31.01.1865–21.07.1941
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Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
19.08.1858–26.10.1908
Sergei Korovin
Sergei Korovin (1858–1908), the elder brother of Konstantin Korovin, studied under Perov, Savrasov and Pryanishnikov and himself taught for almost twenty years at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His main picture, “At the Village Assembly” (1893), shows a village meeting after the peasant reform. Later he turned to lyrical landscape and illustrated Gogol’s “The Overcoat”.
14.03.1835–16.06.1890
Alexander Litovchenko
Alexander Litovchenko (1835–1890), the son of a poor townsman of Kremenchug, left the Academy of Arts with his comrades in 1863 (the “Revolt of the Fourteen”), joined the St Petersburg Artel of Artists and later the Peredvizhniki. He painted Muscovite Russia of the 16th and 17th centuries, from “The Falconer” to “Ivan the Terrible Showing His Treasures to the Ambassador Horsey”, as well as portraits.
08.01.1900–12.10.1969
Serge Poliakoff
Serge Poliakoff (1900–1969), born Sergei Georgievich Polyakov, left Russia in 1918, earned his living for years by playing the guitar in Russian cabarets, and only in Paris, after meeting Kandinsky and the Delaunays, came to non-figurative painting. He is counted among the post-war School of Paris. In 1962 he was given a room at the Venice Biennale.30.11.1897–15.03.1988
Ivan Dubasov
Ivan Dubasov (1897–1988) worked at Goznak for almost half a century, as its chief artist from 1932 to 1971. He gave the final form to the state emblem of the USSR, drew Soviet banknotes from the chervontsy of the 1920s to the money of the 1961 issue, designed the Gold Star medal and other awards, and made more than a hundred and fifty postage stamps.
02.11.1893–26.09.1937
Vera Ermolaeva
Vera Ermolaeva (1893–1937) started out in Petrograd’s Futurist circles, helped Malevich create UNOVIS in Vitebsk and in 1921 became head of the art institute there. Back in Petrograd she ran the colour laboratory at GINKhUK and later illustrated children’s books by Kharms, Vvedensky and Schwartz. She was arrested in December 1934 and shot near Karaganda in 1937.
14.03.1880–03.06.1930
Alexander Bogomazov
Alexander Bogomazov (1880–1930) worked in Kiev and was one of the leading painters and theorists of the Ukrainian avant-garde. In 1914 he wrote the treatise “Painting and Its Elements”, which was published in full only in 1996. He is best known for his Cubo-Futurist works of 1913–1917 and for his late “Spectralism”, to which the unfinished triptych “The Sawmill” belongs.06.10.1891–27.04.1967
Sergey Kalmykov
Sergey Kalmykov (1891–1967) studied under Dobuzhinsky and Petrov-Vodkin, worked in Orenburg after the revolution, and from 1935 spent more than thirty years in Alma-Ata, painting sets for the opera theatre. His fantastic paintings and handmade books ran counter to Socialist Realism, and he went almost unrecognised in his lifetime. The Kasteev Museum in Alma-Ata holds more than a thousand of his works.
20.07.1858–08.07.1929
Ilya Ostroukhov
Ilya Ostroukhov (1858–1929) became a landscape painter in his twenties; Pavel Tretyakov bought his “Golden Autumn”, “First Greenery” and “Siverko”. Later, for more than ten years, he was the de facto head of the Tretyakov Gallery’s council, and in his house in Trubnikovsky Lane he gathered icons, paintings and studies by Russian artists that became a museum bearing his name after 1918.
28.04.1841–06.10.1886
Nikolay Makovsky
Nikolay Makovsky (1841–1886) graduated from the Academy of Arts as an architect but soon gave up building for landscape and genre painting. In 1870 he signed the charter of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions and painted views of Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Cairo. He was one of four artists in the Makovsky family, along with his brothers Konstantin and Vladimir and his sister Alexandra.
13.11.1905–04.03.1952
Nil Khasevych
Nil Khasevych (1905–1952), a native of Volhynia, studied graphic art in Warsaw under Władysław Skoczylas and in the 1930s exhibited prints and bookplates in Lviv, Prague, Berlin, Chicago and Los Angeles. A member of the OUN and the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, in the 1940s he drew and cut in wood propaganda graphics for the underground publications of the UPA.
1584–05.06.1645
Miyamoto Musashi
Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) became famous as a master swordsman, the founder of the two-sword school Niten Ichi-ryū and the author of “The Book of Five Rings”. In his last years, living in Kumamoto under the patronage of the Hosokawa clan, he painted in ink and practised calligraphy; his works include “Shrike Perched on a Withered Branch” and “Hotei Watching a Cockfight”.
04.06.1985–05.06.2011
Leon Botha
Leon Botha (1985–2011) lived all his life in Cape Town. An artist without formal art training, he painted commissions and held exhibitions about hip hop and about his own life, while as a DJ he performed under the name Solarize and appeared in a music video by Die Antwoord. In 2014 a one-act opera inspired by his life was staged in Warsaw.
08.01.1941–present
Boris Vallejo
Boris Vallejo (born 1941) studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Lima, moved to the United States in 1964 and quickly became known for his covers for books about Tarzan, Conan and Doc Savage. He paints fantasy scenes in oil, with muscular heroes and monsters, has made film posters, and with the artist Julie Bell produces an annual calendar.
13.02.1891–12.02.1942
Grant Wood
Grant Wood (1891–1942) painted the farmers, hills and cornfields of Iowa and, with Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry, became the leading figure of American Regionalism. His “American Gothic” (1930) is in the Art Institute of Chicago. He helped found an art colony at Stone City and from 1934 to 1941 taught painting at the University of Iowa.
21.06.1883–08.10.1960
Henry Lamb
Henry Lamb (1883–1960) was born in Adelaide, grew up in Manchester and trained as a doctor before he took up painting in earnest. In 1911 he was among the founders of the Camden Town Group, and in 1913 of the London Group. In the First World War he served as a battalion medical officer, in the Second as a salaried war artist; his best-known work is the elongated portrait of Lytton Strachey.
24.11.1864–09.09.1901
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), heir to an old comital family from Albi, lived in Montmartre from 1884 until the end of his life and painted its cabarets, circuses, dancers and brothels. He was one of the first to make colour lithographic posters: for the Moulin Rouge, for the café-concerts, for the chansonnier Aristide Bruant. In under twenty years of work he left 737 paintings and more than five thousand drawings.
29.10.1504–17.05.1551
Shin Saimdang
Shin Saimdang (1504–1551), a painter, calligrapher and poet of the Joseon period from Gangneung, painted grasses, insects, grapes, fish and landscapes in ink and mineral colours; about forty of her works are known. Her son Yi I became a celebrated Confucian scholar, and in Korea she has long been honoured as the “Wise Mother”. In 2009 she became the first woman to appear on a South Korean banknote.
05.09.1921–16.10.1988
Farida of Egypt
Farida (1921–1988), born Safinaz Zulficar, was queen of Egypt for almost eleven years as the first wife of King Farouk, and the first queen of her dynasty to appear in public. After the divorce of 1948 she lived in Egypt, Lebanon and France. In the late 1960s she began to paint and held solo exhibitions in Europe, the United States and Cairo.09.02.1896–30.12.1982
Alberto Vargas
Alberto Vargas (1896–1982), the son of a Peruvian photographer from Arequipa, worked in the United States from 1916: he drew for the Ziegfeld Follies and for Hollywood studios, and in the 1940s became famous for the “Vargas Girls” in the pages of Esquire. He painted in watercolour with the airbrush. From 1959 he worked for Playboy, and he is considered one of the best-known pin-up artists.
24.04.1904–19.03.1997
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) arrived in the United States from Rotterdam as a stowaway in 1926 and lived in New York and East Hampton for seventy years. He was one of the leaders of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. He is best known for his black-and-white abstractions of the late 1940s and the “Woman” series begun in 1950; in the 1970s he also worked as a sculptor.28.09.1876–06.12.1958
Hayley Lever
Hayley Lever (1876–1958) grew up in South Australia, studied painting in Adelaide and from 1899 worked in St Ives, the Cornish colony of marine painters. In 1912, on Ernest Lawson’s advice, he moved to New York, painted the harbours of Massachusetts and the streets of New York, and taught for twelve years at the Art Students League. He is regarded as one of the leaders of American Impressionism in the 20th century.21.11.1898–15.08.1967
René Magritte
René Magritte (1898–1967), a Belgian Surrealist, painted ordinary objects in unexpected combinations: a pipe captioned “This is not a pipe”, men in bowler hats, a night street under a daytime sky. He lived almost all his life in Brussels and for a long time earned his living in advertising. From the 1960s his images were taken up by Pop Art, conceptual art, record covers and film.
24.01.1930–09.08.2025