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Mental Plane II (1997)
Oil on canvas
h: 42 x w: 50 in
Courtesy of Woodward Gallery, NYC
Copyright Artist Natalie Edgar
Oil and pencil on canvas; 148.9 x 197.7 cm.
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist who broke down the boundaries between works of art and everyday objects. After the sensation caused by “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1912), he painted few other pictures. His irreverence for conventional aesthetic standards led him to devise his famous ready-mades and heralded an artistic revolution. Duchamp was friendly with the Dadaists, and in the 1930s he helped to organize Surrealist exhibitions. He became a U.S. citizen in 1955.
In 1911 Duchamp, the great iconoclast of 20th-century art, was still adhering to the conventions of easel painting, formal composition, narrative structure, and individual inspiration. His formative years were bracketed by studies at the Académie Julien in Paris in 1904–05 and participation in the artistic circle known as the Puteaux Group, which gathered at the home of his older brothers and fellow artists, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, after 1910. During this period, Duchamp moved rapidly through a succession of Modernist styles before renouncing painting altogether in 1913 in favor of an art that privileged the intellectual over the optical.
As artist and anti-artist, Marcel Duchamp is considered one of the leading spirits of 20th-century painting. With the exception of the “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2,” however, his works were ignored by the public for the greater part of his life. Until 1960 only such avant-garde groups as the Surrealists claimed that he was important, while to “official” art circles and sophisticated critics he appeared to be merely an eccentric and something of a failure. He was more than 70 years old when he emerged in the United States as the secret master whose entirely new attitude toward art and society, far from being negative or nihilistic, had led the way to Pop art, Op art, and many of the other movements embraced by younger artists everywhere. Not only did he change the visual arts but he also changed the mind of the artist.
Oil on canvas; 182.8 x 152.5 cm.
1962 Born in Shantou, China
1985 BFA Education, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art, China
1997 BFA Painting, University of Tasmania, Australia
1985–1990 Assistant Lecturer, Shantou University, Guangdong, China
2003 Co-Curator, Out of China, Long Gallery and Salamanca Arts Centre, Australia
Co-Curator, Tasmanian Vision, Shantou University Gallery, China
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist who broke down the boundaries between works of art and everyday objects. After the sensation caused by “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1912), he painted few other pictures. His irreverence for conventional aesthetic standards led him to devise his famous ready-mades and heralded an artistic revolution. Duchamp was friendly with the Dadaists, and in the 1930s he helped to organize Surrealist exhibitions. He became a U.S. citizen in 1955.
In 1911 Duchamp, the great iconoclast of 20th-century art, was still adhering to the conventions of easel painting, formal composition, narrative structure, and individual inspiration. His formative years were bracketed by studies at the Académie Julien in Paris in 1904–05 and participation in the artistic circle known as the Puteaux Group, which gathered at the home of his older brothers and fellow artists, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, after 1910. During this period, Duchamp moved rapidly through a succession of Modernist styles before renouncing painting altogether in 1913 in favor of an art that privileged the intellectual over the optical.
As artist and anti-artist, Marcel Duchamp is considered one of the leading spirits of 20th-century painting. With the exception of the “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2,” however, his works were ignored by the public for the greater part of his life. Until 1960 only such avant-garde groups as the Surrealists claimed that he was important, while to “official” art circles and sophisticated critics he appeared to be merely an eccentric and something of a failure. He was more than 70 years old when he emerged in the United States as the secret master whose entirely new attitude toward art and society, far from being negative or nihilistic, had led the way to Pop art, Op art, and many of the other movements embraced by younger artists everywhere. Not only did he change the visual arts but he also changed the mind of the artist.
#25, 1951
Oil on canvas, 37 x 46 inches
Signed lower left: C. Park
Signed and inscribed on verso:
C. Park / #25, 1951
Photograph courtesy Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York.
Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev in the Russian Empire. His parents were ethnic Poles. It remains a mystery of 20th century art, how, while leading a comfortable career, during which he just followed all the latest trends in art, in 1915 Malevich suddenly came up with the idea of Suprematism. The fact that Malevich throughout all his life was signing and re-signing his works using earlier dates makes this u-turn in his artistic career even more ambiguous.
In 1915 he published his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism. In 1915-1916 he worked with other Suprematist artists in a peasant/artisan co-operative in Skoptsi and Verbovka village. In 1916-1917 he participated in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group in Moscow together with Nathan Altman, David Burliuk and A. Ekster. Famous examples of his Suprematist works include Black Square (1915) and White on White (1918).
Unforcasted Wind (1997)
Oil on canvas
43 by 56 in.
Courtesy of Woodward Gallery, NYC
Copyright Artist Natalie Edgar
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.
Oil on canvas; 80.6 x 100.0 cm.
Born in Montreal, he studied under Paul-Émile Borduas in the 1940s and was a member of Les Automatistes movement. He was one of the signers of the Refus global manifesto. In 1949 he moved to Paris and continued his career as an artist, where he commercialized on his image as a "wild Canadian". In 1959 he began a relationship with the American painter Joan Mitchell. Living together throughout the 1960s, they kept separate homes and studios near Giverny, where Monet had lived. They influenced one another greatly, as much intellectually as artistically, but their relationship was a stormy one, fueled by alcohol. The relationship ended in 1979. His 1992 painting Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg is Riopelle's tribute to Mitchell, who died that year, and is regarded as a high point of his later work.
Riopelle's style changed gradually from Surrealism to abstract expressionism, in which he used myriad soft cubes of color, applied as flat planes with a palette knife, on large canvases to create powerful atmospheres. In 1969 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, and began to spend more time in Canada. He was specially recognized by UNESCO for his work. One of his largest compositions was originally intended for the Toronto airport, but is now in the Opéra Bastille in Paris. In 1988 he was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec and was promoted to Grand Officer in 1994. In 2000 Riopelle was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. In June, 2006 the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts organized a retrospective exhibition which was presented at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Musee Cantini in Marseilles, France. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has a number of his works, spanning his entire career, in their permanent collection.
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.
Oil, opaque watercolor and pastel on paperboard; 119.4 x 175.3 cm.
Adja Yunkers (1900–1983) was an American abstract painter and printmaker. He was born in Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire in 1900. He studied art in Leningrad, Berlin, Paris, and London. He lived in Paris for 14 years, and then moved to Stockholm in 1939. In Stockholm, he published and edited the arts magazines ARS magazine and Creation magazine. In 1947 he moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1949, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. During the 1950s he primarily worked in color woodcuts, introducing brushwork into the genre. In 1960, he began producing lithographs. He produced two important series of lithographs at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles―Salt (five lithographs) and Skies of Venice (ten lithographs). Yunkers died in New York City in 1983.
Adja Yunkers (1900–1983) was an American abstract painter and printmaker. He was born in Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire in 1900. He studied art in Leningrad, Berlin, Paris, and London. He lived in Paris for 14 years, and then moved to Stockholm in 1939. In Stockholm, he published and edited the arts magazines ARS magazine and Creation magazine. In 1947 he moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1949, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. During the 1950s he primarily worked in color woodcuts, introducing brushwork into the genre. In 1960, he began producing lithographs. He produced two important series of lithographs at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles―Salt (five lithographs) and Skies of Venice (ten lithographs). Yunkers died in New York City in 1983.
Anton Rooskens went to technical school in Venlo from 1924 to 1934. In 1935 he moved to Amsterdam. As a painter he was self-educated. In the works he made during the nineteen thirties, mainly landscapes, the influence of Van Gogh prevailed. In 1945 Rooskens visited the exhibition "Art and Freedom" at the Rijksmuseum where he observed sculpture from Africa sculptures and New-Guinea. The simplified, straight shapes of this art can be found in his work of the early post-war period in which also the influence of cubism can be detected. He was the co-founder of the Nederlandse Experimentele Groep which merged with CoBrA later. Rooskens participated in the illustrious exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in 1949 and then he withdrew from the movement.
The connection with CoBrA turned out to be very stimulating for Rooskens. He developed a personal language of magic signs in penetrating black, yellow, ochre, blue and red and he painted compositions in which masks, shields and images of gods were entwined in a jumble of spontaneously painted areas of color. In 1954 he painted, influenced by African art, in a geometric style for a short period. From 1956 he put, in a more and more dynamic manner, abstract signs on large canvasses on which black paint, put on in sturdy strokes, is of a prominent presence. In about 1965 the fantastical beings, reminiscent of the CoBrA period, emerged again. Until the time he died in 1976 his paintings were brighter again.
by San Francisco Bay Area artist Arnold Chao of arnisto.com
48" x 60"
oil on canvas
oil painting next to one of my art collectors, James Berry, in his San Francisco loft.
Untitled
(Blue, Yellow, and Green)
mid-1950s
Gouache on paper
17 3/4 x 23 1/2 inches
Photograph courtesy Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York.
In the heart of darkness, where shadows dance and light flickers, lies a realm untouched by time. "Whispers in the Shadows" unveils a world where beauty intertwines with the surreal, and each image serves as a gateway to the enigmatic depths of the human psyche. Inspired by the haunting works of Yoshitaka Amano and Zdzisław Beksiński, this collection is a tapestry of dreams and nightmares, woven with the threads of abstract expressionism. Here, a Swedish girl becomes the vessel of our deepest fears and fascinations, her smile a paradox amidst the brooding landscape of dark grays, blacks, and golds.
Poem
In the realm where night whispers linger,
A Swedish maiden smiles, a spectral figure.
In hues of gold, black, and sorrow's gray,
She dances with shadows, in eternal play.
Amidst the canvases of Amano's dream,
And Beksiński's nightmarish scream,
Her eyes hold stories untold,
In this world, hauntingly bold.
In the echo of each brushstroke's fall,
She whispers secrets, hidden to all.
A blend of beauty, fear, and art's embrace,
In this gallery of the dark, her ethereal place.
Haiku
Shadowed smile gleams,
In gold and gray dreams she weaves,
Silent whispers breathe.
Tapestry.
Soriano, son of Rafael Rodríguez Soriano and Amalia Montoya Navarro, was born in Guadalajara and displayed his first painting at age 14. He moved to Mexico City in 1935, where after a difficult start he was accepted into the local art scene.
He became a member of the Mexican School cultural movement also featuring Frida Kahlo and poet Octavio Paz. He also joined the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios.
Soriano experimented with abstract work as well as portraits and self portraits. He also became a sculptor in terracotta, ceramics and later bronze.
In 1957, he was awarded the José Clemente Orozco prize by the government of Jalisco. In 1985, Bellas Artes staged an exhibition in honor of his fifty years in the art world. In 1987, he was awarded the National Art Prize by the Mexican government. The Spanish Government awarded Soriano its Valazquez Plastic Arts Prize.
During his career, his works featured in 130 exhibitions held in Mexico, the US, China, France and Poland. Soriano has works on display in public places in Mexico such as a large dove outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey.
He died in February 2006 in Mexico City. He was 85 years old.
Watercolor on wove paper; 48.1 x 63.2 cm.
Gershon Iskowitz was born in Kielce, Poland. He began as an expressionist painter who dealt with figurative subjects and later painted the Canadian landscape in an abstract expressionist style. At the age of four he was sent to the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva where he began drawing. After a year and a half he begged his father to be allowed to return home and was given permission. He was tutored in Polish and placed in a public school. He was bullied at school and left after two and a half years. His father set up a small studio area for him in their home and allowed him to spend his time drawing and painting. At age nine he exchanged his art posters for free admission to a local cinema.
He registered at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1939. But war broke out before he began classes so he had to return to Kielce and was put to forced labor. In September 1943 the Kielce Ghetto was burned. Gershon and his brother, Yosl, were sent to Auschwitz. Gershon painted or drew at night only after every one else was asleep. He said "Why did I do it? I think it kept me alive. There was nothing to do. I had to do something in order to forget the hunger. It's very hard to explain, but in the camp painting was a necessity for survival." He was transferred to Buchenwald in 1944. Near the end of the war he tried to escape but was seriously wounded. In 1947 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and had private study with Oskar Kokoschka who painted in intense expressionistic style.
Gershon's first application to move to Canada was rejected because he had a limp. He reapplied and drew a picture for the bureaucrat in immigration. The fellow declared Gershon a genius, and approved his emigration application. In 1949 he emigrated to Canada. In 1952 he attended Artist's Workshop, Toronto until 1959–60 and began sketching trips to Markham and Uxbridge. He stopped painting scenes from his past in the mid 50's and turned to the Canadian landscape for his models. A major change in his painting style occurred in 1967 when a Canada Council grant permitted him to view the northern landscape from a helicopter. His painting became explosions of color and light.
In 1954 he had his first exhibition with the Canadian Society of Graphic Artists. He also did some part-time teaching at McKellar Lake. In 1964 he became associated with Gallery Moos, where he had many one-man exhibitions. In 1982 Gershon was honored by the AGO with a forty year retrospective of his work. A subset of the exhibition was put on display in London, England. Gershon said [painting] "... is just an extension of myself. It's a plastic interpretation of the way I think. You reflect your own vision. That's what it's all about. Art is like evolution and life, and you've got to search for life, stand on your own feet and continue. The only fear I have is before starting to paint. When I paint, I'm great, I feel great."
Oil on canvas; 195 x 160 cm.
Article provided by Grove Art Online www.groveart.com
Israeli painter, draughtsman, printmaker and writer, of Romanian birth, active in France. The drawings he made in deportation from Nazi labour camps at the age of 13 and 14 saved his life by attracting attention to his precocious talent. In 1944 he emigrated to Israel, living in a kibbutz near Jerusalem and studying art at the Bezalel School in Jerusalem; after being severely wounded in 1948 in the Israeli War of Independence, he continued his studies in Paris. He first made his name as an illustrator. From 1957 to 1965 he produced abstract paintings which had something in common with Art Informel but were characterised by his particular sensitivity of touch and sumptuousness of colour. During this period he also designed stained-glass windows.
Arikha stopped painting in 1965, feeling that it was impossible to continue in the same vein, and he restricted himself first to drawing and then to etching in black and white. He resumed painting in 1973, this time working exclusively from life, painting quickly in oil on canvas on an intimate scale well suited to his generally domestic subjects.
Wary of his own virtuosity and always receptive to the shocks of emotion and chance, Arikha practised a kind of dynamic realism. Arikha's paintings from life after 1973, calm and endowed with a feeling of plenitude arising from his mastery of colour and amplitude of gesture, also have a muted drama because of the vibration of the marks, tonal contrasts and spatial ambiguities, which together assure the modernity of his work within a long tradition.
Bibliography
Avigdor Arikha: Dessins, 1965–1970 (exh. cat., preface S. Beckett, essay B. Rose; Paris, Cent. N. A. Contemp., 1970)
S. Beckett and others: Arikha (Paris and London, 1985)
László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.
He said “Everybody is talented.” As a teacher, Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy lived by these words. As a painter and photographer he demonstrated his own talent. His vision of a nonrepresentational art consisting of pure visual fundamentals—color, texture, light, and equilibrium of forms—was immensely influential in both the fine and applied arts.
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952, oil and charcoal on unsized, unprimed canvas, 219.4 x 297.8 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
A short time ago my friend Mobius Faith posted a terrific image titled "Traffic - Glad" and his background reminded me of a Rothko painting. I happened to look out my window and saw a small portion of what must have been an amazing sunset, and I captured this small part which reminds me again of Rothko. I'm sure "teacherholly" will post an award winning image from tonight's sunset. She has a knack.
Oil on paper; 65.3 x 48.7 cm.
TWORKOV, JACK (1900–1982), U.S. educator, printmaker, painter. Tworkov was born in Biala, Poland and immigrated to the U.S. in 1913. He studied at Columbia University, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League. Tworkov worked as an artist for the Works Project Administration's Federal Art Project in 1935, where he met Willem de Kooning. Both men emerged as forces in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Tworkov was also one of the founders of The Club, a loose New York association of Abstract Expressionists which met to discuss matters relating to art making. Like many other Abstract Expressionists, Tworkov's early work consisted of figures and still-lifes. He also rendered images in a cubist style before adopting the visual aspects of Abstract Expressionism. As to be expected, his early work shared many stylistic characteristics with that of de Kooning. As Tworkov gained eminence along with his colleagues in the New York School representational subject matter became subsumed in abundantly textured long, dashing, diagonal brush strokes, as in his painting Blue Note from 1959. Among other influences, Tworkov also turned to the art of the marginalized Expressionist painter Chaim Soutine as a source of inspiration; in fact, Tworkov wrote an article on Soutine during the latter's 1950 show at MOMA. Tworkov achieved the illusion of vibrating and multiple fields or screens of color from a cool, restricted palette and subtle nuances of tone. Likely influenced by the Minimalists, Tworkov integrated grids and other ordering systems into his images from the 1960s onward, such as Shield (1961) and Variables II (1964–65). One of his major series of paintings, House of the Sun, refers to Ulysses, whose epic adventures suggested a variety of themes to the artist. Tworkov taught at numerous institutions: the American University, Black Mountain College (other luminaries of this period such as John Cage, Franz Kline, and Lyonel Feininger also taught here during the 1940s), Queens College, the Pratt Institute, and Yale University, where he functioned as chairman of the art department. He was a recipient of a Corcoran Gold Medal in 1963. Tworkov's art has been exhibited at numerous major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the Whitney Museum, among other venues. His work is in the collections of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.
Oil on canvas; 128.6 x 95.7 cm.
Zao Wou-Ki was a Chinese-French painter. He was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Zao studied calligraphy in his childhood and, from 1935 to 1941, painting at the school of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. In 1948, he went with his wife Lan-lan, a composer, to Paris to live on the same block in Montparnasse where the classes of Émile Othon Friesz took place. His earliest exhibitions in France were met with praise from Joan Miró and Picasso.
Zao and his wife pursued their own careers, their son having stayed in China with his Zao's parents. In the mid-1950s, they were divorced. In 1957, Zao decided to visit the United States where his younger brother Chao Wu-Wai was living in Montclair, New Jersey, close to the art scene of New York City. He wanted to learn more about "pop art". While in the US, he painted seven canvases at his brother’s house. There are relatively few items dating from that year (1957). Years later, the largest canvas was given by his brother, Chao Wu-Wai, to the Detroit Institute of Arts.[2]
He left the U.S. after a six week stay, traveling to Tokyo and then to Hong Kong, where he met his future wife Zhu Ying, a movie star with two young children. She later became a sculptor who received admiring and critical praise. She committed suicide at the height of her career.
Zao's works, influenced by Paul Klee, are orientated to abstraction. He names them with the date in which he finishes them, and in them, masses of colours appear to materialise a creating world, like a big bang, where light structures the canvas. He worked formats in triptychs and diptychs. While his work was stylistically similar to the Abstract Expressionists whom he met while travelling in New York, he was influenced by Impressionism. Zao Wou-ki stated that he had been influenced by the works of Matisse, Picasso and Cézanne.[4][5]
His meetings with Henri Michaux pushed him to review his Indian ink techniques, always based in Chinese traditional drawings. Zao was a member of the Académie des beaux-arts, and was considered to have been one of the most successful Chinese painters during his lifetime.
His auction record of HK$68,980,000 (US$8,863,930) was set at Sotheby's, Hong-Kong, on 3 October 2011.[6]
Former French President Jacques Chirac was offered a painting by Zao Wu Ki by his ministers during their last meeting. By the end of his life Zao had stopped producing new paintings due to health problems. He died on 9 April 2013 at his home in Switzerland.
Watercolor on canvas and lacquered wood; 83.3 x 106 cm.
Lucio Fontana was an Italian/Argentine painter and sculptor. He was mostly known as the founder of Spatialism and his ties to Arte Povera. Born in Rosario, province of Santa Fe, Argentina of Italian parents, Fontana spent the first years of his life in Italy and came back to Argentina in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor along with his father, and then on his own.
In 1927 he returned to Italy and studied under the sculptor Adolfo Wildt, and there he presented his first exhibition in 1930, organized by the Milano art gallery Il Milione. During the following decade he journeyed Italy and France, working with abstract and expressionist painters. In 1935 he joined the association Abstraction-Création in Paris and from 1936 to 1949 made expressionist sculptures in ceramic and bronze.
In 1940 he returned to Argentina. In Buenos Aires (1946) he founded the Altamira academy together with some of his students, and made public the White Manifesto, where he states that "Matter, color and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art". Back in Milano in 1947, he supported, along with writers and philosophers, the first manifesto of spatialism (Spazialismo)**. He also resumed his ceramics works in Albisola.
From 1949 on he started the so-called Spatial Concept or slash series, consisting in holes or slashes on the surface of monochrome paintings, drawing a sign of what he named "an art for the Space Age". In 1948 Fontana experimented the use of neon lighting with "Ambiente spaziale a luce nera" (Galleria del Naviglio, Milan). He then created an elaborate neon ceiling called "Luce spaziale" in 1951 for the Triennale in Milan. In 1959 he exhibited cut-off paintings with multiple combinable elements (he named the sets quanta). He participated in the Bienal de São Paulo and in numerous exhibitions in Europe (including London and Paris) and Asia, as well as New York.
Shortly before his death he was present at the "Destruction Art, Destroy to Create" demonstration at the Finch College Museum of New York. Then he left his home in Milano and went to Comabbio (in the province of Varese, Italy), his family's mother town, where he died in 1968.
Anton Rooskens went to technical school in Venlo from 1924 to 1934. In 1935 he moved to Amsterdam. As a painter he was self-educated. In the works he made during the nineteen thirties, mainly landscapes, the influence of Van Gogh prevailed. In 1945 Rooskens visited the exhibition "Art and Freedom" at the Rijksmuseum where he observed sculpture from Africa sculptures and New-Guinea. The simplified, straight shapes of this art can be found in his work of the early post-war period in which also the influence of cubism can be detected. He was the co-founder of the Nederlandse Experimentele Groep which merged with CoBrA later. Rooskens participated in the illustrious exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in 1949 and then he withdrew from the movement.
The connection with CoBrA turned out to be very stimulating for Rooskens. He developed a personal language of magic signs in penetrating black, yellow, ochre, blue and red and he painted compositions in which masks, shields and images of gods were entwined in a jumble of spontaneously painted areas of color. In 1954 he painted, influenced by African art, in a geometric style for a short period. From 1956 he put, in a more and more dynamic manner, abstract signs on large canvasses on which black paint, put on in sturdy strokes, is of a prominent presence. In about 1965 the fantastical beings, reminiscent of the CoBrA period, emerged again. Until the time he died in 1976 his paintings were brighter again.
Öl auf Leinwand / oil on canvas
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
Ausstellung / exhibition "Robert Motherwell - Pure Painting"
Kunstforum Wien
Mikhail Larionov was born at Tiraspol, near Odessa. In 1898 he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Isaac Levitan and Valentin Serov. He was suspended three times for his radical outlook. In 1900 he met Natalya Sergeevna Goncharova and formed a life-long relationship with her.
From 1902 his style was Impressionism. After a visit to Paris in 1906 he moved into Post-Impressionism and then a Neo-primitive style which derived partly from Russian sign painting. In 1908 he staged the Golden Fleece exhibition in Moscow, which included paintings by international avant-garde artists such as Matisse, Derain, Braque, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Other group shows promoted by him included Tatlin, Chagall and Malevich.
Larionov was a founding member of two important Russian artistic groups Jack of Diamonds (1909–1911) and the more radical Donkey's Tail (1912–1913). He gave names to both groups. His first solo show was for one day in Moscow in 1911. In 1913 he created Rayonism, which was the first creation of near-abstract art in Russia. In 1915 he left Russia and worked with the ballet owner Sergei Diaghilev in Paris on the productions of the Ballets Russes.
The highest price paid for a Larionov painting at auction is 2,200,000 British pounds.