painting, along with the three versions of Monument to the Birds, illustrates Ernst’s growing preoccupation with bird imagery during this period.”

In 1929, Ernst renewed his interest in collage producing the ‘novel’, La Femme 100 têtes (‘The woman with 100 heads’). The book consisted of 124 captioned pictures which were made by adapting images taken from late 19th-century illustrated magazines. From 1929 to 1932, Ernst also created a series of collages featuring ‘Loplop, the Bird-Superior’. “In these and other collages Loplop represents the artist himself and presents a sequence of tableaux illustrating Ernst’s technical methods and ideas.”

During this period, Ernst supported the ideas of the Surrealists. “Andre Breton’s novel Nadja and Dalí’s advocacy of the ‘paranoiac-critical’ method were important background influences on his work. Ernst renewed his solidarity with the group in his collage Loplop Introduces Members of the Surrealist Group.”

From 1925 to 1931 many of Ernst’s works carried imagery that was “violent and menacing. This aspect of his work became more prominent after 1933, partly in reaction to the political and social climate of the time.” Ernst (as well as many other German artists and writers) was condemned by the Nazi cultural authorities.

During the 1930s Ernst became increasingly well known. He exhibited at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York and in 1936 and 1938, participated in the large international Surrealist exhibitions in London, New York and Paris.

At the outbreak of WWII, Ernst was interned as an enemy alien. With the help of Peggy Guggenheim, was able flee to New York in July 1941. Ernst married Guggenheim in 1942 and became a leading figure among the art community in New York. His marriage to Guggenheim was short, and in 1946, Ernst married American artist Dorothea Tanning.

In New York, Ernst developed a technique using paint dripped from a suspended, swinging can and renewed his belief in the “unconscious sources of his work.” Many of his paintings of this period employ the technique of decalcomania where “rich, unpredictable patterns were obtained by either taking an impression from, or sponging, layers of liquid paint: figurative motifs were then developed by overpainting.”

In 1946 Ernst and Tanning settled in Sedona, Arizona, and in 1948, he gained American citizenship. Between 1943 and 1950 he created a series of paintings in a controlled geometric style and produced a number of sculptures.

In 1953 Ernst and Tanning returned to France where he had his first major post-war retrospective at Knokke-Het Zoute. Ernst became a naturalized French citizen in 1958. His reputation grew steadily after his return to Europe and in 1954 he was awarded a Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale. In the following years, major exhibitions of his work were held in New York, Cologne, and Stockholm. Major retrospectives of his work were held in New York and Paris in 1975.

Max Ernst died on April 1, 1976 in Paris. He was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Sources: MoMA, Olga’s Gallery (images), Guggenheim, Wikipedia

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Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs

March 27, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

In honour of those celebrating Easter this weekend, DAF presents the infamous Fabergé eggs. The House of Fabergé made thousands of jeweled eggs from 1885 through 1917. The majority of these were miniature ones that were popular gifts at Eastertide. The most famous eggs were the larger Imperial Easter Eggs made for Alexander III and Nicholas II of Russia.

Fabergé was given complete creative freedom in creating the eggs. The only stipulations were that each egg must be unique and must contain a surprise. The eggs were made with precious metals or hard stones decorated with combinations of enamel and gem stones. The term “Fabergé egg” has become a symbol of luxury and the eggs are regarded as masterpieces of the jeweller’s art. Of the 50 made, 42 have survived.

In 2014, an original Fabergé Imperial Easter Egg was discovered in the United States. It was bought by a scrap metal dealer in the US, who had been intending on melting it down. The value of the egg was estimated at approximately $33 million USD.

Read more on Wikipedia and Fabergé.com.