For Claude Monet the designation `impressionist' always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the end of his very long life. He was so by deep conviction, and for his Impressionism he may have sacrificed many other opportunities that his enormous talent held out to him. Monet did not paint classical compositions with figures, and he did not become a portraitist, although his professional training included those skills. He chose a single genre for himself, landscape painting, and in that he achieved a degree of perfection none of his contemporaries managed to attain. Yet the little boy began by drawing caricatures. Boudin advised Monet to stop doing caricatures and to take up landscapes instead. The sea, the sky, animals, people, and trees are beautiful in the exact state in which nature created them - surrounded by air and light. Indeed, it was Boudin who passed on to Monet his conviction of the importance of working in the open air, which Monet would in turn transmit to his impressionist friends. Monet did not want to enrol at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He chose to attend a private school, L'Académie Suisse, established by an ex-model on the Quai d'Orfèvres near the Pont Saint-Michel. One could draw and paint from a live model there for a modest fee. This was where Monet met the future impressionist Camille Pissarro. Later in Gleyre's studio, Monet met Auguste Renoir Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille. Monet considered it very important that Boudin be introduced to his new friends. He also told his friends of another painter he had found in Normandy. This was the remarkable Dutchman Jongkind. His landscapes were saturated with colour, and their sincerity, at times even their naïveté, was combined with subtle observation of the Normandy shore's variable nature. At this time Monet's landscapes were not yet characterized by great richness of colour. Rather, they recalled the tonalities of paintings by the Barbizon artists, and Boudin's seascapes. He composed a range of colour based on yellow-brown or blue-grey. At the Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877 Monet presented a series of paintings for the first time: seven views of the Saint-Lazare train station. He selected them from among twelve he had painted at the station. This motif in Monet's work is in line not only with Manet's Chemin de fer (The Railway) and with his own landscapes featuring trains and stations at Argenteuil, but also with a trend that surfaced after the railways first began to appear. In 1883, Monet had bought a house in the village of Giverny, near the little town of Vernon. At Giverny, series painting became one of his chief working procedures. Meadows became his permanent workplace. When a journalist, who had come from Vétheuil to interview Monet, asked him where his studio was, the painter answered, "My studio! I've never had a studio, and I can't see why one would lock oneself up in a room. To draw, yes - to paint, no". Then, broadly gesturing towards the Seine, the hills, and the silhouette of the little town, he declared, "There's my real studio."Monet began to go to London in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He began all his London paintings working directly from nature, but completed many of them afterwards, at Giverny. The series formed an indivisible whole, and the painter had to work on all his canvases at one time. A friend of Monet's, the writer Octave Mirbeau, wrote that he had accomplished a miracle. With the help of colours he had succeeded in recreating on the canvas something almost impossible to capture: he was reproducing sunlight, enriching it with an infinite number of reflections. Alone among the impressionists, Claude Monet took an almost scientific study of the possibilities of colour to its limits; it is unlikely that one could have gone any further in that direction.
Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) ist einer der unumstrittenen Meister der spanischen Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts. Oft wird er aufgrund seines gewagten Stils und seines Credos, dass die persnliche Sichtweise des Künstlers mehr wert ist als die Tradition, der erste Maler der Moderne genannt. Mit seiner großen Auswahl der Werke Goyas wird diese Great Masters-Ausgabe jeden Kunstliebhaber verzaubern.
In diesem Zeichentrickfilm mit farbigen Illustrationen stoppt das mutige Kätzchen Lucía einen Dieb, der Geld vom Markt stiehlt.
* Der einfache zweisprachige Text in Dialogen.
* Schne Zeichnungen.
* Eine interessante Geschichte.
* Leicht zu lesen und so viel Spaß!
Behind Frida Kahlo's portraits, lies the story of both her life and work. It is precisely this combination that draws the reader in. Frida's work is a record of her life, and rarely can we learn so much about an artist from what she records inside the picture frame. Frida Kahlo truly is Mexico's gift to the history of art. She was just eighteen years old when a terrible bus accident changed her life forever, leaving her handicapped and burdened with constant physical pain. But her explosive character, raw determination and hard work helped to shape her artistic talent. And although he was an obsessive womanizer, the great painter Diego Rivera was by her side. She won him over with her charm, talent and intelligence, and Kahlo learnt to lean on the success of her companion in order to explore the world, thus creating her own legacy whilst finding herself surrounded by a close-knit group of friends. Her personal life was turbulent, as she frequently left her relationship with Diego to one side whilst she cultivated her own bisexual relationships. Despite this, Frida and Diego managed to save their frayed relationship. The story and the paintings that Frida left us display a courageous account of a woman constantly on a search of self discovery.
Egon Schiele's work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill in the manipulation of line, above all, lent a taut expressivity to all his work. Profoundly convinced of his own significance as an artist, Schiele achieved more in his abruptly curtailed youth than many other artists achieved in a full lifetime. His roots were in the Jugendstil of the Viennese Secession movement. Like a whole generation, he came under the overwhelming influence of Vienna's most charismatic and celebrated artist, Gustav Klimt. In turn, Klimt recognised Schiele's outstanding talent and supported the young artist, who within just a couple of years, was already breaking away from his mentor's decorative sensuality. Beginning with an intense period of creativity around 1910, Schiele embarked on an unflinching exposé of the human form - not the least his own - so penetrating that it is clear he was examining an anatomy more psychological, spiritual and emotional than physical. He painted many townscapes, landscapes, formal portraits and allegorical subjects, but it was his extremely candid works on paper, which are sometimes overtly erotic, together with his penchant for using under-age models that made Schiele vulnerable to censorious morality. In 1912, he was imprisoned on suspicion of a series of offences including kidnapping, rape and public immorality. The most serious charges (all but that of public immorality) were dropped, but Schiele spent around three despairing weeks in prison. Expressionist circles in Germany gave a lukewarm reception to Schiele's work. His compatriot, Kokoschka, fared much better there. While he admired the Munich artists of Der Blaue Reiter, for example, they rebuffed him. Later, during the First World War, his work became better known and in 1916 he was featured in an issue of the left-wing, Berlin-based Expressionist magazine Die Aktion. Schiele was an acquired taste. From an early stage he was regarded as a genius. This won him the support of a small group of long-suffering collectors and admirers but, nonetheless, for several years of his life his finances were precarious. He was often in debt and sometimes he was forced to use cheap materials, painting on brown wrapping paper or cardboard instead of artists' paper or canvas. It was only in 1918 that he enjoyed his first substantial public success in Vienna. Tragically, a short time later, he and his wife Edith were struck down by the massive influenza epidemic of 1918 that had just killed Klimt and millions of other victims, and they died within days of one another. Schiele was just twenty-eight years old.
Beyond the sunflowers, irises and portrait of Doctor Gachet, there is the man Van Gogh, signified by his fragility and talent. From his birth in 1853 to his death in 1890, the Post-Impressionist Van Gogh shaped 19th century concepts of painting, with his creativity and technique. He became a forerunner of the Expressionists, the Fauves and Modern art. Today, however, Van Gogh remains the symbol of a painter tortured by illness, by others and, above all, by himself.
Explore the world of Post-Impressionism with a beautiful collection of paintings from this creative genius. The vibrant colours and whimsical brushstrokes within the paintings provide an insight into the volatile nature of Van Gogh's state of mind.
Whistler (Lowell, 1834 - Londres 1903)
Whistler surgit à un moment crucial de l'histoire de l'art et il joue un rôle de précurseur. Il a, comme les Impressionnistes, la volonté d'imposer ses idées. Son oeuvre se déroule en quatre périodes. Dans une première période de recherche, l'artiste est influencé par le réalisme de Courbet et par le japonisme. Puis Whistler trouve son originalité
avec les Nocturnes et la série des Cremorne Gardens en s'opposant à l'académisme qui veut qu'une oeuvre d'art raconte une histoire. Lorsqu'il peint le portrait de sa mère, Whistler l'intitule Arrangement en gris et noir (p.31), ce qui est significatif de ses théories esthétiques. S'il dépeint les jardins de plaisir de Cremorne, ce n'est pas pour y figurer, comme Renoir, des personnages identifiables, mais pour saisir une atmosphère. Il aime les brumes des bords de la Tamise, les lumières blafardes, les cheminées d'usine. C'est la période au cours de laquelle il fera figure de précurseur et d'aventurier de l'art ; au bord de l'abstraction, il choque ses contemporains. La troisième période est surtout dominée par ses portraits en pied : c'est elle qui lui apportera la gloire. Mais il saura insuffler à un genre pourtant classique sa profonde originalité. Il restitue les personnes dans leur environnement : cela donne une étrange présence aux modèles. Il crée des portraits qualifiés de médiums par ses contemporains et dont Oscar Wilde s'inspirera pour écrire son Portrait de Dorian Gray. Enfin, vers la fin de sa vie, l'artiste réalise des paysages et des portraits dans la grande tradition, très influencé par Velazquez. Whistler fera preuve d'une impressionnante rigueur en faisant sans cesse coïncider son oeuvre avec ses théories. Il n'hésitera pas à croiser le fer avec les théoriciens de l'art les plus célèbres.
Sa personnalité, ses foucades, son élégance, en font un sujet idéal de curiosité et d'admiration. Ami proche de Mallarmé, admiré par Marcel Proust, dandy provocateur, mondain ombrageux, artiste exigeant, il fut un novateur audacieux.
Peintre flamand du XVIIe siècle, Van Dyck eut une carrière aussi courte qu'éblouissante. Élève de Rubens, il devint vite le protégé des princes et des rois et fut le portraitiste attitré des plus grandes familles italiennes et anglaises. Au travers d'une composition rigoureuse, il confère à ses modèles dignité, grandeur et spiritualité. Dames fières, seigneurs caracolant sur leur cheval, Van Dyck s'entend à rendre l'élégance nonchalante et l'ennui d'une société raffinée. Peintre baroque aux inflexions chatoyantes, il joue d'une palette légère et nuancée et restitue avec la plus grande virtuosité les étoffes de velours, de satin et de soie.
Van Dyck est considéré comme le fondateur de l'École anglaise du portrait. Il influença Lely, Dobson, Kneller et surtout Reynolds et Gainsborough, ainsi que les peintres français du XVIIIe siècle.
Modigliani (1884-1920), peintre sans bonheur dans son Italie natale, ne connut que le chagrin dans sa terre d'adoption, la France. De ce mal-être, l'artiste constitue une oeuvre originale, influencée par l'Art africain, les Cubistes et les nuits alcoolisées de Montparnasse.
Sa vision de la femme, au corps sensuel, à la nudité presque agressive, aux visages énigmatiques, exprime toute sa souffrance d'être mal aimé, injustement méconnu.
Modigliani est mort à l'âge de 36 ans. Ce livre se compose des toiles qui firent scandale en leur temps et qui paraissent aujourd'hui bien sages.
Gustav Klimt (Baumgarten, 1862 Vienne, 1918)
«Faire un autoportrait ne m'intéresse pas. Les sujets de peinture qui m'intéressent ? Les autres et en particulier les femmes » Aucune référence au monde extérieur ne vient contrarier le charme des allégories, portraits, paysages et autres personnages que l'artiste peint. Des couleurs et des motifs d'inspiration orientale (Klimt a été très influencé par le Japon, l'ancienne Egypte et la Ravenne byzantine), un espace bidimentionnel dépourvu de profondeur et une qualité souvent stylisée de l'image, autant d'éléments utilisés par le peintre pour créer une oeuvre séduisante, où le corps de la femme s'expose dans toute sa volupté. A 14 ans, il obtient une bourse d'Etat pour entrer à la Kunstgewerbeschule (l'Ecole viennoise des Arts et Métiers). Très vite, ses talents de peintre et de dessinateur s'affirment. Ses toutes remières oeuvres lui valent un succès inhabituellement précoce. Sa première grande initiative date de 1879 : il crée cette année-là la Künstlerkompagnie (la compagnie des artistes) avec son frère Ernst, et Franz Matsch. A Vienne, la fin du XIXe siècle est une période d'effervescence architecturale. L'empereur François- Joseph décide, en 1857, de détruire les remparts entourant le coeur médiéval de la ville. Le Ring, financé par l'argent du contribuable, est alors construit : de magnifiques résidences y côtoient de superbes parcs. Ces changements profitent à Klimt et à ses associés, leur fournissant de multiples occasions de faire montre de leur talent.
En 1897, Klimt, accompagné de quelques amis proches, quitte la très conservatrice Künstlerhausgenossenschaft (Société coopérative des artistes autrichiens) ; il fonde le mouvement Sécession et en prend la présidence. La reconnaissance est immédiate. Au-dessus du porche d'entrée de l'édifice, conçu par José Maria Olbrich est inscrite la devise du mouvement : «A chaque âge son art, à l'art sa liberté. » A partir de 1897, Klimt passa pratiquement tous ses étés sur l'Attersee, en compagnie de la famille Flge. Durant ces périodes de paix et de tranquillité, il eut l'occasion de peindre de nombreux paysages qui constituent un quart de son oeuvre complète. Klimt exécute des croquis préparatoires à la plus grande partie de ses réalisations. Parfois, il exécute plus de cent études pour un seul tableau. Le caractère exceptionnel de l'oeuvre de Klimt tient peut-être à l'absence de prédécesseurs et de réels disciples. Il admirait Rodin et Whistler sans les copier servilement. En retour, il fut admiré par les peintres viennois de la jeune génération, tels Egon Schiele et Oskar Kokoschka.
Dalí, Salvador (Figueras, 1904 - Torre-Galatea, 1989)
Peintre, artiste, créateur d'objets, écrivain et cinéaste, il est connu du public comme un des représentants majeur du surréalisme. Buñuel, Lorca, Picasso, Breton... : ces rencontres constituent autant d'étapes dans la carrière de Dalí. Réalisé avec Buñuel, le film Un chien andalou marque son entrée officielle dans le groupe des surréalistes parisiens où il rencontre Gala, la femme d'Éluard, qui deviendra sa compagne et son inspiratrice. Entre cet artiste éclectique et provocateur et les surréalistes parisiens, les relations se tendront progressivement à partir de 1934 jusqu'à la rupture avec Breton, cinq ans plus tard. Pourtant, l'art de Dalí relève bien de l'esthétique surréaliste dont il a conservé le goût pour le dépaysement, l'humour et l'imagination.
Paul Cézanne (Aix-en-Provence, 1839 - 1906)
Depuis sa mort il y a deux siècles, Cézanne est devenu le peintre le plus célèbre du XIXe siècle. Il naquit à Aix-en-Provence en 1839, et la plus belle période de sa vie fut sa prime jeunesse en Provence, qu'il passa en compagnie de Zola, également d'origine italienne. Suivant l'exemple de ce dernier, Cézanne partit pour Paris à l'âge de 21 ans. Il fut déserteur pendant la guerre franco-prussienne, partageant son temps entre la peinture en plein air et son atelier. Il déclara à Vollard, un marchand d'art : «Je ne suis qu'un peintre. L'humour parisien me donne du mal. Peindre des nus sur les rives de l'Arc [une rivière près d'Aix] c'est tout ce que je demande ». Encouragé par Renoir, l'un des premiers à l'apprécier, il exposa avec les impressionnistes en 1874 et en 1877. Il fut reçu avec une dérision qui le blessa. L'ambition de Cézanne, selon ses propres paroles, était «de faire de l'impressionnisme quelque chose d'aussi solide et de durable que les peintures des musées ». Son but était d'atteindre au monumental par un langage moderne de tons incandescents et vibrants. Cézanne voulait reproduire la couleur naturelle d'un objet et l'harmoniser avec les variations de lumière et d'ombre qui tendent habituellement à le détruire ; il désirait élaborer une échelle de tons capables d'exprimer la masse et le caractère de la forme. Cézanne aimait peindre des fruits, parce que c'étaient des modèles dociles et qu'il travaillait lentement. Il ne cherchait pas à reproduire la pomme. Il gardait la couleur dominante et le caractère du fruit, mais amplifiait l'attrait émotionnel de sa forme par un agencement de tons riches et harmonieux. C'était un maître de la nature morte. Ses compositions de fruits et légumes sont véritablement impressionnantes : elles ont le poids, la noblesse, le style des formes immortelles. Aucun autre peintre n'a jamais accordé à une pomme de conviction aussi ardente, de sympathie aussi authentique, ni d'intérêt aussi prolongé. Aucun autre peintre de ce talent n'a jamais réservé dans ses natures mortes ses impulsions les plus fortes à la création de choses nouvelles et vivantes. Cézanne rendit à la peinture la prééminence du savoir - de la connaissance des choses - une qualité essentielle à tout effort créatif. A la mort de son père, en 1886, il devint riche, mais ne changea rien à son train de vie frugal. Peu après, Cézanne se retira définitivement dans sa propriété en Provence. Il fut sans doute le peintre le plus solitaire de son temps. Parfois, il était saisi d'une curieuse mélancolie, d'un noir désespoir. Avec le temps, il devint plus sauvage et exigeant, détruisant des toiles, les jetant dans les arbres par la fenêtre de son atelier, les abandonnant dans les champs, les donnant à son fils pour qu'il en fasse des puzzles, ou aux gens d'Aix. Au début du XXe siècle, quand Vollard débarqua en Provence avec l'intention de spéculer en achetant tous les Cézanne qu'il pouvait emporter, les paysans des environs, apprenant qu'un guignol de Paris cherchait à gagner de l'argent avec des vieilles toiles, se mirent à produire dans leurs granges tout un tas de natures mortes et de paysages. Le vieux Maître d'Aix fut submergé par la joie. Mais la reconnaissance vint trop tard. En 1906, il succomba à une fièvre contractée alors qu'il peignait sous une pluie diluvienne.
Paul Gauguin was first a sailor, then a successful stockbroker in Paris. In 1874 he began to paint at weekends as a Sunday painter. Nine years later, after a stock-market crash, he felt confident of his ability to earn a living for his family by painting and he resigned his position and took up the painter's brush full time. Following the lead of Cézanne, Gauguin painted still-lifes from the very beginning of his artistic career. He even owned a still-life by Cézanne, which is shown in Gauguin's painting Portrait of Marie Lagadu. The year 1891 was crucial for Gauguin. In that year he left France for Tahiti, where he stayed till 1893. This stay in Tahiti determined his future life and career, for in 1895, after a sojourn in France, he returned there for good. In Tahiti, Gauguin discovered primitive art, with its flat forms and violent colours, belonging to an untamed nature. With absolute sincerity, he transferred them onto his canvas. His paintings from then on reflected this style: a radical simplification of drawing; brilliant, pure, bright colours; an ornamental type composition; and a deliberate flatness of planes. Gauguin termed this style "synthetic symbolism".
Since his death 100 years ago, Cézanne has become the most famous painter of the nineteenth century. He was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839 and the happiest period of his life was his early youth in Provence, in company with Emile Zolá, another Italian. Following Zolá's example, Cézanne went to Paris in his twenty-first year.
During the Franco-Prussian war he deserted the military, dividing his time between open-air painting and the studio. He said to Vollard, an art dealer, "I'm only a painter. Parisian wit gives me a pain. Painting nudes on the banks of the Arc [a river near Aix] is all I could ask for." Encouraged by Renoir, one of the first to appreciate him, he exhibited with the impressionists in 1874 and in 1877. He was received with derision, which deeply hurt him.
Cézanne's ambition, in his own words, was "to make out of Impressionism something as solid and durable as the paintings of the museums." His aim was to achieve the monumental in a modern language of glowing, vibrating tones. Cézanne wanted to retain the natural colour of an object and to harmonise it with the various influences of light and shade trying to destroy it; to work out a scale of tones expressing the mass and character of the form.
Cézanne loved to paint fruit because it afforded him obedient models and he was a slow worker. He did not intend to simply copy an apple. He kept the dominant colour and the character of the fruit, but heightened the emotional appeal of the form by a scheme of rich and concordant tones. In his paintings of still-life he is a master. His fruit and vegetable compositions are truly dramatic; they have the weight, the nobility, the style of immortal forms. No other painter ever brought to a red apple a conviction so heated, sympathy so genuinely spiritual, or an observation so protracted. No other painter of equal ability ever reserved for still-life his strongest impulses. Cézanne restored to painting the pre-eminence of knowledge, the most essential quality to all creative effort.
The death of his father in 1886 made him a rich man, but he made no change in his abstemious mode of living. Soon afterwards, Cézanne retired permanently to his estate in Provence. He was probably the loneliest of painters of his day. At times a curious melancholy attacked him, a black hopelessness. He grew more savage and exacting, destroying canvases, throwing them out of his studio into the trees, abandoning them in the fields, and giving them to his son to cut into puzzles, or to the people of Aix.
At the beginning of the century, when Vollard arrived in Provence with intentions of buying on speculation all the Cézannes he could get hold of, the peasantry, hearing that a fool from Paris was actually handing out money for old linen, produced from barns a considerable number of still-lifes and landscapes. The old master of Aix was overcome with joy, but recognition came too late. In 1906 he died from a fever contracted while painting in a downpour of rain.
Rembrandt is completely mysterious in his spirit, his character, his life, his work and his method of painting. What we can divine of his essential nature comes through his painting and the trivial or tragic incidents of his unfortunate life; his penchant for ostentatious living forced him to declare bankruptcy. His misfortunes are not entirely explicable, and his oeuvre reflects disturbing notions and contradictory impulses emerging from the depths of his being, like the light and shade of his pictures. In spite of this, nothing perhaps in the history of art gives a more profound impression of unity than his paintings, composed though they are of such different elements, full of complex significations. One feels as if his intellect, that genial, great, free mind, bold and ignorant of all servitude and which led him to the loftiest meditations and the most sublime reveries, derived from the same source as his emotions. From this comes the tragic element he imprinted on everything he painted, irrespective of subject; there was inequality in his work as well as the sublime, which may be seen as the inevitable consequence of such a tumultuous existence.
It seems as though this singular, strange, attractive and almost enigmatic personality was slow in developing, or at least in attaining its complete expansion. Rembrandt showed talent and an original vision of the world early, as evidenced in his youthful etchings and his first self-portraits of about 1630. In painting, however, he did not immediately find the method he needed to express the still incomprehensible things he had to say, that audacious, broad and personal method which we admire in the masterpieces of his maturity and old age. In spite of its subtlety, it was adjudged brutal in his day and certainly contributed to alienate his public.
From the time of his beginnings and of his successes, however, lighting played a major part in his conception of painting and he made it the principal instrument of his investigations into the arcana of interior life. It already revealed to him the poetry of human physiognomy when he painted The Philosopher in Meditation or the Holy Family, so deliciously absorbed in its modest intimacy, or, for example, in The Angel Raphael leaving Tobias. Soon he asked for something more. The Night Watch marks at once the apotheosis of his reputation. He had a universal curiosity and he lived, meditated, dreamed and painted thrown back on himself. He thought of the great Venetians, borrowing their subjects and making of them an art out of the inner life of profound emotion. Mythological and religious subjects were treated as he treated his portraits. For all that he took from reality and even from the works of others, he transmuted it instantly into his own substance.
In 1905 Georgia travelled to Chicago to study painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1907 she enrolled at the Art Students' League in New York City, where she studied with William Merritt Chase. During her time in New York she became familiar with the 291 Gallery owned by her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In 1912, she and her sisters studied at university with Alon Bement, who employed a somewhat revolutionary method in art instruction originally conceived by Arthur Wesley Dow. In Bement's class, the students did not mechanically copy nature, but instead were taught the principles of design using geometric shapes. They worked at exercises that included dividing a square, working within a circle and placing a rectangle around a drawing, then organising the composition by rearranging, adding or eliminating elements. It sounded dull and to most students it was. But Georgia found that these studies gave art its structure and helped her understand the basics of abstraction. During the 1920s O'Keeffe also produced a huge number of landscapes and botanical studies during annual trips to Lake George. With Stieglitz's connections in the arts community of New York - from 1923 he organised an O'Keeffe exhibition annually - O'Keeffe's work received a great deal of attention and commanded high prices. She, however, resented the sexual connotations people attached to her paintings, especially during the 1920s when Freudian theories became a form of what today might be termed "pop psychology". The legacy she left behind is a unique vision that translates the complexity of nature into simple shapes for us to explore and make our own discoveries. She taught us there is poetry in nature and beauty in geometry. Georgia O'Keeffe's long lifetime of work shows us new ways to see the world, from her eyes to ours.
Chagall's work and life has an international dimension that endows it with universal appeal. Throughout his life, this Jewish artist imbued his painting with passion and poetry, and left his mark across the world, from the Metropolitan Opera House of New York to the Opera Garnier of Paris.
Hieronymus Bosch, der um 1450 im niederländischen 's-Hertogenbosch geboren wurde, gehrt zu den Künstlern, deren Werke den Kunsthistorikern bis heute Rätsel aufgeben. Bosch lebte in einer Zeit, die vom Aufkommen der Devotio Moderna und dem bürgerlichen Humanismus im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert geprägt war. In dieser Zeit des Umbruchs und Wertewandels suchte Bosch über die Symbolik seiner geheimnisvoll-surrealen Bildwelten dem Menschen eine Orientierung an die Hand zu geben. So arbeitete er in sein Werk einen deutlich moralisierenden Aspekt ein, was eine für die damalige Zeit neuartige Profanikonografie bedeutete. In beinahe allen seinen Bildern lassen sich darin eingebettete christlich-religise Allegorien erkennen, die Bosch als Anspielungen auf Versuchungen, Todsünden und Hllenstrafen darstellte. Bis heute erscheinen die Bilder Boschs dem Betrachter als kryptisch, widersprüchlich und düster-grotesk. Die Kunsthistorikerin Virginia Pitts Rembert nähert sich diesen aus einem neuen Blickwinkel, und zeigt so eine weitere Dimension des Werkes Boschs auf.
Was Leonardo's pronounced vocation for scientific research a help or a hindrance to him as an artist? It is normal to quote him as an example of scientific and artistic theory joined together. In him, genius took on a new meaning combining reason that actually reinforced the imagination and the emotions. A profound savant and an incomparable creator, he was the only man in the history of mankind who has at once delved into the most radiant beauty and who has united the science of Aristotle with the art of Phidias.
Studying nature with passion and all the independence proper to his character, Leonardo da Vinci did not fail to combine precision with liberty and truth with beauty. The master's reason of being and glory consist in this final emancipation, this perfect mastery of modeling, of illumination, and of expression, and of this breadth and freedom. Others may have struck out new paths also, but none traveled further or mounted higher than this master of Renaissance art.
De retour en Allemagne en 1921, Kandinsky développera sa théorie d'une « Science de l'Art » dans son ouvrage du Spirituel dans l'Art à Weimar. La période du Bauhaus est celle de sa plus intense production où son génie est également le mieux reconnu. Cet ouvrage permet d'entrevoir la richesse de l'oeuvre de Kandinsky à travers de nombreuses toiles qui ont contribué au prestige international du peintre.
Questo volume contiene numerose opere create da Picasso tra il 1881 e il 1914. Inizialmente, lo stile
dell'artista è influenzato da El Greco, da Munch e da Toulouse-Lautrec, che lui scoprì da studente a
Barcellona. Affascinato dall'espressione psicologica, nel suo periodo Blu (1901-1904) Picasso descrive lo squallore morale: le scene di genere, le nature morte e i ritratti sono carichi di malinconia. In seguito, l'artista manifesta un vivo interesse per le figure di acrobati e comincia il periodo Rosa. Dal 1904, data del suo arrivo a Parigi, la sua estetica si evolve in modo considerevole. L'influenza di Cézanne e della scultura iberica lo portano al Cubismo, caratterizzato dalla moltiplicazione dei
punti di vista sulla superficie pittorica. Oltre a una selezione di dipinti giovanili, questo volume presenta anche numerosi disegni, sculture e fotografie di Picasso.
1921, im Jahr seiner Rückkehr nach Deutschland, entwickelt Kandinsky seine Theorie einer »Wissen¬schaft der Künste« in Weimar. Die Bauhaus-Periode ist seine intensivste, hier kommt auch sein Genie am besten zur Wirkung. Dieses Buch ermglicht einen Einblick in den Reichtum und die Vielfalt der Arbeit Kandinskys, der es mit seinen zahlreichen Bildern zu international sehr hohem Ansehen gebracht hat.
Cézannes glücklichste Zeit war seine frühe Jugend in der Provence, wo er zusammen mit Zola und einem anderen Freund in der Natur umherstreifte. Ermutigt durch Renoir, stellte er 1874 und 1877 zusammen mit den Impressionisten aus. Doch die ablehnende Haltung, mit der man seiner Kunst begegnete, verletzte ihn tief. Er malte gern Früchte, weil sie gehorsame Modelle waren, was seiner langsamen Arbeitsweise entgegenkam, dabei behielt er die dominante Farbe und den Charakter der Frucht bei, verstärkte aber den emotionalen Reiz der Form durch ein Spiel von reichen, fein aufeinander abgestimmten Farbwerten. Seine eigentliche Meisterschaft entfaltete er in den Stillleben. Cézanne verstand es, seine Malkunst mit Wissen zu bereichern, dem Wissen um die Dinge dieser unabdingbaren Voraussetzung für alles schpferische Bemühen. Kurz nach dem Tod seines Vaters zog er sich für immer auf sein Gut in der Provence zurück und war vermutlich dort der einsamste Maler seiner Zeit. Von Zeit zu Zeit überfiel ihn eine seltsame Melancholie, ja sogar eine düstere Hoffnungslosigkeit. Er konnte unberechenbar und schwierig sein, seine Leinwände zerstren oder sie zum Fenster seines Studios hinauswerfen, sie ganz einfach auf einer Wiese stehen lassen oder sie seinem Sohn geben, der sie zerschnitt und wie ein Puzzle wieder zusammensetzte. Zu Beginn des neuen Jahrhunderts holten die Bauern aus ihren Scheunen eine grßere Menge von Stillleben und Landschaften, als sie hrten, dass ein Narr aus Paris dafür mit gutem Geld zahlte. Doch leider kam die Anerkennung zu spät. Er starb 1906 an einem Fieber, das er sich zugezogen hatte, als er beim Malen vom Regen überrascht wurde.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) ließ nach seinem Tod 19 000 Kunstwerke zurück und schon die Bildauswahl für dieses Buch war eine wahre Mammutaufgabe.
Turner hatte als Romantiker und Landschaftsmaler ein unvergleichliches Gespür für das Meer und war als Pionier neuer Techniken, mit denen er innovative Farbtne und -Nuancen schuf, stark beeinflusst von Goethes Farbenlehre.
Turner war außerdem ein erfolgreicher Gallerist, Professor an der Royal Academy und ein unermüdlich Reisender, der stets mit einer Vielzahl unglaublicher Kunstwerke, vor allem aus Venedig, zurück nach England kam. Mit seinem Blick für das Dramatische dokumentierte er auf seiner Leinwand auch die Schlacht von Waterloo, das Feuer, das das englische Parlament zerstrte, und andere historische Ereignisse seiner Zeit. Heute sind seine Werke Teil der Sammlungen großer Museen in London, Los Angeles, New York und Washington DC.
