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Jean (Hans) Arp: 1886 – 1966

September 16, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Born on September 16, 1886 in Strasbourg (then part of Germany), Jean (Hans) Arp was a pioneer of abstract art and a founding member of the Dada movement.  After studying at the Kunstschule, Weimar from 1905 to 1907, Arp attended the Académie Julian in Paris.

In 1909, Arp moved to Switzerland where in 1911 he was a founder of and exhibited with the Moderne Bund group. One year later, he began creating collages using paper and fabric and influenced by Cubist and Futurist art. Arp then traveled to Paris and Munich where he became aquainted with Robert and Sonia Delaunay Vasily Kandinsky, Amadeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and others.

In 1915, with the onset of World War I, Arp moved to Zurich, feigning mental instability to avoid military service. It is here where he met and collaborated with Sophie Taeuber, creating tapestries and collages, and whom he married in 1922.

In 1916, Arp became part of the founding group of the Zurich Dada artists. Their aim was to encourage spontaneous and chaotic creation, free from prejudice and the academic conventions that many believed were the root causes of war. For Arp, Dada represented the “reconciliation of man with nature and the integration of art into life.” At the end of the war, Arp continued his involvement with Dada promoting it in Cologne, Berlin, Hannover, and Paris.

Although Arp was committed to Dada, he also aligned himself somewhat with the Surrealists, exhibiting with the group in Paris exhibitions in the mid 1920′s. He shared their notion of unfettered creativity, spontaneity, and anti-rational position.

Arp and his wife also had close ties to Constructivist groups such as De Stijl, Cercle et carré, Art Concret and Abstraction–Création, all of which aimed to create a counterbalance to Surrealism as well as to change society for a better future.

In the early 1930′s, Arp developed the principle of the “constellation,” and used it in both his writings and artworks. While creating his reliefs, Arp would identify a theme, such as five white shapes and two smaller black ones on a white ground, and then reassemble these shapes into different configurations.

In the 1930′s, Arp began creating free-standing sculpture. Just as his reliefs were unframed, Arp’s sculptures were not mounted on a base, enabling them to simply take their place in nature. Instead of the term abstract art, he and other artists, referred to their work as Concrete Art, stating that their aim was not to reproduce, but simply to produce more directly. Arp’s goal was to concentrate on form to increase the sculpture’s domination of space and its impact on the viewer.

From the 1930′s onward, Arp also wrote and published poetry and essays. As well, he was a pioneer of  automatic writing and drawing that were important to the Surrealist movement.

With the fall of Paris in 1942, Arp fled the war for Zurich where he remained, returning to Paris in 1946. In 1949, he traveled to New York where he had a solo show at Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery. In 1950, Harvard University in Cambridge, MA invited him to create a relief for their Graduate Center. In 1954, Arp was awarded the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale. Retrospectives of his work were held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1958 and at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962.

Jean Arp died June 7, 1966, in Basel, Switzerland at the age of 80. His works are in major museums around the world including a large collection at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg.




Sources: Guggenheim Museum, MoMA

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Collage, Painting, Sculpture Tagged With: abstract-art, Dada, German Art, Jean Arp, Surrealism

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 7

September 12, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Figure-With-Ribbons-Edith-Branson1. Edith Branson (1891 – 1976) – “Edith Branson was an American modernist painter who created her own interpretation of the multitude of avant-garde movements that blossomed in Europe and New York City in the early 20th century. She was a significant contributor to the New York art scene both through her numerous exhibitions and in the roles she served as a director of the Society of Independent Artists (1934-1940) and as one of the officers of Emily Francis’ Contemporary Arts Gallery. Branson exhibited nearly every year from 1921-1941 with the Society of Independent Artists, as well as with the Municipal Art Galleries (1938).

Most of Branson’s work is reflective of her personal life as a young woman living in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Though not autobiographical, her surrealistic works introduce a woman’s introspection into the many social changes of the day.

Branson’s early paintings were influenced by Cubism and Synchromism but expanded to include Surrealism in the 1930’s. Previously kept in family hands over the last 70 years, Edith Branson’s paintings are currently being reintroduced to American collectors. It is hoped that the reputation she acquired while active will be recaptured and that her position among many other important women artists of that era can be reestablished.” (Blue Heron Fine Art)

Metamorphosis-of-a-Butterfly-Maria-Sibylla-Merian2. Maria Sibylla Merian (April 2, 1647 – January 13, 1717, Frankfurt, Germany) – was a naturalist, scientific illustrator, businesswoman, and publisher who made a significant contribution to the understanding of insects and flowers in the 17th century. Merian was encouraged to paint at a young age by her stepfather and still life painter Jacob Marrel. In 1665, Merian married Marrell’s apprentice, Johann Andreas Graff, had a child, and moved to Nuremberg where she continued to paint, created designs for embroidery patterns, and had many students from wealthy families.  It was in the gardens of the elite that she first began her study of insects and took note of the transformations, and illustrated all the stages of their development in her sketch book.

In 1675, at the age of 28, Merian published her first book “Neues Blumenbuch — New book of flowers”. One year later, she published “The Caterpillar, Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food.”   In 1690, Merian moved to Amsterdam where her work attracted the attention of various contemporary scientists. In 1699 the city of Amsterdam sponsored Merian to travel to Surinam along with her younger daughter, Dorothea Maria. Merian worked in Surinam for two years, travelling around the colony and sketching local animals and plants. She also criticized the way Dutch planters treated Amerindian and black slaves. In 1705 she published a book “Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium” about the insects of Surinam.

In 1715, Merian suffered a stroke and was partially paralysed but she continued to work.  She died in Amsterdam on January 13, 1717. Her daughter Dorothea published “Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis”, a collection of Merian’s work, posthumously.

Untitled1992-Cindy-Sherman3. Cindy Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is aNew York based photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits.

“Sherman’s photographs are portraits of herself in various scenarios that parody stereotypes of woman. A panoply of characters and settings is drawn from sources of popular culture: old movies, television soaps and pulp magazines. Sherman rapidly rose to celebrity status in the international art world during the early 1980s with the presentation of a series of untitled ‘film stills’ in various group and solo exhibitions across America and Europe. While the mood of Sherman’s early works ranges from quiet introspection to provocative sensuality, there are elements of horror and decay in the series from 1988–9. Studies from the early 1990s make pointed caricatures of characters depicted through art history, with Sherman appearing as a grotesque creature in period costume. Her approach forms an ironic message that creation is impossible without the use of prototypes; identity lies in appearance, not in reality.” (MoMA)

In 1995, Sherman was the recipient of one of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowships, popularly known as the “Genius Awards.” This fellowship grants $500,000 over five years, no strings attached, to important scholars in a wide range of fields, to encourage their future creative work. Sherman’s works are in the collections of major galleries and museums around the world including MoMA, New York, Tate (London), Museum Ludwig (Germany), Guggenheim (New York), and others.

Barbara_Hepworth_Winged_Figure_19634. Barbara Hepworth (January 10, 1903 – May 20, 1975) – born in West Riding of Yorkshire, Hepworth won a scholarship to the Leeds School of Art at age sixteen where she studied with Henry Moore, and completed the two-year program in half the time. Her formal art education continued for a three-year period at the Royal College of Art under the honor of a senior scholarship. Hepworth trained in Rome  in sculpture with master stone carvers and by 1924, she was a finalist in the Prix de Rome.

Hepworth returned to England in 1926 to exhibit her work with her husband John Skeaping in their shared studio, and then in a solo exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1928. She joined a small group of pioneer sculptors who were committed to abstraction, with whom she developed her more mature style marked by organic abstraction and innovative use of various media including string, wire and colored paint.

In 1931, Hepworth divorced and two years later married the avant-garde painter Ben Nicholson, beginning a personal and professional relationship that lasted 20 years. By the 1950’s Hepworth’s reputation grew tremendously. Her work was featured at the Venice Biennial and won the top prize at the Sao Paulo Biennial. Additionally, she held her first major retrospective exhibition, which contributed to the honor of Commander of the Order of the British Empire, receiving the rank of Dame in 1965.

In the later part of her life, Hepworth was diagnosed with cancer which left her confined to a wheelchair. Hepworth died in her studio in 1975 as a result of a fire. The studio was later rehabilitated and opened as a museum in 1976.

Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany-Hannah Hoch-19195. Hannah Höch (November 1, 1889 Gotha Germany– May 31, 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. From 1912 to 1914, Höch studied glass design and graphic arts at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin under  Harold Bergen. In 1915, she studied graphics at the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. In that same year, Höch began an influential friendship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement.  Upon completion of her studies, she worked in the handicrafts department for Ullstein Verlang (The Ullstein Press), designing dress and embroidery patterns for Die Dame (The Lady]) and Die Praktische Berlinerin (The Practical Berlin Woman). The influence of this early work and training can be seen in her later work involving references to dress patterns and textiles.

Höch’s work at Verlang working with magazines targeted to women, made her keenly aware of the difference between women in media and reality.  Many of her pieces critique the mass culture beauty industry. Her works from 1926 to 1935 often depicted same sex couples, and women were  a central theme  from 1963 to 1973. Höch also made strong statements on racial discrimination. Her most famous piece “Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser DADA durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands” (“Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany”), is a critique of Weimar Germany in 1919 and combines images from newspapers of the time re-created to make a new statement about life and art in the Dada movement.

Höch spent the years of the Third Reich in Germany quietly in the background. Although her work was not as acclaimed after the war as it had been before, she continued to produce her photomontages and exhibit them internationally until her death in 1978, in Berlin.

Sources: Blue Heron Fine Art (Branson), Wikipedia (Merian), MoMA (Sherman), Leslie Sacks Fine Art (Hepworth), Wikipedia (Höch)

Filed Under: 5 Women Artists Series, ART, Art History, Painting, Photography Tagged With: abstract-art, American Art, Barbara Hepworth, Cindy Sherman, Edith Branson, English Art, German Art, German Dada, Hannah Höch, Maria Sibylla Merian, Surrealism

Dena Schuckit: Abstract Painting

June 24, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Dena Schuckit has a BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and her MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. She was a master printer with Crown Point Press for twelve years.

Schuckit works from stacks of saved and categorized photos pulled from online news. “My hybrid landscapes chart loose and abstracted scenes of construction, destruction and the suspended chaos that often accompanies the two. The process decontextualizes the action from any specific event, instead drawing from the connections that emerge in the process of organizing the photos. Online news is often accompanied by entire slide shows of photos capturing the drama and dynamism of the disaster and the surprising and unplanned landscape that is the deconstructed physical manifest. Sorting stacks of these pictures is a way of mapping my relationship to my landscape. Pattern, shape, color, and event overlap and repeat in a complex rhizome charting the ebb and flow of civilization vs. nature.” (from artist website)

Schuckit’s work is included in the collections of the University of the Arts, London and the Parsons School of Design, New York. Her current solo show ” The Garden is a Raging Sea” at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, Colorado runs August 27th through September 25th.

To see more visit DenaSchuckit.com.



Filed Under: ART, Painting, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: abstract-art, American Art, Dena Schuckit

Chris Langstroth: Painting

June 19, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Chris Langstroth has been a full-time artist for 20 years after graduating from the Ontario College of Art, and later Ryerson University in Toronto, specializing in film and photography. He has participated in numerous solo, group and juried exhibitions, and has his works in many corporate and private collections.

Searching for the most compelling combination of imagery and abstract paint quality, Langstroth often makes his work balance on the edge of abstraction and figuration.

“I enjoy the physicality of thick paint and use knives to smear on one wet layer over another or to excavate through existing layers. Although I strive for a certain ‘visual plausibility’ in my work, representational accuracy is not my prime objective. The most enigmatic and interesting qualities particular to painting have to do with the transformation of pigment in paste to an image on canvas. I am, therefore, seeking to retain some visual evidence of the process used in making the image as a subtext for reading or interpreting it.” — Chris Langstroth

To see more, visit the source links below.




Sources:  Kurbatoff Art Gallery, Oeno Gallery

Filed Under: ART, Painting Tagged With: abstract-art, Canadian Art, Chris Langstroth

Daniel Castan: Painting

June 6, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Born in 1959 in Dordogne France, Daniel Castan is a graduate of the Fine Arts School of Bordeaux. Previously a graphic designer, Castan worked with such organizations as UNICEF, Pierre Balmain, the UN, and  ZIPPO. It was not until the age of 40 that he picked up a paintbrush for his own enjoyment.

Painting with a palette knife and an oil alkyd, Castan  works from his memories and his imagination while maintaining some realism. “

To see more, visit Castan-Daniel.odexpo.com.



Filed Under: ART, Painting Tagged With: abstract-art, Daniel Castan

Jylian Gustlin: Painting

May 10, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Jylian Gustlin is a native Californian and grew up in the San Francisco bay area. She has been shaped by the technology explosion of Silicon Valley and her art reflects her in-depth knowledge of that technology.

“I knew that if I finished, I would never make art” is how Gustlin explains leaving college one semester short of a degree in computer science and mathematics to attend the Academy of Art College, San Francisco. After completing her BFA, Jylian fused her understanding of computers and her passion for art to became a graphics programmer for Apple Computer, Inc. Now, Jylian uniquely combines the effects of modern technology with traditional techniques. While painting in acrylic and oil paints, her artwork often conveys the same complex layered effects possible in computer programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Just as she challenged the creative limitations of the latest computer software, Gustlin experiments with a variety of materials to discover their effects. Working with two-part epoxy resin, oil and acrylic paints, charcoal, wax, gold leaf, pastel and graphite on board, Gustlin draws, paints, scratches on her surfaces.

Figures have always been an important part of Gustlin’s work. Her characters are frequently set in an alien-like landscape, moody and brooding, yet at the same time, depicting a sense of future. For the last several years, Jylian has been working on a series of paintings, related to the  Fibonacci mathematical theory which is based on the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on.  Fibonacci mathematical calculations create rectangles and shell spirals based on the incrementally increasing numbers. She is also exploring the relationship of Fibonacci numbers to the petals on flowers and how to use these ideas in paintings as well as the relationship of Fibonacci to musical scales and the 5-tone scale, 8-tone scale, and 13-tone scale. She continues to explore science and mathematics and how it intersects with the arts. (bio from Jylian Gustlin.com)

To see more, visit Jylian Gustlin.com.




Filed Under: ART, Painting Tagged With: abstract-art, Jylian Gustlin

Alice Vander Vennen – Mixed Media

March 22, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Alice Vander Vennen was born in 1957 in Southwestern Ontario and now lives in Cobourg, Ontario. Vander Vennen completed her BA in Art Education at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has studied visual art at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She has practiced as a professional artist since 1980, with exhibits in Canada and the United States. (from Oeno Gallery)

Artist Statement: “The journey of life reflects a capability of piecing together many views of the world, activities and relationships as an expression of one’s vision. I attempt to reflect this as I work with multiple materiality, fabric, branches, wire, copper, paper and ceramic shards as part of a visual language suggesting a story. The story is part women’s history, the meaning of objects in everyday life and the collection and sorting of intriguing things. I strive to have my art speak as a celebration of the human spirit in relation to its Creator, whether from secret spaces or the most flamboyant expressions. The works form a record of my own journey in life.”

To see more, visit AliceVanderVennen.ca.



Filed Under: ART, Mixed Media, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: abstract-art, Alice Vander Vennen, Candian Art, fibre art

Leslie Wayne: Mixed Media

February 23, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

One-Big-Love-62-Leslie-WayneMore great work from New York based artist Leslie Wayne. Wayne’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the U.S. and Germany. She is in many public collections including Neuberger Museum of Art in New York, The Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

To see more, visit LeslieWayneStudio.com.



Filed Under: ART, Mixed Media Tagged With: abstract-art, American Art, German Art, Leslie Wayne

Katrin Fridriks: Mixed Media

November 20, 2011 By Wendy Campbell

Born in Iceland in 1974, Katrin Fridriks currently lives between Luxemburg and Paris. 

”Her work creates a visual universe and language combining Japanese calligraphy, abstract expressionism and graffiti-inspired aesthetics, all filtered through a concept of installation works with strongly contemporary color palettes.  Natural elements such as water, earth, air and fire, as well as cosmic energies, are sources of inspiration.” (bio from Circle Culture Gallery)

To see more, visit Katabox.com.




Filed Under: ART, Mixed Media, Sculpture Tagged With: abstract-art, Icelandic Art, Katrin Fridriks

Lawren S. Harris: 1885-1970

October 23, 2011 By Wendy Campbell

Born on October 23, 1885 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, Lawren Stewart Harris is widely credited for the formation of the well known Canadian collective called the Group of Seven. Harris grew up in a privileged, conservative, and religious family. His family’s wealth enabled him to focus on painting from an early age and from 1904-1908, he studied painting in Berlin, Germany.  He returned to Canada to serve in the army and taught musketry at Camp Borden training facility in Ontario.

Harris married Beatrice (Trixie) Phillips in 1910 with whom he had three children. In 1911, he met and became friends with J.E.H. MacDonald and the pair formed the Group of Seven. In 1913 Harris and MacDonald saw an exhibition of Scandinavian art in Buffalo, New York and under this influence, he started producing landscape oil paintings. Along with Dr. James MacCallum, Harris financed what was known as The Studio Building in downtown Toronto where the artists could work and live. Other artists in the Group of Seven included Arthur Lismer, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, F.H. Varley, and Frank Carmichael.

Between 1918 and 1921, Harris organized the now famous boxcar trips to Algoma, Ontario. The last of these trips took place in 1921, when Harris and A.Y. Jackson went to the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was here that Harris encountered the stark and bare landscape would become the inspiration for his new direction of his work. Harris was passionate about the North Shore and returned annually for the next seven years. It is here that he developed the style he is best known for –  “characterized by rich, decorative colours that were applied thick, in painterly impasto.”

In 1920, the Group of Seven held their first exhibition and in their time,  dominated the Canadian art scene.  A.Y. Jackson claimed: “Without Harris there would have been no Group of Seven. He provided the stimulus; it was he who encouraged us to always take the bolder course, to find new trails.”

In 1924, Harris traveled to the Rocky Mountains and returned annually for the next three years. In 1930, his landscape paintings became simplified as he sailed with A.Y. Jackson aboard a supply ship in the Arctic.

In 1934, Harris divorced his wife and married Bess Housser, whom he had fallen in love with 20 years earlier.  He and Bess moved to New Hampshire where Harris was the artist in residence at Darmouth College. In 1938 they moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he worked with Dr. Emil Bisttram, leader of the Transcendental Group of Painters, which Harris helped found in 1939.  In 1940, the couple moved permanently  to Vancouver, Canada where Harris continued to explore “abstraction inspired by the rhythms of nature.”

Harris was interested in philosophy and eastern thought and was involved in Theosophy.  His “belief in theosophy was intimately linked to his development as a nonobjective artist. Through abstract paintings, many of which use forms from landscape, he sought to portray a binding and healing conception of the universe – to make the sublime visual. His paintings have been criticized as being cold, but in fact they reflect the depth of his spiritual involvement.”

In 1969 Harris was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. He died in Vancouver on January 29, 1970 and is buried in the small cemetery on the McMichael Gallery grounds in Kleinburg, Ontario, where many of his works are held.

To learn more about Lawren Harris, visit the source links below the image gallery.





Sources: McMichael Gallery, Art History Archive, Group of Seven Art, BertC.com (images), The Canadian Encyclopedia

Filed Under: ART, Art History Tagged With: abstract-art, Canadian Art, Group of Seven, Lawren S. Harris

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