Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Akseli Valdemar Gallen-Kallela


Portrait

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Symbolist movement, Akseli Valdemar Gallen-Kallela [Finnish, 1865-1931] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Gallen-Kallela_Akseli_Valdemar

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931), was a Finnish painter, graphic artist, designer, and architect, his country’s most famous artist and a major figure in the Art Nouveau and Symbolist movements. He was born in Pori and studied in Helsinki and then in Paris (1884–9, notably at the Académie Julian). In 1894 he settled at Ruovesi in central Finland, where he designed his own home and studio (1894–5) in a romantic vernacular style, together with its furnishings. He traveled widely, however, and was well-known outside his own country, particularly in Germany (he had a joint exhibition with Munch in Berlin in 1895 and exhibited with Die Brücke in Dresden in 1910). In 1911–13 he built a new home and studio for himself at Tarvaspää near Helsinki (now a museum dedicated to him). Gallen-Kallela was deeply patriotic (he volunteered to fight in the War of Independence against Russia in 1918, even though he was in his 50s) and he was inspired mainly by the landscape and folklore of his country, above all by the Finnish national epic Kalevala (‘Land of Heroes’).


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Lake Keitele

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Lemminkäinen’s Mother

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Kullervo cursing

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Autumn. Fresco in the tomb of Juselius (Pori).

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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Constantin Brâncuși


Portrait

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist, Constantin Brâncuși [Romanian, 1876-1957] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Brancusi_Constantin

Constantin Brâncuși; surname sometimes spelled Brâncuș; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His abstract style emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Famous Brâncuși works include the Sleeping Muse (1908), The Kiss (1908), Prometheus (1911), Mademoiselle Pogany (1913), The Newborn (1915), Bird in Space(1919) and The Column of the Infinite (Coloana infinitului), popularly known as The Endless Column (1938). Considered the pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture.


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The First Cry

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The Kiss (1907)

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The Kiss (1912)

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Madame L.R.

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