04.05.1867–07.04.1930
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Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
24.04.1826–08.01.1889
Casimiro Castro
Casimiro Castro (1826–1889) drew Mexico City from a balloon and from rooftops: the views of the city and its surroundings in the album “Mexico and Its Environs” (1855–1856) made him the best-known Mexican lithographer of the nineteenth century. Later he and other artists produced the chromolithographs for an album on the country’s first railway, from Veracruz to the capital.
24.02.1694–11.11.1783
Bartolomeo Altomonte
Bartolomeo Altomonte (1694–1783) was born in Warsaw, the son of the court painter of John III Sobieski, studied in Italy and from 1722 worked in Austria. He painted ceilings in the monasteries of St. Florian, Admont, Herzogenburg and Wilhering. In old age he remained faithful to baroque allegory, when many of his contemporaries had already turned to the rococo.18.10.1418–18.11.1453
Grand Prince Anpyeong
Grand Prince Anpyeong (personal name Yi Yong), the third son of the Korean king Sejong, was known for his calligraphy, his poetry and his friendships with painters. In 1447 he commissioned the painter An Gyeon to make a scroll from his own dream, “Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land”. In 1453 he was executed on the orders of his elder brother Suyang, and his books and paintings were burned.1987–present
Lady Skollie
Lady Skollie, whose real name is Laura Windvogel, was born in Cape Town and works with themes of desire, consent and sexuality in contemporary South Africa. Her pseudonym alludes to a colonial word that white people used for Black people they called “untrustworthy”. She has exhibited in Johannesburg, Cape Town and London, won the FNB Art Prize in 2020 and was named Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year in 2022.29.07.1921–24.03.2005
Mercedes Pardo
Mercedes Pardo studied in Caracas, lived in Santiago and Paris, and in the early 1950s showed abstract work in an exhibition alongside Jesús Soto and Alejandro Otero. She painted in oil and watercolour and made prints, collages, stained glass and theatre sets. In 1978 she received Venezuela’s National Prize of Plastic Arts.08.09.1915–17.07.2015
Nela Arias-Misson
Nela Arias-Misson was born in Havana to a family from Asturias, studied in New York and with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, and from 1961 to 1976 lived in Spain and Belgium. In Provincetown she grew close to the circle of the Abstract Expressionists, and in Europe she exhibited in seven countries. She died in Miami a few weeks short of her hundredth birthday.
02.12.1951–present
Alexander Aizenshtat
Alexander Aizenshtat (born 1951) studied painting in Moscow with the watercolourist Skulsky, left the USSR in 1974 and now lives in Israel. He paints in pure, strong colour, above all blue, and keeps returning to Kafka’s imagery; in 1989 he founded the Center for Torah Studies in Moscow. His work was shown at the Pushkin Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery in 2016.08.03.1984–02.10.2019
Matthew Wong
Matthew Wong (1984–2019) studied anthropology and photography, and began to paint only around the age of thirty, with no art school behind him. In 2017 the Dallas Museum of Art acquired his painting “The West”, and in 2018 his first solo exhibition opened at Karma gallery in New York. In a few years he made hundreds of landscapes, from ink on rice paper to oil.1958–present
Kebedech Tekleab
Kebedech Tekleab (born 1958) studied at the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa, then spent almost ten years in a labour camp and, after her release in 1989, moved to the United States. In 2001 she and Alexander (Skunder) Boghossian made the aluminium relief “Nexus” for the Ethiopian embassy in Washington. She paints, makes sculpture and writes poetry in Amharic and English.16.03.1913–27.09.2010
Carmelo Arden Quin
In 1934 the Uruguayan Carmelo Arden Quin took a pair of scissors and cut the edge of his own Cubist painting to abolish the rectangular frame. From that experiment grew his shaped canvases and the Madí movement, founded in Buenos Aires in 1946. From 1948 he lived mostly in France, where he worked until his death.15.03.1932–17.03.2021
Vicente Rojo Almazán
Vicente Rojo was born in Barcelona and at seventeen came to Mexico to join his Republican father, staying there for the rest of his life. He designed more than eight hundred book covers, among them the first edition of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, founded the publishing house Era and painted the abstract series “Signals” and “Negations”. In 1991 he received the National Prize in the fine arts.17.03.1919–12.06.1998
Alexei Eriomin
Alexei Eriomin was born in Velikaya Guba, in the Zaonezhye region on Lake Onega, won a Leningrad prize as a teenager for an illustration to Gogol’s “The Overcoat”, and went through the war as a commander of a heavy tank company. He graduated from Boris Ioganson’s studio and made the nature and people of Zaonezhye his main subject: “Onega Fish Soup”, “In the Native Home”. People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1978).10.03.1934–08.08.2003
Bhupen Khakhar
Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003) worked as an accountant in Baroda well into adulthood and began painting without any art training. His first exhibited works were collages of gods cut from popular prints and glued onto mirrors. Later he painted barbers, watch repairers and himself in oils, and in 2000 he received the Prince Claus Award.02.10.1934–17.08.1967
Ahmed Cherkaoui
Ahmed Cherkaoui (1934–1967) grew up in Morocco, studied in Paris and Warsaw, and built his abstract painting on the signs of Berber tattoos, pottery patterns and carpets. His first exhibition took place in 1959, and in 1966 he received a Moroccan prize. He died at thirty-two; after his death his work was shown in Paris, Rabat and other cities.27.08.1943–19.06.1995
Luis Caballero
Luis Caballero (1943–1995) was born in Bogotá into a conservative Catholic family and spent most of his working life in Paris. He drew and painted large male nudes in sepia tones, using ink, oil and watercolour washes. In 1968 he won first prize at the First Ibero-American Biennial in Medellín; Colombia’s main prize in the visual arts is named after him.
1978–present
Wilfredo Prieto
Wilfredo Prieto (born 1978) graduated from the art institute in Havana as a painter but has long since stopped painting. He is known for installations made of plain things: thirty flagpoles stripped of colour, a library of blank books, a banana peel with soap and axle grease on the floor of an exhibition hall. In 2008 he won the Cartier Award, and in 2024 he represented Cuba at the Venice Biennale.20.04.1923–29.03.2010
Ilya Bogdesko
Ilya Bogdesko designed more than a hundred books and spent five years on a series of 33 illustrations for “Don Quixote”. He is best known for his copper engravings for “Gulliver’s Travels”, which won the Ivan Fyodorov diploma in 1980. He also drew his own typeface, the “Bogdesko Alphabet”. The son of a father who was shot, he became People’s Painter of the USSR in 1963.28.06.1938–23.01.2001
Moy Yat
Moy Yat (1938–2001) studied from 1957 under Ip Man, a teacher of Wing Chun, and from 1962 taught at his instruction. After his teacher’s death he moved to New York and taught there until he was sixty. He wrote six books on Wing Chun, carved seals and painted; his stone tablets on the history of the style are reproduced in one of the books.1960–present
Ada Udechukwu
Ada Udechukwu (born 1960) grew up between Nigeria and Michigan, studied under the writer Chinua Achebe and began with designs painted on fabric, then from 1988 turned to ink and watercolour on paper. She is the author of a book of poems and drawings, “Woman, Me” (1993), and a children’s book, “Herero”. Her work is in the collection of the Newark Museum of Art.1937–22.06.2025
Gerardo Chávez
Gerardo Chávez (1937–2025) was born in Trujillo, studied in Lima, and in the 1960s lived in Italy and Paris, where in 1967 he held a notable exhibition at the Desbrieres gallery. In the 1980s he returned to Peru and founded a biennial in his home city, then a Museum of Modern Art. In 2012 he was recognised as the most important Peruvian artist then at work.10.03.1930–22.01.2013
Ignacio Barrios
Ignacio Barrios (1930–2013) grew up in the mining village of Zacualpan, the son of a miner, and as a boy made brushes from horsehair. He studied in Mexico City, in studios and drawing schools, but considered himself self-taught. From 1965 he painted almost exclusively in watercolour: landscapes, still lifes, the figure. Later he taught, and his work was shown in dozens of countries.
13.10.1920–18.01.2017
Yosl Bergner
Yosl Bergner grew up in Warsaw, arrived in Melbourne at seventeen and there painted pictures of Indigenous Australians and of the ghetto that caused a public stir. From 1950 he lived in Israel, designed plays by Nisim Aloni, illustrated Shmuel Yosef Agnon and painted kitchen graters and dented pots. Winner of the Israel Prize in 1980.1953–present