18.12.1626–19.04.1689
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Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
09.08.1914–27.06.2001
Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson grew up in a family of a sculptor and a graphic artist and at fourteen began publishing drawings in magazines. For the satirical magazine Garm she drew covers and caricatures of Hitler and Stalin, painted murals in a city hall, schools and a church, and became world famous through her books about the Moomins. She always called herself first of all a painter.13.09.1874–13.07.1951
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was born in Vienna's Leopoldstadt, had almost no formal musical training, and until his late twenties orchestrated operettas. In 1921–1923 he worked out a method of composing with twelve interrelated tones, which his pupils and many later composers adopted. He taught in Vienna, Berlin and Los Angeles, and he also painted: in 1911 his pictures hung in Blue Rider exhibitions.05.01.1921–14.12.1990
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) hesitated in his youth between painting and literature, and began writing crime novels for money: The Judge and His Hangman appeared in 1950 as a newspaper serial for a fee of a thousand francs. His plays The Visit and The Physicists made him world famous. He drew and painted all his life and left about a thousand works, now kept at the Centre Dürrenmatt in Neuchâtel.25.02.1861–30.03.1925
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) began as an editor of Goethe's scientific writings and the author of The Philosophy of Freedom, and went on to create the teaching he called anthroposophy. He headed the German section of the Theosophical Society, founded a society of his own and designed two Goetheanum buildings at Dornach. Waldorf schools, eurythmy and four “mystery dramas” are associated with his name.16.04.1896–24.12.1963
Tristan Tzara
The poet Samy Rosenstock, who took the name Tristan Tzara, reached Zürich at nineteen and became the chief organizer of the Dada movement: he edited the magazine “Dada”, corresponded with avant-garde artists in many countries, and from 1920 worked in Paris. He wrote manifestos, poems and plays, made a film based on his own play, spent time in Spain during the Civil War and took part in the French Resistance.20.10.1958–?
Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen grew up between Argentina, Denmark and upstate New York, and came to film at twenty-six, playing an Amish farmer in Peter Weir’s “Witness”. Aragorn in “The Lord of the Rings” made him internationally known; he received three Oscar nominations, for “Eastern Promises”, “Captain Fantastic” and “Green Book”. He also writes poetry, paints, photographs, records music and publishes books through Perceval Press.07.11.1598–27.08.1664
Francisco de Zurbarán
Zurbarán received a commission for twenty-one canvases for the monastery of San Pablo el Real in Seville, and the “Crucifixion” he then painted for its sacristy made his name in the city. Cycles for the Mercedarians, Franciscans and Carthusians followed, and in the 1630s he also painted for the royal palace in Madrid. He never left Spain, yet his workshop shipped paintings to South America.07.12.1598–28.11.1680
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
At twenty-two Bernini carved a bust of Pope Paul V, and by twenty-six he had finished four marble groups for Cardinal Scipione Borghese that still stand in the Galleria Borghese. He later became architect of St Peter’s Basilica, built its baldachin and the colonnades of its square, and in the Cornaro Chapel combined sculpture, architecture and hidden light.06.10.1931–09.12.2018
Riccardo Giacconi
Riccardo Giacconi (1931–2018) built instruments to see the sky in X-rays, which do not pass through the atmosphere. In 1962 his rocket-borne detector picked up the first X-ray source outside the solar system, Scorpius X-1, and the Uhuru satellite (1970) produced the first survey map of the X-ray sky. Later he directed the science institute for the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002.29.09.1912–30.07.2007
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni began as a film journalist and documentary maker, and by 1960 had made L’Avventura, which was both cheered and booed at Cannes. After L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse he came to be seen as the leading director of films about the estrangement between people. Blowup won the Palme d’Or, and after a stroke in 1985 he still made one more feature. In his last years he painted and exhibited his pictures.06.03.1926–09.10.2016
Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda began as an art student in Kraków and became famous as a film director: Kanał won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1957, and Man of Iron the Palme d'Or in 1981. He made films about the war, about Stalinism and about Solidarity, directed for the theatre, founded a museum of Japanese art in Kraków and his own film school. In 2000 he received an Honorary Oscar.19.11.1909–11.11.2005
Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker grew up in Vienna in a house where Joseph Schumpeter and Ludwig von Mises were visitors, and his work on a conservative philosopher ended up on the list of books burned by the Nazis. After fleeing Germany he became an American author who described management as a discipline in its own right. “The Practice of Management” appeared in 1954, and in 2002 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.29.03.1943–17.05.2022
Vangelis
Evangelos Papathanassiou, known as Vangelis, could not read music and played from memory, yet he wrote the scores for “Chariots of Fire” (Academy Award, 1982) and “Blade Runner”. In the 1970s he settled in London, where he recorded a series of electronic albums in his own Nemo Studios. Later he wrote music for NASA and ESA missions, for ceremonies and for sporting events. He also painted; his first exhibition was held in Valencia in 2003.07.11.1943–?
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell drew before she sang, and she designed her own album covers, including the self-portrait on “Clouds”. She taught herself guitar from a Pete Seeger songbook and devised her own tunings for it. Her album “Blue” (1971) became one of the best-known records in popular music, and “Court and Spark” (1974) sold better than the rest.02.04.1891–01.04.1976
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (1891–1976) studied philosophy at the University of Bonn, became one of the founders of Dada in Cologne and then a Surrealist. He invented frottage and grattage, made three novels out of collages, fled Europe for the United States in 1941, and won the Grand Prize for painting at the 1954 Venice Biennale.24.06.1911–30.04.2011
Ernesto Sabato
In 1943 Ernesto Sabato left physics, after a spell at the Curie Institute in Paris, for literature and painting. He wrote three novels: “The Tunnel” (1948), “On Heroes and Tombs” (1961) and “The Angel of Darkness” (1974). In 1983–1984 he chaired the commission that investigated the disappearance of people under the military dictatorship; its report was published as “Never Again”.1497–29.11.1543
Hans Holbein the Younger
Hans Holbein the Younger was born in Augsburg into a family of painters, spent about ten years in Basel working for printers and humanists, and from 1532 lived in England, where from 1536 he served as King's Painter to Henry VIII. He illustrated books by Erasmus of Rotterdam, drew the “Dance of Death” and painted “The Ambassadors”, with its anamorphic skull in the foreground.02.04.1647–13.01.1717
Maria Sibylla Merian
At thirteen Maria Sibylla Merian was raising silkworms, and at fifty-two she sailed to Suriname with her daughter, having sold hundreds of her own works to pay for the trip. She was the first among European artists to draw insects at every stage of development together with their food plants. Her main book, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, appeared in Amsterdam in 1705.22.07.1960–?
John Leguizamo
John Leguizamo began as a stand-up comedian in New York clubs, and by the late 1990s he was writing and performing one-man shows about Latinos in the United States. He won an Emmy for the televised version of “Freak” and a Special Tony Award in 2018. Wider audiences know him as the voice of Sid the Sloth in “Ice Age” and of Bruno in “Encanto”.22.06.1910–18.12.1995
Konrad Zuse
In the mid-1930s Konrad Zuse gave up a job as a structural analyst at an aircraft factory to build a machine that would do an engineer's calculations, and he assembled it in his parents' flat in Berlin. From this came the Z1, the Z3 (12 May 1941), the Plankalkül language and the first computer company in Germany. In later years he painted a great deal in oils.1377–15.04.1446
Filippo Brunelleschi
The Florentine Filippo Brunelleschi began as a goldsmith and sculptor, lost the competition for the bronze doors of the Baptistery and turned to architecture. He built the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore without wooden centering under the vault, and designed the Foundling Hospital and the churches of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito. He is also credited with the first experiments in linear perspective.02.12.1891–25.07.1969
Otto Dix
Otto Dix (1891–1969) went through the First World War as a machine-gunner and then spent almost ten years returning to it in drawings, etchings and paintings: “The Trench” (1923), the cycle “The War” of fifty etchings (1924), the triptych “The War” (1932). In the 1920s he became one of the leading artists of the New Objectivity. In 1933 he was dismissed from the Dresden Academy, and in 1937 his works were shown in the exhibition “Degenerate Art”.30.08.1884–25.02.1971