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Oil, emulsion, and sand on photograph, mounted on canvas; 280 x 380 cm.
Anselm Kiefer is a German painter who became one of the most prominent figures in the Neo-Expressionist art movement of the late 20th century.
Kiefer abandoned his law studies at the University of Freiburg in 1966 to pursue art. He subsequently studied at art academies in Freiburg, Karlsruhe, and Dusseldorf. In the latter city in 1970 he became a student of the conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, who encouraged Kiefer’s early use of symbolic photographic images to deal ironically with 20th-century German history. Beuys also encouraged Kiefer to paint, and in such huge paintings as “Germany’s Spiritual Heroes” (1973) and “Operation Sea Lion” (1975) Kiefer was able to develop an array of visual symbols by which he could comment with irony and sarcasm on certain tragic aspects of German history and culture, in particular the Nazi period. These paintings used garish, somber colors and coarse, naive drawing, but they did achieve powerful effects owing to their imaginative allusions to Nazism. In the 1970s he also painted a series of landscape vistas that capture the rutted and somber look of the German countryside and that use linear perspective with great dramatic effect.
Kiefer’s landscapes and interiors done in the 1980s acquired an intense physical presence by means of perspectival devices and the incorporation of unusual textures on the surface of the painted canvas. Though Kiefer continued to treat Germany’s Nazi past in such paintings as “Interiors” (1981), the range of his themes broadened to include references to ancient Hebrew and Egyptian history, as in the large painting “Osiris and Isis” (1985–87).
Oil on canvas; 401.6 x 361.3 cm.
Danish painter, sculptor and writer. In 1962 he entered the Eksperimenterende Kunst-skole (Experimental Art School) in Copenhagen.His first important one-man exhibition abroad was at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, in 1977. He later exhibited widely at public and commercial galleries throughout Europe and the USA.
A prolific artist, Kirkeby used a range of different media. He was a member of the Fluxus group and was influenced by Pop art in the 1960s. Later he was influenced by Tachism and Abstract Expressionism. The vigorous brushwork and chromatic beauty of his, mostly untitled, paintings and the sensuous modelling of his rough black bronzes have earned him the title ‘lyric expressionist'. The paintings, which tend towards the abstract, bear veiled iconographic reference, largely to the Danish landscape and the female figure.
In contrast to the poetic and dramatic character of his paintings and black bronzes Kirkeby's brick sculptures display an unusual clarity. They make strong reference to traditional Danish housing and are inspired by Mayan architecture, as in the house-like, symmetrical form (1973) at Ikast, Denmark. In 1981 Kirkeby completed a group of such sculptures for the County Council building in Ålborg. His concern with experiment and conceptual art led him to execute a series of works in chalk on blackboard, and he regularly published poetry, essays and travel books, as well as making television and full-length documentary films. He also produced many artist's books, such as the ‘picture novel' Landskaberne (‘Landscapes'; Copenhagen, 1969).
Bibliography
Per Kirkeby: Übermalungen, 1964–84 (exh. cat., Munich, Kstraum, 1984)
Per Kirkeby: Skulpturen und Bilder (exh. cat., Zurich, Gal. Knoedler, 1985)
Per Kirkeby: Retrospektive (exh. cat., Cologne, Mus. Ludwig, 1987)
Per Kirkeby: Pinturas, esculturas, grabados y escritos (exh. cat., Valencia, IVAM Cent. Julio Gonzalez, 1989–90)
‘Per Kirkeby', Louisiana Revue, xxx/3 (1990) [whole issue]
JENS PETER MUNK
Bram Bogart is one of the artists of the ‘Informel’, the loosely knit aesthetic movement which produced a generation of painters in the early 1950s. The movement included such European artists as Alberto Burri in Italy, and Antonio Tàpies in Spain, whose textural canvasses distance them from their American counterparts, the Abstract Expressionists. From 1946 Bogart worked in Paris for a decade, a difficult time during which a typical reaction to his work (from a Dutch critic) was ‘a form of rock and roll with paint in its most stupid manifestation’. However after his move to Belgium in 1959, Bogart’s work became widely recognized. From the early 1960s onwards his canvasses are characterized by a new technique radiant with color, light and optimism. Bogart became a Belgian citizen in 1969. Bogart’s work has been the subject of countless one-man shows around the world.
Oil on masonite; 70 x 88 cm.
Mario Sironi, born in Sardegna Italy, is known for his highly personal romantic expression. As a student, he first specialized in mathematics and engineering but then abandoned them for painting. Studying art in Rome at the Free School of Nude Drawing, he was exposed to the exponents of Futurism, which he explored in his early art work. One of his close associates was Umberto Boccioni, a leading Futurist, who involved Sironi in Futurist exhibitions held in Rome. Boccioni described Sironi as an artist "who has embarked in a profound and highly original way on research into plastic dynamism." Sironi also worked as an illustrator for various Italian periodicals. Faced with the threats of World War I, he and his companions enrolled in the Volunteer Lombard Battalion of Cyclists and Motorists (1915-18) and signed the manifesto calling on Italy to enter the war. He married Matilde Fabbrini, a painter, in 1919 and they lived and worked in Milan.
As an artist closely identified with Fascism, his reputation declined dramatically in the post-World War II period. He had returned to easel painting in 1943, and worked now in relative isolation. The paintings of his later years sometimes approach abstraction, resembling assemblages of archaeological fragments, or juxtaposed sketches. He continued working until shortly before his death in 1961.
Throughout the 1920s Rodchenko's work was abstract often to the point of being non-figurative. In the 1930s, with the changing Party guidelines governing artistic practice, he concentrated on sports photography and images of parades and other choreographed movements. Rodchenko joined the October circle of artists in 1928 but was expelled three years later being charged with "formalism." He returned to painting in the late 1930s, stopped photographing in 1942, and produced abstract expressionist works in the 1940s. He continued to organize photography exhibitions for the government during these years.
Oil on canvas; 35 1/2 x 47 3/8 in.
Italian painter and stage designer, born in Udine. Full name Afro Balsadella, but is usually known as Afro; brother of the sculptor Mirko Balsadella (Mirko). Father a leading decorator. Studied at secondary schools specialising in art subjects in Florence and Venice, and had his first one-man exhibition at the Galleria del Milione, Milan, in 1932. Began by painting still lifes, landscapes, portraits and murals. Moved in 1938 to Rome. War service and in the Resistance 1940-4. Developed a near-abstract style in 1947-8 under the influence of Klee and late Cubism. Held regular exhibitions at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York, from 1950-68 and made frequent visits to the USA, developing a looser, more improvisatory abstract style partly under the influence of Gorky, Kline and de Kooning. Joined the group Otto with Birolli, Corpora, Moreni, Morlotti, Santomaso, Turcato and Vedova in 1952. Painted a mural for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris 1958. Awarded the City of Venice painting prize at the 1956 Venice Biennale and Second Prize at the 1959 Pittsburgh International; also designed sets and costumes for the ballet and the opera. His late works, from c.1970, had more precise shapes. Died in Zurich.
Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.2
Gracias por las visitas, amables comentarios e invitaciones
Thank you for the visits, kind comments and invitations
En mi tierra... en el Sur de España, la Primavera llega pronto, pero se va muy rapido... El campo se seca, y las flores se marchitan.... Ya solo quedan Olivos y Rastrojos...
In my land ... in Southern Spain, Spring comes early, but it goes so fast ... Field withers, flowers fade .... And then there were Olivos and stubble ...
Watercolor and gouache on paper; 22.4 x 46 cm.
The artist Lasar Segall was a Brazilian Jewish painter, engraver and sculptor born in Lithuania. Segall's work is derived from impressionism, expressionism and modernism. His most significant themes were depictions of human suffering, war, persecution and prostitution. Segall was born in the Jewish ghetto of Vilnius, Lithuania and was the son of a Torah scribe. Segall moved to Berlin at the age of 15 and studied first at Berlin Königliche Akademie der Künste from 1906 to 1910. At the end of 1910 he moved to Dresden to continue his studies at the Kunstakademie Dresden as a "Meisterschüler".
Segall published a book of five etchings in Dresden, Sovenirs of Vilna in 1919, and two books illustrated with lithographs titled Bubu and die Sanfte.[1] He then began to express himself more freely and developed his own style, which incorporated aspects of Cubism, while exploring his own Jewish background. His earlier paintings throughout 1910 to the early 1920s depicted troubled figures surrounded in claustrophobic surroundings with exaggerated and bold features, influenced by African tribal figures.[2] In 1912 his first painted series of works were conducted in an elderly insane asylum.[3] Segall's work largely portrayed the masses of persecuted humanity in his Expressionist form. Later that year, he moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where three of his siblings were already living. He returned to Dresden in 1914 and was still quite active in the Expressionist style. In 1919 Segall founded the 'Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919' with Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, Otto Lange and other artists. Segall's exhibition at the Galery Gurlitt received multiple awards. However successful Segall was in Europe, he had already been greatly influenced by his time spent in Brazil, which had already transformed both his style and his subject matter. The visit to Brazil gave Segall the opportunity to obtain a strong idea of South American art and, in turn, made Segall return to Brazil.
Segall's subject matter was portrayed more subtly and softer in his early career. He did not depict much of the African influence on his artwork until he moved to Brazil. It was not until Segall visited Brazil for the first few times, that he branched out towards the Expressionist style. He was able to express himself in a freer manner while he portrayed the lifelong theme of his Jewish culture depicting the tribulations of European Jews.[1] Although he was a humanist, he never forgot his Jewish roots.[9]
Segall's initial paintings in Brazil reflect a strong national connection and passion for his newfound homeland. He portrayed the landscapes in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and portrayed the different races without tension or malintention.[10] However, Segall remained faithful towards his Cubist nature throughout the majority of his artworks. Specifically, one of his famous artworks, entitled Banana Plantation, shows a Brazilian banana plantation, thick in density.[7] Segall achieved balance in this painting by centering the worker's neck and head protruding from the bottom of the painting. This causes the audience to be fully focused towards the center space. This significant symmetrical balance emphasizes the human element involved in the Brazilian agricultural system.[7] The diminished amount of slavery in Brazil during this time period, the 1920s, abolished Brazilian-Negro slaves and replaced them with an overwhelming amount of European workers coming to Brazil. This particular image portrays the engulfment of the plantations by the Europeans.
Other prominent theme in Segall's work is human suffering and emigration. In another famous artwork of Segall's, entitled Ship of Emigrants, a ship dock is overcrowded and engulfed with emigrant passengers. Not only does the image portray a dark and saddening emotion, but it significantly portrays the troubled figures aboard the ship.[2] The solemn faces and lack of expression on the passengers blatantly shows the harsh reality of emigrants and their depressing lifestyles of forced moves.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasar_Segall
Oil on fiberboard; 8 ft. x 4 ft.
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956), known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was well known for his unique style of drip painting.
During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety, a major artist of his generation. Regarded as reclusive, he had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.[1]
Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related, single-car accident; he was driving. In December 1956, several months after his death, Pollock was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. A larger, more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967. In 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London.[2][3]
In 2000, Pollock was the subject of the film Pollock, directed by and starring Ed Harris, which won an Academy Award.
Oil on canvas; 21 1/4" x 25 1/2"
Jean-Paul Riopelle was born in Montreal on October 7, 1923. He studied painting with Henri Bisson and in 1943 he enrolled at the Ecole du Meuble in Montreal. In 1945 Riopelle began a close association with his instructor Paul-Emile Borduras, and other Canadian avant-garde artists who formed the Automatiste group. That year he also traveled to Paris on a Canadian Government Fellowship. In 1946 the artist visited New York, Where his work was included in the International Surrealist Exhibition and where he met Hayter, Miró and Lipchitz.
Riopelle settled in Paris in 1947, where he soon met Pierre Loeb and André Breton. He also made the acquaintance of many of the artists involves with art informel, including Georges Mathieu, Wols and Hans Hartung. In 1948 the Automatiste manifesto Refus global, which Riopelle signed, was published. Beginning in that year he participated regularly in the Salon de Mai. In 1949 he was represented in the Salon des Surindépendants and was given his first one-man exhibition, at the Galerie Nina Dausset. Additional Riopelle shows followed in Paris. He participated in the São Paolo Bienal in 1951 and 1955, receiving an Honorable Mention at the latter. In 1954 and again in 1962 Riopelle was included in the Venice Biennale. Also in 1954 the first of many Riopelle shows was held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.
In 1958 Riopelle received an Honorable Mention at the Guggenheim Museum’s Guggenheim International Award exhibition and a major retrospective of his work was held at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne. Also that year the artist began to make bronze sculpture, which he exhibited for the first time at the Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris, in 1962. Retrospectives of Riopelle’s work held in the early 1970s include those at the Fondation Maeght, Saint Paul-de-Vence, France, in 1971, and at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris the following year. In 1977 the artist began his black and white Iceberg series of paintings. Two years later he commenced work on a ceramic wall for the Fondation Maeght, which he completed in 1981. When his wife, the artist Joan Mitchell, died in 1992, Riopelle dedicated to her his Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg, a work composed of three big canvases. Soon after the artist would stop to paint completely. Riopelle died in Île aux Grues, Quebec.
Oil on canvas; 178 x 123 cm.
Lucio Fontana was born in Argentina. His father was Italian and his mother Argentinean. He lived in Milan from 1905 to 1922 and then moved back to Argentina, where he worked as a sculptor in his father’s studio for several years before opening his own. In 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentinean artists working in Rosario de Santa Fé. Upon his return to Milan in 1928, Fontana enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, which he attended for two years.
The Galleria Il Milione, Milan, organized Fontana’s first solo exhibition in 1930. The artist traveled to Paris in 1935 and joined the Abstraction-Création group. The same year, he developed his skills in ceramics in Albisola, Italy, and later at the Sèvres factory, near Paris. In 1939, he joined the Corrente, a Milan group of expressionist artists. In 1940, Fontana moved to Buenos Aires. With some of his students, he founded in 1946 the Academia de Altamira from which emerged the Manifiesto Blanco group. He moved back to Milan in 1947 and in collaboration with a group of writers and philosophers signed the Primo manifesto dello Spazialismo.
The year 1949 marked a turning point in Fontana’s career; he concurrently created the Buchi, his first series of paintings in which he punctured the canvas, and his first spatial environment, a combination of shapeless sculptures, fluorescent paintings, and black lights to be viewed in a dark room. The latter work soon led him to employ neon tubing in ceiling decoration. In the early 1950s, he participated in the Italian Art Informel exhibitions. During this decade, he explored working with various effects, such as slashing and perforating, in both painting and sculpture. The artist visited New York in 1961 during a show of his work at the Martha Jackson Gallery. In 1966, he designed opera sets and costumes for La Scala, Milan.
In the last year of his career, Fontana became increasingly interested in the staging of his work in the many exhibitions that honored him worldwide, as well as in the idea of purity achieved in his last white canvases. These concerns were prominent at the 1966 Venice Biennale, for which he designed the environment for his work, and at the 1968 Documenta in Kassel. Fontana died in Comabbio, Italy.
Oil on canvas; 140.3 x 140.7 cm.
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter, and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. He started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
In 1896 he settled in Munich and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. He went back to Moscow in 1914 after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France and became a French citizen.
I just found this! Hadn't realized I'd gotten another off from yesterday at work. The only reason I'm posting this is because it's soooo unflattering and I've no shame a'tall! Well, and I do like to have a good jest -- even if it's at my own expense. Yah!
#worksonpaper #arte #malerei #abstractexpressionism #pintura #lyricalabstraction #fineart #modernpainting #abstractpaintings #kunstwerk #abstrakt #abstraktekunst #nataliedavydova #nonobjectiveart #contemporaryart #contemporarypainting #paintings #artcollector #abstractart #smallpaintings #peinture #pittura #acryliconpaper #livewithart #artwatcher #modernart #artwork #markmaking #abstractpainting #arts
Oil on canvas; 100 x 70 cm.
Mark Rothko, original name Marcus Rothkovitch, American painter whose works introduced contemplative introspection into the melodramatic post-World War II Abstract Expressionist school; his use of colour as the sole means of expression led to the development of Colour Field Painting.
In 1913 Rothko’s family emigrated from Russia to the U.S., where they settled in Portland, Ore. During his youth he was preoccupied with politics and social issues. He entered Yale University in 1921, intending to become a labour leader, but dropped out after two years and wandered about the U.S. In 1925 he settled in New York City and took up painting. Although he studied briefly under the painter Max Weber, he was essentially self-taught.
Rothko first worked in a realistic style that culminated in his Subway series of the late 1930s, showing the loneliness of persons in drab urban environments. This gave way in the early 1940s to the semi-abstract biomorphic forms of the ritualistic Baptismal Scene (1945). By 1948, however, he had arrived at a highly personal form of Abstract Expressionism. Unlike many of his fellow Abstract Expressionists, Rothko never relied on such dramatic techniques as violent brushstrokes or the dripping and splattering of paint. Instead, his virtually gestureless paintings achieved their effects by juxtaposing large areas of melting colours that seemingly float parallel to the picture plane in an indeterminate, atmospheric space.
Rothko spent the rest of his life refining this basic style through continuous simplification. He restricted his designs to two or three “soft-edged” rectangles that nearly filled the wall-sized vertical formats like monumental abstract icons. Despite their large size, however, his paintings derived a remarkable sense of intimacy from the play of nuances within local colour.
From 1958 to 1966 Rothko worked intermittently on a series of 14 immense canvases (the largest was about 11 × 15 feet [3 × 5 metres]) eventually placed in a nondenominational chapel in Houston, Texas, called, after his death, the Rothko Chapel. These paintings were virtual monochromes of darkly glowing browns, maroons, reds, and blacks. Their sombre intensity reveals the deep mysticism of Rothko’s later years. Plagued by ill health and the conviction that he had been forgotten by those artists who had learned most from his painting, he committed suicide.
After his death, the execution of Rothko’s will provoked one of the most spectacular and complex court cases in the history of modern art, lasting for 11 years (1972–82). The misanthropic Rothko had hoarded his works, numbering 798 paintings, as well as many sketches and drawings. His daughter, Kate Rothko, accused the executors of the estate (Bernard J. Reis, Theodoros Stamos, and Morton Levine) and Frank Lloyd, owner of Marlborough Galleries in New York City, of conspiracy and conflict of interest in selling the works—in effect, of enriching themselves. The courts decided against the executors and Lloyd, who were heavily fined. Lloyd was tried separately and convicted on criminal charges of tampering with evidence. In 1979 a new board of the Mark Rothko Foundation was established, and all the works in the estate were divided between the artist’s two children and the Foundation. In 1984 the Foundation’s share of works was distributed to 19 museums in the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Israel; the best and the largest proportion went to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
German Artist whose sculpture Der Neue Mensch was displayed on the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) brochure in 1937.
Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an abstract expressionist artist, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to variously as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School. Other painters that developed this school of painting include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford Still among others.
Felt-tip pen, synthetic polymer paint, and gouache on printed paper; 135.3 x 90.2 cm.
Albert Oehlen is a German artist. He graduated at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Hamburg, in 1978. Closely associated with the Cologne art scene, he was a member of the Lord Jim Lodge along with Martin Kippenberger among others. His art is related to the Neue Wilde movement.
Oehlen has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including Grounswell at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Provins – Legende at Museet for Samtidskunst in Roskilde and Spiegelbilder 1982-1985 at Max Hetzler in Berlin. He is represented by Max Hetzler in Berlin and Luhring Augustine in New York. He has worked collaboratively with Jonathan Meese. Since the late 1990s Oehlen has played in the bands Red Krayola and Van Oehlen. He is the brother of Markus Oehlen.
Hard ground etching, engraving and aquatint with three colors; 20 x 24 in.
Gabor Peterdi,a printmaker and painter, was the son of the leading Hungarian poets of their time, the late Andor Peterdi and Zeseni Varnai. He learned to paint by observation and not formal training. At age 15 he won the Prix de Rome which gave him a year of study in the Italian capital.(He would win another Prix de Rome in 1977). After a year in Italy, He move to Paris where he trained with Stanley William Hayter who taught him how to engrave at his "Studio 17". He came to New York City in 1939 and after serving in the United States Army infantry on the front lines in Europe during World War II, he returned to a position at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art. He later taught at Hunter College (1952-1960) and was a professor at the Yale School of Art (1960-1987). Among his many awards were the Louise Nevelson Award of the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters (1991), Guggenheim Fellowship (1964-1965), the Pennel Medal (1961), Ford Foundation Award (1960), Sesnan Gold Medal for Oils (1958), and the Paris World's Fair Gold Medal (1937). He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design (1979) and the Florentine Academy of Design (1963). He had 200 one-man exhibitions in this country and abroad and 25 retrospectives. His work can be found in the permanent collections of over 200 museums around the world. The Encyclopdia Britannica selected him to write the 22 page essay on printmaking in it's 15th edition published in 1975 and it's been in all subsequent printings to date. He also wrote "Printmaking:Methods Old and New", a standard text in the field.
Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an abstract expressionist artist, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to variously as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School. Other painters that developed this school of painting include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford Still among others.
Ink and acrylic marker on paper 9.75" x 6.75" 2017 www.saatchiart.com/art/Drawing-Pulse/292357/3969984/view
Lithograph on paper; sheet: 30 1/8 x 21 1/4 in.
Alexander Liberman was born in 1912 in Kiev Russia. His father was in the timber business and his mother was involved in the Russian theater. In 1921 the Libermans left the Soviet Union, and Alexander studied first in London and then in Paris. He took courses in philosophy and mathematics at the Sorbonne and architecture at Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In the 1930s Liberman designed stage sets, worked briefly with a landscape architect. and worked on the staff of "Vu," the first magazine illustrated with photographs. Consequently, he became friends with Cartier Bresson, Brassai and Kertesz. Liberman began his publishing career as an assistant in the art department, moved on to become art director, then managing director. He even used a nom de plume to write their film reviews. In 1936 Liberman left the magazine and devoted himself to painting, writing and filmmaking.
In 1940 the Liberman family escaped to the unoccupied zone in France, then to Spain, and eventually to New York in 1941. A friend helped him gain employment at VOGUE magazine and twenty years later, in 1962, he was appointed Editorial Director of all Conde Nast Publications, a position he held until he retired in 1994. During his long tenure at VOGUE, Liberman commissioned artists such as: Cornell, Dali, Chagall, Duchamp, Braque, Rauschenberg, Johns to work on projects for the magazine. He was the only publisher granted the rights to reproduce images of Matisse's chapel in Vence, France. He also had Jackson Pollock's paintings used as a backdrop for a fashion shoot by Cecil Beaton, as there was no other way to get Pollock's work reproduced in the magazine. Liberman's "day job" offered him a highly unusual position in the art world.
By the mid-1950s, Liberman was exhibiting his own paintings and photographs in galleries and museums around New York. In 1959 Liberman learned to weld steel and he quickly began making sculpture on a scale that required industrial machinery. By 1963 he had hired an assistant to do all of the grinding and labor required to make large sculpture. He embraced the industrial scale of America that had so impressed him on his arrival to here in 1941.
One of his first public commissions was from the architect Philip Johnson for a pavilion at the 1963 World's Fair. Other important commissions quickly followed, and over the next decade he purchased additional equipment and hired additional personnel to meet the increasing demand for and scale of his sculpture. In this sense his "day job" was supporting his passion for making large public sculpture.
Alexander Liberman died in November, 1999 at the age of 87. His sculpture and painting are included in the collections of some of the world's most prestigious museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In addition, Storm King Art Center, the most important contemporary sculpture park in America, has three monumental Liberman sculptures in it's collection. His public sculpture can be seen in over 40 cities around the world, including three that are located in Los Angeles.
František Kupka was a Czech painter and graphic artist. He was a pioneer and co-founder of the early phases of the abstract art movement and Orphic cubism (Orphism). Kupka's abstract works arose from a base of realism, but later evolved into pure abstract art. He was born in Opočno, eastern Bohemia (now Czech Republic) in 1871. From 1889 to 1892, he studied at the Prague Art Academy. At this time, he painted historical and patriotic themes. Kupka enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, where he concentrated on symbolic and allegorical subjects. He was influenced by the painter and social reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851-1913) and his naturistic life-style. Kupka exhibited at the Kunstverein, Vienna, in 1894. His involvement with theosophy and Eastern philosophy dates from this period. By spring 1894, Kupka had settled in Paris; there he attended the Académie Julian briefly and then studied with Jean-Pierre Laurens at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Kupka worked as an illustrator of books and posters and, during his early years in Paris, became known for his satirical drawings for newspapers and magazines. In 1906, he settled in Puteaux, a suburb of Paris, and that same year exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne. Kupka was deeply impressed by the first Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909 in Le Figaro. Kupka’s 1909 painting Piano Keyboard/Lake marked a break in his representational style. His work became increasingly abstract around 1910–11, reflecting his theories of motion, color, and the relationship between music and painting (orphism). In 1911, he attended meetings of the Puteaux Group (Section d'Or). In 1912, he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in the Cubist room, although he did not wish to be identified with any movement. Creation in the Plastic Arts, a book Kupka completed in 1913, was published in Prague in 1923.
In 1931, he was a founding member of Abstraction-Création. In 1936, his work was included in the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and in an important show with another excellent Czech painter Alphonse Mucha at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. A retrospective of his work took place at the Galerie Mánes in Prague in 1946. The same year, Kupka participated in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, where he continued to exhibit regularly until his death. During the early 1950s, he gained general recognition and had several solo shows in New York.
Kupka had a strong interest in color theory. His decadent 1907 self-portrait The Yellow Scale prefigures his abstract emphasis on color. Around 1910 he began developing his own color wheels, adapting a format previously explored by Sir Isaac Newton and Hermann von Helmholtz. This work in turn led Kupka to execute a series of paintings he called "Discs of Newton" (1911-12). Kupka was interested in freeing colors from descriptive associations. His work in this area is thought to have influenced other artists like Robert Delaunay.
Josef Albers was a painter, printmaker, sculptor, poet, teacher, and theoretician of art. His work at the Bauhaus and later at Black Mountain College and Yale University was influencial in both the Color Field and Op Art movements. Formulation, Articulation includes one hundred and twenty-seven serigraphs or silk screened prints based on geometric design and complex relationships of color. In the prints, Albers explores the effects of perception, such as the illusion of movement and the interaction of adjacent colors.