Daily Art Fixx

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

Remedios Varo: 1908-1963

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salvador Dali: 1904 – 1989

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salvador daliSalvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol (Salvador Dali) was born on May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Spain near the French border.  A painter, draughtsman, illustrator, sculptor, writer and film maker, Dali was one of the most prolific, flamboyant, and well-known artists of the 20th century.

He was a student at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid but was expelled for encouraging students to rebel and for withdrawing from an exam because he said the teachers were not qualified to judge his work.

Dali gained recognition relatively quickly after just three shows: a solo show in Barcelona in 1925, a showing of his works at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928, and in 1929, his first solo show in Paris.  It was at this time that Dali joined the ranks of the surrealists and met his future wife, Gala Eluard.

“The Persistence of Memory” was painted in 1931 after seeing some Camembert cheese melting in the heat on a hot summer day. Later that night, he dreamt of clocks melting on a landscape.  The small work (24 cm x 33 cm) is one of the most famous of the surrealist paintings. During this time, and inspired by Sigmund Freud, Dali used his “paranoiac-critical method” to create his art.

During the 1930s Dalí’s political indifference alienated him from the other Surrealists who were mainly leftist. In 1937, he painted an unusual series of Adolf Hitler that were considered to be in bad taste and partly led to his expulsion from the movement.

Salvador and Gala spent World War II in the United States, where he became a popular figure. He painted portraits, dressed shop windows, created a dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Spellbound” and created a cartoon, “Destino”, with Walt Disney.

Dalí returned to Europe in 1948 and was completely disconnected from Surrealism. He painted mainly in Spain, with an eclectic approach focusing on history, religion, and science.  Dalí created over 1,500 paintings in his career as well as illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theatre sets and costumes, numerous drawings,  sculptures, and various other projects.

Dali was greatly affected by the death of his wife Gala in 1982. After that time, he lost much of his passion for life. His health began to fail, and he painted very little. On January 23, 1989, at the age of 84, Salvador Dali died from heart failure with respiratory complications. He is buried in his Theater Museum in Figueres.

For a full biography of Salvador Dali, see the source links below.

Sources: MOMA, Salvador Dali Museum, Wikipedia

Pablo Picasso: 1881-1973

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Pablo PicassoBorn on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso (Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso) was a painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker, decorative artist, and writer.  “His revolutionary artistic accomplishments, including the co-founding of Cubism, brought him universal renown making him one of the best-known figures in 20th century art.”

The son of an academic painter, José Ruiz Blasco, Picasso began to draw at an early age. In 1895, the family moved to Barcelona where Picasso studied at La Lonja Academy of Fine Arts. Picasso’s first exhibition took place in Barcelona in 1900, and that fall he traveled to Paris for the first of several stays during the early years of the century. Picasso settled in Paris in April 1904, and his circle of friends included Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude and Leo Stein, as well as two dealers, Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill.

Picasso’s work is generally categorized into commonly accepted periods:

Blue Period (1901-1904) – Picasso worked in a predominantly blue palette and his imagery focused on outcasts, beggars and invalided prostitutes. He also produced  his first sculptures: a modeled figure, Seated Woman, and two bronze facial masks

Rose Period (1905-1907) – Picasso’s work was dominated by pink and flesh tints and by delicate drawing. These works were less monochromatic than those of the Blue Period. Harlequins, circus performers and clowns appear frequently in his work in this period.

Primitivism (1906-1908) – Picasso’s works made reference to forms of archaic art and made expressive use of distortion with subdued greys and earth colours and rhythmical repetitions and contrasts. Picasso made his first carved sculptures. The resistance of wood produced simplified forms similar to his paintings.

Analytic Cubism (1909-1912) – Picasso produced works where objects were deconstructed into their components. His images were increasingly transparent and difficult to interpret and characterized by a growing discontinuity of figurative fragments. From 1909, Georges Braque and Picasso worked closely together to develop Cubism. By 1911, their styles were extremely similar and during this time, it was virtually  impossible to distinguish one from the other.

Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919) – In 1912, Picasso and Braque began to incorporate elements of collage into their paintings and to experiment with the papier collé (pasted paper) technique. “Both collage and papier collé offered a new method not only of suggesting space but also of replacing conventional forms of representation with fragments of images that function as signs. During two further phases of his development of papier collé in 1913, Picasso discovered that shapes could acquire other meanings or identities simply by their arrangement, without requiring a resemblance to naturalistic appearances. A single shape might wittily and equally convincingly stand for the side of a guitar or a human head.”

Classicism and Surrealism – From 1916-1922, Picasso collaborated on ballet and theatrical productions. He designed five complete ballet productions while still maintaining his career as a painter. During the 1920s, and with the continuing influence of Cubism, Picasso created a personal form of neo-classicism where his work showed a renewed interest in drawing and figural representation. From 1925 and into the 1930s, Picasso was involved to a certain degree with the Surrealists, and from the fall of 1931 he was especially interested in making sculpture. In 1932, with large exhibitions at the Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, and the Kunsthaus Zürich, and the publication of the first volume of Christian Zervos’s catalogue raisonné, Picasso’s fame increased greatly.

“By 1936 the Spanish Civil War had profoundly affected Picasso, the expression of which culminated in his 1937 painting Guernica. After the invasion of France by the Germans in 1940, Picasso continued to live in his Paris studio. Although monitored by the German authorities, he was still able to work and even to cast some sculpture in bronze.”

In 1944, Picasso became associated with the Communist Party. From August 1947 he made ceramics at the Madoura potteries in Vallauris, partly motivated by political concerns. He also produced a considerable number of bronze sculptures in the early 1950s, including some of his best-known works in the medium.

“Picasso’s final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.”

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91. He was extremely prolific throughout his career. He produced approximately 50,000 artworks including 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, 12,000 drawings, thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs.

For a more in-depth biography of Picasso, see the source links below and be sure to visit the On-line Picasso Project – a non-profit project that catalogues an amazingly large number of Picasso’s works and a timeline of the artist’s life. The website contains over 16,000 catalogued artworks, over 6,000 notes, and thousands of commentaries, biographical entries, and archived news articles. (note, a login is now required to access this site)

Sources: Guggenheim, MoMA, Wikipedia

Gervasio Gallardo: Surrealism

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Born in Barcelona in 1934, Gervasio Gallardo studied art in Spain and worked for several Spanish agencies before moving to Munich in 1959.  He then spent four years in Paris working with the Delpire Agency.  In 1963, he traveled to the United States where he met Frank and Jeff Lavaty who have represented him since that time. Gallardo went back and forth between Paris and the U.S.  and eventually returned to Barcelona to set up his own studio.

By the early 1970’s, Gallardo had gained recognition as a commercial artist.  “His paintings for advertisers in medical and trade journals were characterized by a style of extreme realism coupled with a puckish sense of humour – a tearful eye embedded in a thicket of greenery depicted the dire effects of not using a certain anti-histamine.”  At the same time, Gallardo worked on his personal paintings which he sold to collectors and museums.  His paintings leaned toward Surrealism and were influenced by Dali and Magritte but with more humour and whimsy.

In 1969, Ballantine Books commissioned Gallardo for its adult fantasy series.  These cover paintings became a signature for the series and were recognized immediately by fans.

Gallardo has received numerous awards in Europe and the United States and has had many solo exhibitions in Paris, Barcelona, and the United States.

To see more of Gallardo’s work, visit Lavaty Art.

 

Source: The Fantastic World of Gervasio Gallardo, ncuxo (images)

Cristian Blanxer: Painting

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Some cool work from Barcelona, Spain, native Christian Blanxer.  Blanxer currently studies Fine Arts at UB Barcelona. To see more of his diverse body of work, visit CristianBlanxer.com or check out his photostream on Flickr.

Eric Dover: Art Direction

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Creative Direction - Eric-Dover - Photograph by Eugenio Recuenco

Born in Argentina and now living in Madrid, Eric Dover is one of the most respected freelance art directors. He has collaborated with some of the world’s leading photographers, advertisers, and fashion labels. All of the photos you see here are by Spanish photographer Eugenio Recuenco.

To see more, visit EricDoverStudio.com.

Untitled - Art Direction-Eric Dover - Photograph by Eugenio Recuenco

Sources: Fast Management

Juan Gris: 1887 – 1927

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Born on March 23, 1887 in Madrid, Spain,  José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez (better known as Juan Gris), was a painter, draughtsman, illustrator and writer. Gris was considered one of the leading Cubist painters of his time.

Gris studied mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904. During this time, he also contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905 he studied painting with the academic artist José Maria Carbonero. From 1905 to 1906, Gris worked as an illustrator, producing drawings in the Art Nouveau style for the periodical “Renacimiento Latino” and for a book of poems, “Alma América”  by  José Santo Chocano.

In 1906 Gris moved to Paris, where he would remain for most of his life. In Paris, he associated with Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso and the writers Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Maurice Raynal. Gris began to paint seriously in 1910 and by 1912 he had developed a personal Cubist style.

Gris exhibited for the first time in 1912 at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, Der Sturm gallery in Berlin, the Salon de la Société Normande de Peinture Moderne in Rouen, and the Salon de la Section d’Or in Paris. He was also signed by French art dealer D.H. Kahnweiler who had exclusive rights to the artist’s work.

“His approach to Cubism, which has often been called scientific in its logic and precision, may well have been affected by his knowledge of technical drawings. From 1913 to 1914, Gris explored the potential of words in Cubist painting as introduced by Picasso and Braque through collage and papier collé. He was quick to exploit papier collé to achieve greater surface activity, clearer compositional structures and a more complex play between modes of descriptive and allusively verbal representation.”

During World War I,  Gris focused on subjects including musical instruments, music sheets, books and domestic paraphernalia. Between 1916 and 1918 he took on a leading role within Cubism and  was a respected friend of other artists who became influential after the war.

From 1916 – 1920, Gris’ Cubist ‘classicism’  was associated with the development of  a ‘pure’ Cubist practice. In 1921, he wrote in L’Esprit nouveau, a Purist magazine.  “He claimed to start with the manipulation of flat shapes, only afterwards ‘qualifying’ them so that they became identifiable in terms of subject-matter. He worked, he said, ‘deductively’ from the general to the particular, the abstract to the concrete, ensuring a basis for his art in conception rather than perception. He called this process ‘synthetic’ to distinguish it from the ‘analysis’ of things that he considered fundamental to his earlier Cubism.”

Gris’ first major solo show was held at Rosenberg’s Galerie l’Effort Moderne in Paris in 1919.  His production was diminished however in May 1920 by  illness – possibly undiagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis. He was hospitalized until August 1920 and was in recovery until 1921, though he did paint again in autumn 1920.

From 1921 to 1922, as Gris regained his health,  he produced some of his most successful classical synthetic works including a series of open-window paintings in which still-lifes are placed before open windows appearing to merge into Mediterranean and mountain views.

Between autumn 1922 and 1924, Gris paintings became richer, with a more vibrant range of colours . His subjects seemed both more “naturalistic and more anecdotal” including images of clowns, sometimes in a drunken state.  “Gris remained committed to his advanced Cubist position, and in April 1924 he delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne, ‘Sur les possibilités de la peinture’. It was the most elaborate exposition of his ideas on synthesis and on art as creation.”

From 1924 until his death,  Gris gained increasing commercial and critical success as well as returning to what he regarded as a more “uncompromising synthetic Cubism”.

From October 1925 Gris’s health declined. He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine on May 11, 1927 at the age of forty, leaving his wife, Josette, and son, Georges.

Sources: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, MoMA, Artchive (images)

Gabriel Moreno: Illustration

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Based in Madrid, Spain, illustrator, engraver, and painter Gabriel Moreno studied Fine Arts at the University of Sevilla and graduated in 1998. Moreno has worked with virtually every major national agency and with numerous national and international publications including  the 2009 cover of Los Angeles Times Magazine.

To see more, visit GabrielMoreno.com.

ARYZ: Street Art

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Fantastic street art from 22 year old Barcelona, Spain based artist and illustrator ARYZ.  His work can be found on abandoned walls on the outskirts of Barcelona as well as in New York,  Germany, Poland, Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.  When he’s not painting walls, ARYZ  also works with Nike True City IPhone App. To see more, visit Aryz.es.

Lita Cabellut: Painting

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Lita Cabellut was born in 1961 in Barcelona, Spain where she grew up in a poor Gypsy-environment. Her work is closely intertwined with the memories of the old area of Barcelona, El Raval, with closeness to the docks, La Bocquerai market, Las Ramblas and Sant Antonie market, replete with pickpockets, street performers and prostitutes.

After 13 years of street and orphan life Cabellut was adopted. It is at this time that she discovered the Prado Museum and the work of  Goya, Velazquez, Ribera, and Rembrandt. One of her preferred statements explaining her passion is: “I married very young, my first marriage was with the art”.

Cabellut had her first exhibition at the age of 17 at the Town Hall of Masnou, Barcelona. At 19 she sought out new challenges by moving to the Netherlands, where she studied between 1982-1984 at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

“Cabellut is a painter with a unique pictorial language, using a contemporary variation on the fresco-technique and a immensely enjoyable, communicative and recognizable ‘Cabellut-palette’.” Her work has been exhibited around the globe including New York, Dubai, Miami, Singapore, Hong Kong, Barcelona, London, Paris, Venice, Monaco, and Seoul, Korea. (bio from artist website)

To see more, visit LitaCabellut.com.

Many thanks to Esther Barend for introducing me to this artist.