1940–present
Research · Sources · Context
Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
22.05.1858–12.06.1935
Belmiro de Almeida
Belmiro de Almeida, painter of “Arrufos” (The Spat, 1887), his best-known picture, studied at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and in Paris, and for decades lived now in Brazil, now in France. He painted in the manner of the Impressionists and Pointillists, drew caricatures for Rio magazines and modelled the “Manequinho”, the figure of a boy that became the mascot of the Botafogo club.
07.03.1905–27.10.1924
Abraham Ángel
Abraham Ángel Card Valdés painted for only about three years: at sixteen he was thrown out of his home for wanting to study painting, and he gave up his surnames, keeping only his given names. His portraits and landscapes in the spirit of naive art were praised by Salvador Novo, and Alfonso Reyes compared him to Rimbaud. He died in 1924, at nineteen; about thirty of his paintings are known.12.05.1921–23.01.1986
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys made felt, fat and honey into the materials of art, and in 1965 he spent three hours “explaining pictures to a dead hare”, his head covered in honey and gold leaf. A professor at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1961 to 1972, he regarded teaching as his principal work, devised “social sculpture” and at documenta in 1982 began the planting of seven thousand oaks in Kassel.1563–19.03.1589
Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn
Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn, a poet and painter of the mid-Joseon period, died in 1589 before reaching thirty and became famous after her death: in 1608, through the efforts of her brother Hŏ Kyun, her poems were published in Ming China, and in 1711 they appeared in Japan. Some two hundred of her poems in Classical Chinese survive. Paintings are also attributed to her, among them “Anggan bigeumdo” (Looking Up at Flying Birds).1932–1981
Gebre Kristos Desta
Gebre Kristos Desta, the son of a learned priest and manuscript copyist from Harar, studied in Cologne and in 1962 brought abstract painting to Ethiopia; at home he was much criticised for it and for his unconventional poems, and in 1965 he received the Haile Selassie I Prize Trust award. In the late 1970s he did not return from a trip to Kenya and spent the last year of his life as a refugee in Oklahoma.
1548–1610
Bernardo Bitti
Bernardo Bitti, a Jesuit from Camerino, arrived in Peru in 1575, the first artist the order sent to South America, and for thirty-five years painted altarpieces for churches in Lima, Cusco, Juli, Arequipa, La Paz and Sucre. He brought Italian Mannerism, with its elongated figures and pastel colour, to the Andes; he is regarded as the founder of the Cusco School of painting.31.05.1924–30.07.2005
Olga Albizu
Olga Albizu Rosaly of Ponce was the first Puerto Rican woman artist to devote herself wholly to abstraction. A pupil of Esteban Vicente and Hans Hofmann, from 1953 she worked in New York in the manner of abstract expressionism. Her paintings are known even to people who have never heard her name: they are on the covers of Stan Getz records of the early 1960s, among them “Getz/Gilberto”.
1340–1410
Theophanes the Greek
Theophanes the Greek came to Rus from Byzantium and settled in Novgorod around 1370, where in 1378 he painted the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyina Street. From the early 1390s he worked in Moscow, painting churches in the Kremlin, and in 1405 the Cathedral of the Annunciation together with Prokhor of Gorodets and Andrei Rublev. No signed icons by him exist, and every attribution is disputed.
1510–1572
Mir Sayyid Ali
Mir Sayyid Ali, son of the Tabriz painter Mir Musavvir, began at the court of Shah Tahmasp working on the “Shahnameh” and Nizami’s “Khamsa”, and in the mid-1540s entered the service of the exiled Mughal emperor Humayun. Together with Abd al-Samad he stood at the origins of Mughal miniature painting, and under Akbar he began the huge manuscript of the “Hamzanama”.
22.10.1813–07.04.1882
Charles Davidson Bell
The Scot Charles Davidson Bell sailed to the Cape Colony in 1830, served there as an official and in 1848 became Surveyor-General. He drew the people of Cape Town and the peoples met on Andrew Smith’s expedition to the Limpopo, designed the first triangular postage stamp of the Cape of Good Hope, and created coats of arms that are still in use.
10.05.1823–14.05.1869
Francisco Laso
The Peruvian painter Francisco Laso twice studied in Paris with Charles Gleyre, and in the 1850s was one of the first in Peru to make the people of the Andes the subjects of his pictures: “Indian Potter”, “The Laundress”, “The Three Races, or Equality before the Law”. In his lifetime he was valued above all as a portraitist; in 1867 he was elected a deputy to the Constituent Congress.18.02.1925–02.01.2016
Marcel Barbeau
The Montreal artist Marcel Barbeau studied with Paul-Émile Borduas, in 1945–1946 made Canada’s first experiments in abstract expressionism together with Jean-Paul Riopelle, and in 1948 signed the manifesto “Refus global”. Then came Op Art in Paris and New York, sculpture, and performances with musicians and dancers.
04.10.1814–20.01.1875
Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet, a farmer’s son from the Norman hamlet of Gruchy, studied in Cherbourg and with Paul Delaroche in Paris, and in 1849 settled in Barbizon, where he lived until his death. “The Sower”, “The Gleaners” and “The Angelus” made peasant labour the main subject of his painting; “The Sower” was later copied by Van Gogh.
1560–1600
Basawan
Basawan worked in the Mughal imperial workshop from about the late 1550s until 1600 and took part in almost all of Akbar’s great manuscripts, from the “Tutinama” to the “Akbarnama”. The chronicler Abu’l-Fazl ranked him fourth among the best painters at court, and for the “Razmnama” he painted more leaves than Daswanth, who was ranked higher.09.09.1967–present
Emmanuel Eni
The Nigerian sculptor, painter and poet Emmanuel Eni studied at Auchi, at the University of Benin and at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and since the mid-1990s has exhibited and taught widely in Germany. He has shown installations and performances at the Lyon and Dakar biennials, staged the play-installation “Death of the Curator” and built a twenty-ton concrete elephant, which he later smashed in public himself.
22.04.1846–18.12.1887
Georg Grimm
The Bavarian Georg Grimm, a carpenter’s son from the Allgäu, studied at the Munich Academy, spent five years wandering around the Mediterranean and in 1877 sailed to Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil he painted coffee fazendas to their owners’ commission, taught landscape at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts and took his students out to paint in the open air; this is how the “Grimm Group” came about.26.02.1915–13.01.2006
Raúl Anguiano
The Mexican painter, printmaker and muralist Raúl Anguiano exhibited at the Palacio de Bellas Artes at twenty, in 1938 became one of the founders of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, and in 1949 took part in the first expedition to the Bonampak murals. His painting “La espina”, a Lacandon woman taking a thorn out of her foot with a knife, was printed in school textbooks for many years.
30.10.1839–29.01.1899
Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley (1839–1899) was born in Paris to an English family, lived his whole life in France and died a British subject. He painted almost nothing but landscapes: the Seine west of Paris, the Thames at Hampton Court and, from 1880, the Loing and the small town of Moret. He took part in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, but never won recognition in his lifetime.
1414–1463
Tenshō Shūbun
Tenshō Shūbun, a monk of the Zen monastery of Shōkoku-ji in Kyoto, ran the monastery’s affairs in the first half of the fifteenth century and served as a painter to the Ashikaga shoguns. He is regarded as the founder of Japanese ink landscape in the Chinese manner and as the teacher of Sesshū, although none of the paintings attributed to him is signed and there are no exact dates for his life.
29.12.1969–present
Kelechi Amadi-Obi
Kelechi Amadi-Obi (born 1969) trained as a lawyer and was called to the Nigerian Bar, showed paintings in Lagos in the 1990s, and then became one of the most prominent portrait and fashion photographers in Nigeria. In 2001 he was among the founders of the group Depth of Field, and he later published his own glossy magazine, Style Mania.
30.01.1817–17.03.1876
Ignacio Merino
Ignacio Merino (1817–1876) was born in Piura, went to Paris to study as a ten-year-old boy and lived there, all told, for more than thirty-five years. In Lima he directed the Academy of Drawing and Painting, where Francisco Laso and Luis Montero studied with him. He painted historical and literary subjects and scenes of everyday life in Lima; in Peru he is regarded as the founder of the national school of painting.
1802–22.12.1874
Agustín Arrieta
José Agustín Arrieta (1803–1874) spent almost his whole life in Puebla, Mexico, and painted its markets, pulque bars and kitchens, its water-carriers, market women, soldiers and beggars. Even more readily he painted still lifes of local food and kitchenware, although the genre was not even taught at the Academy of San Carlos. He lived in poverty, and real recognition came to him only in the 1940s.06.04.1917–25.05.2011