abstract-art Archives – Daily Art Fixx

Jean-Paul Riopelle: 1923 – 2002

October 7, 2019 By Wendy Campbell

Born on October 7, 1923 in Montreal, Canada, Jean-Paul Riopelle is one of Canada’s most famous painters. Riopelle studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal in 1942, and then at the École du Meuble, graduating in 1945. He studied with Paul-Émile Borduas under whose direction Riopelle created his first abstract painting.

Riopelle was a member of a group of writers and artists in Quebec called the Automatistes, led by Borduas, and was a signer of the Refus global manifesto. In 1946, he traveled to France, and then returned to settle the following year. Pioneering a style of painting where large quantities of coloured paints were thickly applied to the canvas with a trowel, Riopelle gained increasing success and immersion in the Parisian cultural scene. From 1949, he had numerous solo exhibitions in Canada, France, Italy, Spain, England, the United States and Sweden. He was represented in New York and participated in the biennials of contemporary art in Venice (1954) and Sao Paulo (1955). He spent his evenings in Paris bistros with friends including playwright Samuel Beckett and artist Alberto Giacometti.

In the 1960s, Riopelle renewed his ties to Canada. Exhibitions were held at the National Gallery of Canada (1963), and the Musée du Quebec held a retrospective in 1967. In the early 1970s, he built a home and studio in the Laurentians in Quebec. From 1974 he divided his time between St. Marguerite in Quebec, and Saint-Cyr-en-Arthies in France. Riopelle participated in his last exhibition in 1996. From 1994 until his death, he maintained homes in both St. Marguerite and Isle-aux-Grues, Quebec. Jean Paul Riopelle died at his home on Îsle-aux-Grues on March 12, 2002.

Riopelle received numerous awards and honorary degrees in his lifetime including the 1958 Prix International Guggenheim award, the 1962 Unesco prize, the 1973 Philippe Hébert Prize, and in 1975, he was inducted as a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Riopelle’s works are in collections around the globe including New York’s Guggenheim Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, the Galerie d’art Moderne in Basel, Switzerland, the Museum of Modern Art in Brazil, Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, McMichael Canadian Art Collection and Ottawa’s National Gallery.

Sources: Gallerie Walter Klinkhoff, National Gallery of Canada, All-Art.org,

Wassily Kandinsky: 1866-1944

December 16, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born 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.

: Kandinsky, On White II 1923.jpg

Sources: MoMA, Wikipedia

Alma Thomas: 1891-1978

September 22, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born 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

Takao Tanabe: Painting, Printmaking

September 16, 2016 By Susan Benton

Takao Tanabe, considered one of Canada’s leading painters and printmakers, has shown work nationally and internationally for over sixty years. Though he studied in New York, Tokyo and London, it was his native area of the coast of western Canada that attracted and inspired him to move from the Abstraction painting of his youth to landscape, the painting that he has become most known for. A self-described minimalist painter, his painting and his teaching have garnered him many awards including the Order of British Columbia, the Order of Canada and the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Takao Tanabe was born Takao Izumi in the small village of Seal Cove (now Prince Rupert) on September 16, 1926, the son of a commercial fisherman. The fishing village on the coast of northern British Columbia was primarily a Japanese-Canadian community and Takao spent the summers of his youth in fishing camps on the Skeena River. The family moved to Vancouver in 1937, however just a few years later, they were forced to leave their home. The 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor in World War II saw the Canadian government impose restrictions on Japanese-Canadians and the family was interned at a “relocation” camp in British Columbia as Japanese aliens. The young man, along with his two older siblings, were then moved to eastern Manitoba as indentured workers on a sugar-beet farm.

At the end of the war, Takao, now with the last name of Tanabe, after his mother’s family, went to Winnipeg in 1946. He began courses at the Winnipeg School of Art and also attended the University of Manitoba.

In 1950, Tanabe studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School in New York. His work reflected the major genre of Abstract Expressionism that was taking hold in America after World War II. He was fortunate enough to take drawing classes from Hans Hofmann, a major artist of the Abstract movement. Tanabe was to remain an Abstract painter, “using geometric shapes, flat spatial planes, perspective and bold colours in a range of mediums”, for more than twenty years.

Tanabe returned home to Canada in 1952, exhibiting to good reviews in Vancouver and taking a few classes at Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta. Over the next ten years he would have the opportunity to travel and learn different aspects of painting and art in England and Japan. In 1953, he was the recipient of an Emily Carr scholarship and was able to attend the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, England. By 1957, Tanabe was gaining recognition and had a one-man show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as exhibits across the country, and internationally – at the Bienal de São Paulo and in Milan.

Support from the Canada Council for the Arts allowed Tanabe to visit Japan in 1959, where he learned the arts of calligraphy and sumi-e (Japanese ink painting) at the Tokyo University of Arts. His new knowledge impacted his painting, and by the early 1960s he was creating Japanese-influenced ink drawings (Falling Water, 1967).

Tanabe returned to Vancouver in 1961 to teach at the Vancouver Art School and was to stay there for seven years, during which time he painted large-scale murals. In 1968, he went back to the States, working in Philadelphia and then in New York City until 1972, when an offer from Banff Art Centre in Alberta, Canada, not only brought him back to Canada but also coincided with a significant change in his work.

“After 22 years of painting abstract painting, I decided it was time to try something else…painting landscape…” he said. His week-long journey across the prairies to his new position inspired a whole series of landscape painting reflecting the flat and vast prairies. Tanabe has said that it is “simpler for my brain to think in series”, and indeed he has painted many landscape series including a series of 20 of the mountains in winter.

After seven years at Banff, and after influencing hundreds of students, Tanabe and his wife moved to Vancouver Island in 1980 where he could paint full time in a place of which he has said, “If you know B.C., you know the variety of landscapes and seascapes…islands, mountains, and valleys. It’s got a prairie-like atmosphere up in the Cariboo area…you don’t have to go look anywhere else…nothing holds a candle to the variety of views that BC offers.”

When last we checked, Tanabe still paints in his rural B.C. studio every day. His work, purely devoted to nature, explicitly without the human intervention in the landscape (railway lines, telephone poles, silos, etc.) and with the smooth finish of the artist who wants the paint to look as though it “just floated on”, has been collected by the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and many other public and private galleries. He is well known for “his transcendent light and atmosphere, which fluctuates from delicate and misty to stormy and brooding in his landscapes”, and his work appeals to collectors and is in high demand – perhaps for the meaning that Tanabe sees in the weather it depicts.

In 2000, Tanabe said in his artist statement for an exhibition of his work in B.C., “However much we desire order and clarity in all the details of our lives, there are always unexpected events that cloud and change our course. Life is ragged. The typical weather of the coast is like that, just enough detail to make it interesting but not so clear as to be banal or overwhelming. It can be a metaphor for life.”

Sources: www.heffel.com, www.gallery.ca, www.ngcmagazine.ca, Exhibition catalogue Takao Tanabe: Wet Coasts and Dry Lands (Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, B.C., 2000), at p. 13

Henry Moore: 1898 – 1986

July 30, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Widely recognized as one of the most important British sculptors of the 20th century, Henry Spencer Moore was born on July 30, 1898, in Castleford, Yorkshire. Moore had an early interest in sculpting, however he began his career as a teacher in Castleford. After serving in the military during World War I, Moore studied at Leeds School of Art on an ex-serviceman’s grant. In 1921, he won a Royal Exhibition Scholarship to study sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Between 1924 and 1931, Moore was an Instructor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy. His first solo exhibition was held at the Warren Gallery, London, in 1928.

“Throughout his life Moore’s appetite for the history of world sculpture was insatiable. Drawings of sculptures in his early sketchbooks indicate that Palaeolithic fertility goddesses, Cycladic and early Greek art, Sumerian, Egyptian and Etruscan sculpture, African, Oceanic, Peruvian and Pre-Columbian sculpture particularly interested him. Moore believed passionately in direct carving and in ‘truth to materials’, respecting the inherent character of stone or wood. Almost all of his works from the 1920s and 1930s were carved sculptures, initially inspired by Pre-Columbian stone carving.” (MoMa)

Moore married Irina Radetsky in 1929. A student of painting at the Royal College, she would be Moore’s model for a series of life drawings over a six year period.

Moore’s sculpture of the 1930s was influenced by the work of Picasso, Hans Arp and Alberto Giacometti. “The subject-matter of Moore’s work of 1932 to 1936 is, in some cases, no longer readily identifiable, although the human, psychological element informs even the seemingly abstract work of the 1930s.”

In the 1930s Moore was a member of Unit One, a group of artists lead by English landscape painter Paul Nash. From 1932 to 1939, he taught at the Chelsea School of Art. Moore was “an important force in the English Surrealist movement, although he was not entirely committed to its doctrines; Moore participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London, in 1936.”

In 1940, Moore was appointed an official war artist and was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to execute drawings of life in underground bomb shelters. From 1940 to 1943, he focused almost entirely on drawing. His first retrospective took place at Temple Newsam, Leeds, in 1941 and he was given his first major retrospective in the United States by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1946. Moore won the International Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale of 1948.

Moore’s bronze Reclining Figure commissioned by the Arts Council for the Festival of Britain in 1951 was key in Moore’s development. “Previously the holes in his sculptures were dominated by the solid forms surrounding them but here ‘the space and the form are completely dependent on and inseparable from each other’ His work became less frontal and more completely three-dimensional. The reclining figure and the mother and child remained the dominant subjects of his sculpture.”

After the mid-1950s, many of Moore’s sculptures were made from natural objects including bones, shells, pebbles and flint stones.

Until the mid-1950s, Moore made numerous preparatory drawings for his sculptures as well as pictorial studies of interiors and sculptures in landscape settings. He drew little between 1955 and 1970, but during the last 15 years of his life he devoted more of his time to drawing for pleasure, independent of his sculpture. He first made prints in 1931, and he experimented with a process he called collograph. By the end of his life Moore had produced 719 prints.

“Moore executed several important public commissions in the 1950s, among them Reclining Figure, 1956–58, for the UNESCO Building in Paris. In 1963, the artist was awarded the British Order of Merit. In the 1970s, there were many major exhibitions of Moore’s work, the finest being at Forte di Belvedere, overlooking Florence (1972). The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, opened in 1974. It comprises the world’s largest public collection of Moore’s work, most of it donated by the artist himself between 1971 and 1974. In 1977, the Henry Moore Foundation was established at Much Hadham, and Moore presented 36 sculptures to the Tate Gallery in 1978.”

Henry Moore died in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, on August 31, 1986.

Sources: Guggenheim, MoMA, Wikimedia Commons (images), Tate, Oval With Points Photo by Maia C

James Oberschlake: Painting / Mixed Media

May 25, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

After some attention as a book illustrator in the late nineties, Ohio-based artist James Oberschlake returned to school and received his MFA from the University of Cincinnati in 2011. He is the founder and director of an online resource for American figurative art called Figure50, which features one artist from every state in the U.S. on a rotating basis. His time is currently divided between managing Figure50, painting nearly full time, and exploring the natural surroundings along the Ohio River. James recently returned from an extended visit to his wife’s home country, Thailand, and suspects that the strange sights there will begin to filter into his new work. (Image left: James Oberschlake – Bestial, oil and collage on board, 16 x 12)

Artist Statement:

I nearly always begin an image by drawing loose forms with paint. Very quickly I will start to make associations with those forms and will then begin a lengthy process of continually reexamining and redefining the anatomical and spatial possibilities suggested by previous marks. A large portion of my intent, and a source of much enjoyment, is simply to explore a diverse range of textures and color/value relationships while the realization of subject matter morphs into focus. In utilizing a free association approach, layers of content build as a narrative in conjunction with the physical application of materials. With no initial objective for content, the stories found in the work typically remain ambiguous, allowing for a raw, emotional response and a variety of personal interpretations.

To see more works by James Oberschlake, visit oberschlake.com and connect with him on Instagram.

Yves Klein: 1928 – 1962

April 28, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Yves Klein was born on April 28, 1928 in Nice, France. He had no formal art training though both of his parents were artists. Between 1948 and 1952, he traveled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Japan where he became a master at judo, achieving a 4th degree black belt. In 1954, Klein settled in Paris and began his career as an artist.

A student of Eastern religions and Rosicrucianism, Klein’s quest for pure color led him to paint in monochrome. He worked with a chemist to develop his “International Klein Blue” which was made from pure colour pigment and a binding medium. Klein considered monochrome painting to be an “open window to freedom, and the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of color.”

Klein’s artistic breakthrough occurred in 1956 when he aroused public debate with the exhibition Yves: Propositions Monochromes at the Galerie Colette Allendy in Paris. The exhibition consisted of 20 monochrome surfaces, each a different shade of red, purple, orange, yellow and blue. The French critic Pierre Restany, in his speech at the opening of the exhibition, described Klein’s paintings as ‘single-colour proposals’.

“Klein presented his work in forms that were recognized as art but would then take away the expected content of that form (paintings without pictures, a book without words, a musical composition without in fact composition) leaving only a shell. He wanted his subjects to be represented by their imprint: the image of their absence.” (wiki)

In 1960, Klein, along with art critic Pierre Restany, and other artists founded the Nouveau Réalisme art movement. Restany wrote the original manifesto for the group, titled the “Constitutive Declaration of New Realism,” proclaiming, “Nouveau Réalisme – new ways of perceiving the real.”

Klein was a showman and one of his most famous events was the imprinting of paper with naked models smeared with blue paint, as he directed their performance to music. As well as his monochrome works, Klein created sculptures using sea sponges, paintings made with fire, and is well known for his exhibit called The Void, in which he chose to exhibit an empty gallery room, void of everything but a large cabinet.

Klein used two other colours before and after his Blue Period, yellow/gold and red. These colours represented his ideas of the immaterial. “Gold is the colour of the Absolute, the infinity of (divine) space. Red stands for life, fire and warmth.”

During his brief career, Klein’s body of work was an important precursor to art movements including minimal, conceptual, land and performance art. Yves Klein died of a heart attack on June 6, 1962 at the height of his career. He was 34 years old.

Sources: MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Wikipedia, Coskun Fine Art, Hirshorn (images)

Jean Hélion: 1904 – 1987

April 21, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born in Normandy, France on April 21, 1904, Jean Hélion is recognized as one of the leading abstract painters in Europe during the 1930’s. Hélion moved to Paris in 1921 where he worked as an architectural apprentice until deciding to become a painter in 1925. He became a member of the Groupe Art Concret in 1929 and co-founded Abstraction Creation in 1931 – an international association of artists who advocated pure abstration.

Hélion moved to the United States (New York, and Virginia) in 1936 and continued his abstract work until 1939 when (much to his admirer’s disappointment) he began to paint in a figurative style.

Hélion returned to Paris in 1940 to serve with the Armed Forces. During this time, he was taken prisoner and help captive until 1942 when he managed to escape. He published a book on his WWII experiences called “They Shall Not Have Me” in 1943.

Hélion returned to America for a short period but then went back to Paris in 1946 where he continued his work painting scenes of everyday life. When asked by a journalist about his abandonment of abstract art, he said the war was an influence on his return to figurative painting. And that “A man who has been locked up for a few years knows the value of reality”.⑴

Jean Hélion made Paris his home until his death on October 27, 1987. Today, his works can be seen at the MOMA and other galleries in the US, as well as the Tate Gallery in London and many Museums in France.

Sources: Wikipedia, NY Times 1981, 1989, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim

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,

Kazimir Malevich: 1878-1935

February 23, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born near Keiv, Ukraine on February 23 or 26, 1878 or 1879, depending on who you talk to, Kazimir (Kasimir) Malevich was a Russian painter, printmaker, decorative artist and writer. Though relatively forgotten until recently, Malevich is now recognized as a pioneer of geometric abstract art, an originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement, and one of the major artists of the 20th century.

Malevich began painting at age 12 and studied at the Kiev School of Art from 1895-96. He grew up in the Ukraine until the family moved to Kursk, Russia in 1896 where he and his father worked for the railway company. In 1903, Malevich studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1904, he studied a the Stroganov School in Moscow and privately with painter Ivan Rerberg.

At the beginning of his career, Malevich experimented with various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, including the Moscow Artists’ Association alongside Vasily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow.

In 1915, Malevich published his manifesto “From Cubism to Suprematism” and laid out the foundations of the Suprematist movement which focused on fundamental geometric forms, in particular the square and circle. In 1916-1917, he participated in exhibitions of the “Jack of Diamonds” group in Moscow with other Suprematist artists including Nathan Altman, David Burliuk and A. Ekster.

In 1919, Malevich joined the art school in Vitebsk (Viciebsk), directed by Marc Chagall. While there, he established a movement of his own called “Unovis” (Affirmers of New Art). The movement focused mainly on his ideas on Suprematism and produced a number of projects and publications that greatly influenced the avant-garde in Russia. After Chagall’s retirement in 1919/20, Malevich’s interest in theoretical and philosophical topics grew and he abandoned painting for several years, to concentrate on teaching and writing. He continued to develop his Suprematist ideas in his ‘architectural’ works, including cardboard models of Utopian towns.

From 1922 to 1927, Malevich taught at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Petrograd, and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural models with his students. In 1927, he took up painting again and traveled with an exhibition of his work to Warsaw and Berlin. Malevich arranged to leave many of his paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union. “Malevich’s assumption that a shifting in the attitudes of the Soviet authorities towards the modernist art movement would take place after the death of Lenin and Trotsky’s fall from power, were proven correct when the Stalinist regime turned against forms of abstractism, considering them a type of “bourgeois” art, that could not express social realities. As a consequence, many of his works were confiscated and he was banned from creating and exhibiting similar art. Critics derided Malevich for reaching art by negating everything good and pure: love of life and love of nature. Malevich responded that art can advance and develop for art’s sake alone, regardless of its pleasure: art does not need us, and it never needed us since stars first shone in the sky.”

In 1934, Malevich became seriously ill with cancer. The artist planned his own funeral, designed his own coffin which was decorated with a black square and circle. Malevich died on May 15, 1935. His coffin was carried through the streets of Leningrad on a truck followed by many artists and friends. After his cremation in Moscow, the urn was placed in the fields near Nemchinovka.

Up until the late 1950’s, Malevich’s work was remembered only by a small group of artists and collectors in the Soviet Union and in Europe. Between 1956 and 1958, a large group of his paintings, originally shown in Berlin in 1927, were acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. This led to renewed interest in his work. Since then, Malevich has been widely recognized as one of the major artists of the 20th century.

Artist Statement:

Sources: MoMA, Guggenheim, Kazimir Malevich.org, Wikipedia