Category Archives: Artists

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 17th Century artist of the Baroque movement, Il Tedesco [German, 1578-1610] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Elsheimer_Adam

Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610), was a German painter, etcher, and draughtsman, active mainly in Italy. Although he died young and his output was small he played a key role in the development of 17th-century landscape painting.

He was born in Frankfurt, where he absorbed the Coninxloo tradition, and moved to Italy in 1598. In Venice he worked with his countryman Rottenhammer, then settled in Rome in 1600. His early Mannerist style gave way to a more direct manner in which he showed great sensitivity to effects of light; his nocturnal scenes are particularly original, bringing out the best in his lyrical temperament, and he is credited with being the first artist to represent the constellations of the night sky accurately (The Flight into Egypt, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1609). He painted a few pictures in which figures predominate, but generally they are fused into a harmonious unity with their landscape settings. They are invariably on a small scale and on copper (the only exception is a self-portrait in the Uffizi, Florence, of doubtful attribution), but although exquisitely executed they have a grandeur out of all proportion to their size.

Elsheimer achieved fame during his lifetime and there are numerous contemporary copies of his works. His paintings were engraved by his pupil and patron, the Dutch amateur artist Count Hendrick Goudt (1573–1648), and Elsheimer himself made a number of etchings. In spite of his popularity he was personally unsuccessful and died in poverty. Sandrart says he suffered from melancholia and was often unable to work; apparently he was imprisoned for debt. Rubens was a friend of Elsheimer and after his death lamented his ‘sin of sloth, by which he has deprived the world of the most beautiful things;’ he also wrote ‘I have never seen his equal in the realm of small figures, of landscapes, and of so many other subjects.;’

Both Rubens (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel) and Rembrandt (National Gallery, Dublin) made paintings of The Flight into Egypt inspired by Elsheimer’s masterpiece, and his influence is apparent in the work of many other 17th-century artists.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 17th Century artist of the Baroque movement, Artemisia Gentileschi [Italian, 1590-?1642] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Gentileschi_Artemisia

Artemisia Gentileschi (July 8, 1593–c.1654) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation after Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

She painted many pictures of strong and suffering women from myth and the Bible – victims, suicides, warriors — and made a specialty of the Judith story. Her best-known image, Judith Beheading Holofernes shows the decapitation of Holofernes, a scene of “horrific struggle and blood-letting.” That she was a woman painting in the 17th century and that she was raped herself and participated in prosecuting the rapist long overshadowed her achievements as an artist. For many years she was regarded as a curiosity. Today she is regarded as one of the most progressive and expressionist painters of her generation, a major artist in her own right.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist, Leslie Ruth Kraker Lampron [American, 1950- ] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Lampron_Leslie_Ruth_Kraker

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Surrealist movement, René François Ghislain Magritte [Belgian, 1898-1967] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Magritte_Rene

René Magritte (1898–1967) was born in Lessines, Hainaut, Belgium. Aside from a few facts, almost nothing is known of Magritte’s childhood. We know that the family’s financial status was comfortable because Léopold, ostensibly a tailor, made handsome profits from his investments in edible oils and bouillon cubes.

We also know that young René sketched and painted early on, and began taking formal lessons in drawing in 1910 — the same year that he produced his first oil painting. Anecdotally, he was said to be a lackluster student in school. The artist himself had little to say about his childhood beyond a few vivid memories that shaped his way of seeing.

Perhaps this relative silence about his early life was born when his mother committed suicide in 1912. Régina had been suffering from depression for an undocumented number of years, and was so badly affected that she was usually kept in a locked room. On the night she escaped, she immediately went to the nearest bridge and threw herself into the River Sambre that flowed behind the Magritte’s property. Régina was missing for days before her body was discovered a mile or so downriver.

Legend has it that Régina’s nightgown had wrapped itself around her head by the time her corpse was recovered, and an acquaintance of René’s later started the story that he was present when his mother was pulled from the river. He was certainly not there. The only public comment he ever made on the subject was that he’d felt guiltily happy to be the focal point of sensation and sympathy, both at school and in his neighborhood. However, veils, curtains, faceless people, and headless faces and torsos did become recurring themes in his paintings.

In 1916 Magritte enrolled in the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels seeking inspiration and a safe distance from the WWI German invasion. He found none of the former but one of his classmates at the Academie introduced him to Cubism, Futurism, and Purism, three movements he found exciting. On a less visionary note, he emerged from the Academie qualified to do commercial art. Although creating ads and designs can be boring, it is steady work. Commercial jobs kept Magritte’s bills paid until, decades into the future, he was able to paint “seriously” full time. agritte died on August 15, 1967 in Schaerbeek, Brussels, Belgium.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Surrealist movement, Salvador Dalí [Spanish, 1904-1989] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Dali_Salvador

Salvador Dali (May 11, 1904 ? January 23, 1989), was born in Figueres, Spain in 1904, Salvador Dali is known for his technical skill as a painter and the shocking quality of his imagination. His pioneering spirit was also accompanied by a reverence of tradition and a will for continuity. Dali consistently depicted the landscape of his homeland, one that became synonymous with the landscape of the imagination and of dreams. He forged in his long career a remarkable body of work, and his life demonstrates the richness of living creatively in every aspect of one?s existence.

Salvador Dali was the only surviving male child of a prosperous Catalan family that divided its time between Figueres and the coastal village of Cadaqués. Dali attended a prominent art academy in Madrid. From his earliest years as an artist he exhibited his work widely, lectured, and wrote. In 1929 he joined the Surrealist movement becoming its most visible and controversial member. That year, Dali met Gala Eluard when she visited him with her husband, poet Paul Eluard. Subsequently, Gala became Dali?s wife, his muse, primary model, and life-long obsession.

Dali broke with the Surrealist movement in 1939. He and Gala fled Europe in 1940 and spent the war years in the United States where he revised his strategy toward art, rejecting modernism and connecting with other traditions of art. In 1947 Dali and Gala returned to Spain and thereafter divided their time between Europe and the United States. In 1974, Dali organized a museum of his own collection of art, the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres. After the death of Gala in 1982, Dali?s health declined. His final years were spent in seclusion at his museum. Salvador Dali died on January 23, 1989 in the place of his birth.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Surrealist movement, Salvador Dalí [Spanish, 1904-1989] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Dali_Salvador

Salvador Dali (May 11, 1904 ? January 23, 1989), was born in Figueres, Spain in 1904, Salvador Dali is known for his technical skill as a painter and the shocking quality of his imagination. His pioneering spirit was also accompanied by a reverence of tradition and a will for continuity. Dali consistently depicted the landscape of his homeland, one that became synonymous with the landscape of the imagination and of dreams. He forged in his long career a remarkable body of work, and his life demonstrates the richness of living creatively in every aspect of one?s existence.

Salvador Dali was the only surviving male child of a prosperous Catalan family that divided its time between Figueres and the coastal village of Cadaqués. Dali attended a prominent art academy in Madrid. From his earliest years as an artist he exhibited his work widely, lectured, and wrote. In 1929 he joined the Surrealist movement becoming its most visible and controversial member. That year, Dali met Gala Eluard when she visited him with her husband, poet Paul Eluard. Subsequently, Gala became Dali?s wife, his muse, primary model, and life-long obsession.

Dali broke with the Surrealist movement in 1939. He and Gala fled Europe in 1940 and spent the war years in the United States where he revised his strategy toward art, rejecting modernism and connecting with other traditions of art. In 1947 Dali and Gala returned to Spain and thereafter divided their time between Europe and the United States. In 1974, Dali organized a museum of his own collection of art, the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres. After the death of Gala in 1982, Dali?s health declined. His final years were spent in seclusion at his museum. Salvador Dali died on January 23, 1989 in the place of his birth.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Futurist movement, Giorgio Morandi [Italian, 1890-1964] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Morandi_Giorgio

Giorgio Morandi was born in Bologna on 20 July 1890. He displayed an artistic talent at a very young age and in 1907 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. Up until 1911 his scholastic performance at the Academy was excellent, but the final two years were marked by conflicts with his professors due to his change in interests now that he had identified his own artistic language. His artistic influences ranged from Cézanne to Henry Rousseau and from Picasso to André Derain. At the same time Morandi developed an interest in the great Italian art of the past. In 1910 he visited Florence where he admired the masterpieces of Giotto, Masacci and Paolo Uccello. In 1914 Morandi began to exhibit his work. At the Hotel Baglioni in Bologna he took part in the famous five-artist exhibition together with Osvaldo Licini, Mario Bacchelli, Giacomo Vespignani and Severo Pozzati. The years of the First World War correspond to his metaphysical period, during which he produced about ten works that underscore the importance and independence of his role in the metaphysical movement. In the twenties his works assumed a greater degree of plasticity. This marked the beginning of his still-life period, characterized by the metaphysics of everyday objects. Without moving from Bologna, Morandi continued to play an active part in the intellectual debate. Although he did not travel abroad until 1956, he nonetheless always showed a lively interest in important international events. His teaching career was emblematic of the esteem he enjoyed in intellectual and official circles of the period. After teaching for many years in the municipally-run drawing schools, in February 1930 he was given the chair of engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna on the strength of his reputation alone. He was to teach here until 1956. Even more important than his participation at the Venice Biennials was that of the Rome Quadrennials. In 1930 and 1935 he was on the acceptance committee and also took part as an artist with a few highly representative works. But he came to controversial public notice at the third edition of the Rome exhibition in 1939, where he had an entire personal room with 42 oil paintings, 2 drawings and 12 aquafortis etchings and won second prize for painting after the younger Bruno Saetti. There were heated arguments surrounding both the awarding of the first prize and the value of the work displayed in the Morandi room.

Morandi continued to work in his studio in Via Fondazza and in the summer in the town of Grizzana in the Apennine hills near Bologna. After the Second World War broke out, in June 1943 he left as an evacuee for Grizzana. This marked the beginning of what Francesco Arcangeli has defined as his “great period,” corresponding to the landscapes and still-lifes of 1942–43. At the 1948 Biennial, Morandi won first prize, thus rekindling the interest of the press and the public in an artist that a select but growing circle of admirers were now hailing as one of the greatest masters of the century. Morandi was highly considered in the most exclusive international circles and some of his works appeared at prestigious exhibitions in Northern Europe and the United States. A glance at the list of foreign exhibitions is sufficient to give an idea of the esteem in which this Bolognese artist was held.

After a year-long illness, Giorgio Morandi died in Bologna on 18 June 1964. The image accompanying this article is a Self-portrait done in 1925.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 18th Century artist of the Rococo movement, Bernardo Bellotto [Italian, 1721-1780] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Bellotto_Bernardo

Bernardo Bellotto (1721–1780) began his career in Venice, where he probably studied with his uncle, Canaletto (Antonio Canal), one of the best-known Italian view painters. By the age of twenty-five, Bellotto had achieved considerable success, having been commissioned to paint views of such cities as Venice, Florence, and Rome for Italian and other European patrons. His best view paintings combine precise topographical detail with a dramatic use of light and shade, all infused with a vivid sense of atmosphere. As well as accurate depictions of existing buildings, he also produced imaginary landscapes, called capricci, both on commission and to sell on the open art market. In 1747 Augustus III, King of Poland, invited Bellotto to move to Dresden, then part of Poland, where the artist was soon named court painter. Bellotto traveled to several other central European cities in subsequent years and painted cityscapes in each one; he lived in Vienna from 1759 to 1761, in Munich in 1761, and returned to Dresden in 1762. In 1767 he took up residence in Warsaw, where he became court painter to Stanislaw II, the last King of Poland, and remained in the city for the rest of his life.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 15th Century artist, Rogier van der Weyden [Flemish, 1399?-1464] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Weyden_Rogier_van_der

Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400–1464), was a South-Netherlandish painter, chronologically halfway up the list of mediaeval West-European innovators, ranking between Jan van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes, known as the Flemish primitives.

Rogier van der Weyden was born Rogier de la Pasture in Doornik (Tournai). As far as we know, he entered late into the services of master painter Robert Campin, in 1427, a year after marrying Elizabeth Goffaert.

His career took off quickly after that. In 1432 he established himself as a master in Doornik, rising to the position of Brussels City Painter in 1435. From that day on he only worked under his Flemish name. There are clues that he stayed in Bruges between 1432 and 1435; whatever the case, the influence of Van Eyck on his work is clearly felt. Brussels at the time was a good place to work in as it was quickly developing into a regional center.

In the Holy Year of 1450 Van der Weyden traveled to Rome. Along the way he composed several works for the Medici family in Florence.

Van der Weyden painted mostly religious themes – with the exception of several portraits his worldly work has been lost. He never signed his work, so art historians to this day are trying to discover which works are his. Most likely he ran a workshop with a large number of assistants and students.

Characteristic of his work are the clear composition and the lively use of colors, in which he incorporated much symbolism. His altarpieces are considered his highlights, including the Descent from the Cross and the multitych with the Last Judgment in Beaune, where he tried to rival Van Eyck’s Lamb of God. Van der Weyden strongly influenced later painters, among whom his student Hans Memling.

Rogier van der Weyden died in Brussels in 1464, where he was buried in the St. Gudula Church, now known as the St. Michael’s Cathedral. He was reasonably prosperous and renowned during his life. For at least half a century his style was much imitated.

Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Surrealist movement, Alberto Giacometti [Swiss, 1901-1966] Link: https://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Giacometti_Alberto

Alberto Giacometti, 1901–1966, was a School of Paris sculptor, a painter and draughtsman born in the village of Borgonovo near Stampa, Switzerland, and son of the Post-Impressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti. Alberto began to draw, paint and sculpt at an early age. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Geneva in 1919–20, and at Italy in 1920–21. He moved in 1922 to Paris where he first studied in Archipenko’s studio, and then for five years at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Bourdelle. His first one-man exhibition ws at the Galerie Aktuaryus, Zurich, 1927. He went through a period of intense restlessness in which he experimented with polychrome sculpture, cages, erotic kinetic objects, near-abstraction and other styles. Giacometti articipated in the Surrealist movement in 1930–35.

He began in 1934–35 to work again from the model, but each sculpture became smaller and smaller, and was finally almost always destroyed; Alerto had no exhibitions between 1935 and 1947. In 1941–45 he lived in Geneva, then returned to Paris. His characteristic style dates from 1947 when he started to make figures which were very tall and thin. He was awarded the First Prize for Sculpture at the Pittsburgh International in 1961, the main prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1962, and the Guggenheim International Award for Painting in 1964. He died at Chur in Switzerland.