Daily Art Fixx

visual arts blog, painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration and more!

Henry Moore: 1898 – 1986

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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

David Hockney: Painting/Photo Collage

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David-HockneyBorn on July 9, 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, David Hockney is a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.

From 1953-57, Hockney studied at the Bradford School of Art and then at the Royal Collage of Art from 1959-62. He received the Royal College of Art gold medal in 1962 for his paintings and draughtsmanship.

Hockney’s early work was diverse. He became associated with the British Pop Art movement (though he rejected this label), but his work also displayed expressionist elements. In the late 1960’s his work was “weightier” with a more “traditionally representational manner”.  He spent much of his time in the United States, and California swimming pools and homoerotic scenes became well-known themes in his work.

In the 1970’s Hockney worked as a stage designer creating set and costume designs for productions including Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Mozart’s The Magic Flute which were produced at Glyndebourne Opera House. Hockney was the subject of the 1974 Jack Hazan’s film called “A Bigger Splash” (named after one of Hockney’s swimming pool paintings from 1967).

In the early 1980’s Hockney produced photo collages which he called “joiners” with subject matter from portraits to still life, and from representational to abstract styles. “Using varying numbers of small Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject, Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. Because these photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work that has an affinity with Cubism, which was one of Hockney’s major aims—discussing the way human vision works.”

In the mid to late 80’s, Hockney made use of computers, colour photocopiers and fax machines to create artwork. In 1985, he was commissioned to draw with the Quantel Paintbox, a computer program that allowed the artist to sketch directly onto the monitor. In 1989, he sent work for the Sao Paulo Biennale to Brazil via fax. Hockney experimented with computers, composing images and colours on the monitor and printing them directly from the computer without proofing.

From the 1990’s onward, Hockney has continued to work on a variety of paintings, photographic and digital work, as well as opera productions. His works have been exhibited across the globe and are in the collections of most major museums. As well, many of his works are now located in a converted industrial building called Salts Mill, in Saltaire, near his home town of Bradford.

Hockney currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California and London, England. “Since 2009, Hockney has painted hundreds of portraits, still lifes, and landscapes using the Brushes iPhone and iPad application, sending them to his friends.”

In 2012, Hockney transferred paintings valued at $124.2 million to the David Hockney Foundation, and gave an additional $1.2 million in cash to help fund the foundation’s operations. The artist plans to give away the paintings, through the foundation, to galleries including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Tate in London.

For more information about David Hockney, visit DavidHockneyPictures.com.


Sandra Dieckmann: Illustration

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Born in Oldenburg , Germany in 1983, Sandra Dieckmann urrently lives and works as a Freelance illustrator and Manager for the RSPCA in East London. Dieckmann studied fashion design in 2006 and eventually earned  a degree in Graphic Information Design from the University of Westminster in London.

“My work eternally explores and expresses my personal love for drawing and observing animals and the planet we live on … bathed in all the shades of human emotion.”

To see more, visit SandraDieckmann.com.

Sources: Creative Boom

5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 7

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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)

Nom Kinnear King: Painting

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Blustery-Dae-Nom-Kinnear-KingOriginally From The Norfolk Countryside, now living south in Hove, east Sussex Nom Kinnear King creates creates in oils imaginary female portraits. Her subjects are girls who roam from town to town in a patchwork old fashioned never world, where accordions and clarinets trail their steps, their joyful and curious behaviour shadowed by sweet melancholy.

Nom is represented by Fine Grime, Just Another Agency, and  George Thornton. She is also a member of the Prisma artist collective.

To see more, visit NomKinnearKing.com.

Alexander Korzer-Robinson: Cut Book Art

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gothic-bestiary-alexander-korzer-robinson

Drawing from a background in psychology, Bristol UK based artist Alexander Korzer-Robinson focuses on the notion of the “inner landscape”.  Using discarded materials, Korzer-Robinson makes objects as “an invitation to the viewer to engage her/his own inner life in order to assign meaning to the artwork.”

His cut book art is made by working through the books, page by page, cutting around some of the illustrations while removing others. The images seen in the finished work, are left standing in the place where they would appear in the complete book. As a final step the book is sealed around the cut, and can no longer be opened.

Of his work, Korzer -Robinson says: “As we remember the books from our own past, certain fragments remain with us while others fade away over time – phrases and passages, mental images we created, the way the stories made us feel and the thoughts they inspired. In our memory we create a new narrative out of those fragments, sometimes moving far away from the original content. This is, in fact, the same way we remember our life – an ever changing narrative formed out of fragments. This mostly subconscious process of value judgements and coincidence is what interests me as an artist and as a psychologist. Through the artistic work, these books, having been stripped of their utilitarian value by the passage of time, regain new purpose. They are no longer tools to learn about the world, but rather a means to gain insight about oneself.”

To see more of Alexander Korzer-Robinson’s work, visit AlexanderKorzerRobinson.co.uk.

Iain Mcarthur: Drawing

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Born in 1986 in Swindon, England, Iain Mcarthur became an art fanatic at the age of eight. Inspired by cartoon shows and comic books, he began creating odd fantasy drawings and and anime characters.  As he grew older, he began drawing realistic figures and faces, influenced by artists such as Mucha, Klimt, Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, James Jean, and others.

Mcarthur graduated from Swindon College in illustration and hopes to continue illustration studies in the future.  Using mostly pencil, watercolours, and pigment pens, he specializes in shirt designs, tattoo designs, prints designs, posters, album art, logo and branding, and editorial illustration.

To see more of Iain’s work, check out his profile on Behance Network or his blog IanMcarthur.blogspot.com.

Lindsey Carr: “The Augmented Animal” @ Roq La Rue Gallery

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gifts_from_the_red_barbarians-Lindsey-CarrLindsey Carr is an artist living and working on the coastline in the South-West of Scotland. Many of her subjects however, tend to be from more exotic locations and her wanderlust is expressed in paint rather than travel.  Her work is strongly influenced by European and Chinese natural history paintings and their subjects.  She sometimes uses these to examine the problems of “nature vs nurture”. Her paintings are created to resemble antique decorative artifacts.  Almost all of the frames are antiques and the paper is treated to give the impression of age. Sometimes Carr  embellishes her paintings with gold leaf, embroidered glass beads and pearls.

Carr’s current exhibition, “The Augmented Animal” is on now at Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, Washington and runs through May 5, 2012. To see more; visit LindseyCarr.co.uk.

Sophie Ryder: Sculpture

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Crawling-Sophie-RyderBorn in London, England in 1963, Sophie Ryder studied at Kingston Polytechnic (1980-81) and the Royal Academy Schools, London (1981-84).

“Individual animals and groups of them, fashioned in wire and in bronze, some realistic and some fantastical, have featured in Ryder’s sculpture and colourful collages since her student days. Her technique of manipulating and winding metal wire to shape her creatures is physically demanding, but it endows her beasts with great dynamism. Human attributes may be found in some of her creatures, but in others innate animal qualities are underlined, particularly in some of the group and pair compositions.

Since 2000 Sophie Ryder has exhibited widely in public exhibitions in the UK, Canada, the United States, Eire, Belgium and the Netherlands. In Europe the spectacular 10 foot wire Torsos was exhibited at The Hague in Holland, sited in an underground chamber. A major show of indoor and outdoor work went to the Veranneman Foundation in Belgium. Shows in North America included substantial exhibitions in Montreal and Vancouver and recently Sophie participated at the Arts Festival in Carlow, Ireland.” (from Sculpture.org.uk)

To see more of Ryder’s work, visit SophieRyder.org.

Gabriel Neale: Painting

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Injured-Man-Walking-Gabriel-Neale Born in 1978, Gabriel Neale is an talented self taught artist based in the UK.  His paintings often depict solitary figures caught up in thought. To see more, visit NuMasters.com.