1668–1715
Research · Sources · Context
Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
1913–24.12.1966
Ramses Younan
Ramses Younan (1913–1966) grew up in a poor Coptic family in Minya, taught drawing in schools, and in 1939 co-founded, with Georges Henein, the surrealist journal La Part du Sable. After the Cairo group Art and Liberty broke up, he lived in Paris for nine years and turned to abstraction. He translated Camus, Kafka and Rimbaud into Arabic.
10.04.1854–19.01.1937
Ramón Subercaseaux Vicuña
Ramón Subercaseaux Vicuña (1854–1937) gave up law studies in Santiago for painting, studied in Rome and became a friend of John Singer Sargent in Paris. Alongside painting he was a deputy, consul in Paris, senator and ambassador to the Holy See, and in 1915 he headed Chile's foreign ministry for a year. He painted views of Valparaíso, Rome and church interiors.
1734–1804
José Nicolás de la Escalera
José Nicolás de la Escalera (1734–1804) painted the cupola of the church of Santa María del Rosario near Havana and made pictures for it, among them a group portrait of the family of the Counts of Bayona. He was self-taught and worked in the manner of the Andalusian school, closest to Murillo. About fifty of his works survive in Cuba, Spain and the United States.17.06.1962–present
Andrew Baines
In January 2023 in Rundle Mall, a pedestrian street in central Adelaide, seven well-known South Australians stood covered in gold paint as living statues: Andrew Baines's way of drawing attention to homelessness. Since 2005 he has staged installations on Australian beaches, with politicians in suits in the surf and cows in the sea. He also paints quasi-surrealist pictures.
11.11.1868–21.06.1940
Édouard Vuillard
Édouard Vuillard failed the entrance examinations of the École des Beaux-Arts three times, but was finally admitted and in 1890 joined the Nabis. He painted seamstresses, interiors with patterned wallpaper and decorative panels for his friends’ apartments, and designed sets for an avant-garde theatre. In the 1890s he worked in his seamstress mother’s workshop; later he became known for portraits of the Parisian elite.04.01.1900–14.08.1985
Nazlı Ecevit
Fatma Nazlı Ecevit studied at the Fine Arts School for Girls in Istanbul, then for twenty-five years barely painted, teaching drawing in Anatolia and Ankara. She returned to painting in 1947 and until 1975 showed landscapes and still lifes almost every year at the State Art and Sculpture Exhibition. Her son Bülent Ecevit became prime minister of Turkey.31.10.1965–09.01.2014
Paul du Toit
Paul du Toit (1965–2014) painted and made sculpture in the evenings until his thirties, working by day as a computer programmer and a bank clerk. The turning point was a trip to Florence in 1992, where Michelangelo’s “David” struck him. In 2001 three of his sculptures were selected for the Florence Biennale, where he took fifth place in the sculpture section.
13.07.1894–11.10.1951
Álvaro Guevara
A Chilean from Valparaíso who came to England as a teenager to study textiles and ended up at the Slade School of Art. His portrait of Edith Sitwell (1916) was bought by the Tate Gallery in 1920. In the 1920s he lived by turns in Chile, London and Paris, and from 1929 he settled in Aix-en-Provence. He was also a boxer: in 1924 he won the Valparaíso championship.26.03.1944–14.03.1977
Benjamin Chee Chee
Benjamin Chee Chee (1944–1977), born in Temagami, Ontario, into the Ojibwa nation, became known for spare images of birds and animals: a fine line, minimal colour, a great deal of blank paper. His first exhibition took place at the University of Ottawa in 1973, and by 1976 his manner was recognisable. He died in Ottawa at thirty-two, but exhibitions of his work continue today.
1952–present
Vincent Forrester
Vincent Forrester was born in 1952 in Alice Springs and grew up on a cattle station in the Angas Downs area. He helped found the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress and the Central Land Council, and in the 1980s advised governments on Indigenous affairs. Since the early 1990s he has painted Dreamtime stories with pigments ground at Uluru.
05.07.1853–20.06.1919
Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka
Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka came to painting at about forty, after leaving the pharmacy, following a vision that, by his own account, promised him a fame greater than Raphael’s. He travelled through Dalmatia, Italy, Greece, North Africa and the Middle East, painted enormous canvases, among them “The Lonely Cedar”, and exhibited in Paris in 1907. At home he was thought a crank, and not one painting sold in his lifetime.
1890–1912
Müfide Kadri
Müfide Kadri (1889/1890–1912) grew up in Istanbul in the household of an adoptive father, was taught at home by private tutors and began drawing seriously at ten. Her pupil was a daughter of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and at a girls’ school she taught drawing and embroidery. Paintings she sent to Munich won a gold medal. She died young, and her life inspired a novel by Halide Edib Adıvar.
1982–present
Ganzeer
Ganzeer is the pseudonym of an Egyptian artist who worked in graphic design and comics before the 2011 revolution and then became known for street murals in Cairo. In 2011 he painted a series of portraits of people killed during the revolution and was detained over stickers of the “Mask of Freedom”. He rejects the label of street artist, and in 2019 he published his first graphic novel, The Solar Grid.
12.02.1813–10.09.1894
Carlos Morel
Carlos Morel (1813–1894) trained as a painter at the art school of the University of Buenos Aires, and in 1845 published an album of 24 lithographs, “Manners and Customs of the Río de la Plata”, showing city streets, shops and gauchos. A large part of his work dates from his first thirty years; he spent his last decades in Quilmes and painted mostly religious subjects.
05.10.1941–11.12.1989
Carlos Almaraz
Carlos Almaraz (1941–1989) was born in Mexico City, grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles, and became one of the first artists of the Chicano movement. In 1973 he joined the group Los Four and later helped found the Centro de Arte Público. He became best known for the “Echo Park” series and for canvases of car crashes set against bright sunsets.1941–26.08.2011
Sylvia Siddell
Sylvia Siddell (1941–2011) studied under Colin McCahon at the Auckland University summer school and worked in Auckland all her life. In her still lifes, ordinary household objects, such as couches or a frying pan, are given character: she drew on the European vanitas tradition. From 1975 she exhibited regularly in New Zealand, and in 2002 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
19.02.1899–07.09.1968
Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) was born in Argentina, studied and worked in Milan, and in 1949 showed a darkened room at the Galleria del Naviglio with a glowing form hanging in it, and began puncturing canvases. For these works he chose the general title “Spatial Concept” and used it for almost all his later paintings. In 1966 he won the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale.18.02.1906–16.12.1990
Zehra Say
Zehra Say (1906–1990) married on 18 February 1926, the day after Turkey adopted its secular civil code, and her wedding is described as the first held under those rules. She later graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, taught drawing for 36 years and painted nature, flowers and fruit. Her first solo exhibition came in 1982, when she was seventy-six.13.12.1932–present
George Bahgoury
George Bahgoury (b. 1932) began in 1953 as a cartoonist for the Egyptian magazines Rose El Youssef and Sabah Al Khair and kept up that work until 1975. He then lived in Paris, where he worked in painting, graphic art and sculpture and wrote books. His work has been shown in Cairo, Amman and at a biennale in Italy.1918–1993
Nemesio Antúnez
Nemesio Antúnez trained as an architect but became known as a printmaker: in 1956 he opened Workshop 99 in Santiago, on Calle Guardia Vieja, and brought metal-plate printmaking techniques to Chile. He also painted murals, directed museums in Santiago, hosted a television programme about art and appeared in a film by Costa-Gavras.17.08.1942–present
Sylvia Safdie
Sylvia Safdie was born in 1942 in Aley, Lebanon, spent her childhood in Haifa and has lived in Montreal since the age of eleven. In half a century of work she has gathered more than five hundred earth samples for her paintings and drawings, made slowed-down videos of a gull and of a ninety-five-year-old woman, and in 2011 showed footage of rain over the Auschwitz camp. Her work is in museums in Quebec and Montreal.23.12.1886–23.11.1962
Grace Butler
Grace Butler (née Cumming) painted New Zealand landscapes, above all the mountain country around Otira and Arthur's Pass, and worked outdoors in difficult conditions. She studied in Napier and at Canterbury College in Christchurch. She exhibited from 1915 to 1960, and her work is held by the Canterbury Society of Arts and Auckland Art Gallery.
10.01.1903–20.05.1975