29.06.1930–15.08.2013
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Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
01.01.1881–25.11.1925
Vajiravudh
Vajiravudh, the sixth king of Siam (Rama VI), reigned for fifteen years and in that time kept writing and staging plays in which he acted himself. He founded the country's first university, created the paramilitary Wild Tiger Corps and in 1917 brought Siam into the First World War on the side of the Allies. He wrote more than a hundred plays and translated Shakespeare.07.12.1872–01.02.1945
Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga studied Dutch literature and Sanskrit, defended a doctoral thesis on the jester in ancient Indian drama, and only then became a historian. In Leiden he wrote “The Autumn of the Middle Ages” (1919) and “Homo Ludens” (1938). In 1933, as rector, he asked the German propagandist Johann von Leers to leave a university conference. In 1942 he spent three months in a hostage camp.27.03.1949–17.03.2023
Dubravka Ugrešić
Dubravka Ugrešić (1949–2023) worked for almost twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature at the University of Zagreb, translated Daniil Kharms and Boris Pilnyak, and co-edited a glossary of the Russian avant-garde. In 1988 she won the NIN Award for “Fording the Stream of Consciousness”. From 1993 she lived abroad, from 1996 in Amsterdam, writing novels and essays in Croatian.18.02.1860–22.08.1920
Anders Zorn
Anders Zorn (1860–1920) grew up in Mora, in Dalarna, on his grandparents’ farm and became one of the most sought-after portrait painters of his day, painting King Oscar II of Sweden and three American presidents. From the 1880s he took up etching and made about three hundred plates. He and his wife left their savings and collection to the state.23.01.1938–30.04.2026
Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz, born Hans-Georg Kern, painted “The Wood on Its Head” in 1969, his first picture with an inverted motif, and went on painting figures upside down. Before that he had been expelled from an art school in East Berlin, and his first solo show in West Berlin ended with two canvases seized. He worked as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and stage designer, and died in 2026 in Salzburg.15.11.1741–02.01.1801
Johann Kaspar Lavater
Lavater (1741–1801) was a pastor in Zurich, and his fame came from the “Physiognomic Fragments” (1775–1778), in which he taught readers to judge character from the features of the face. The book was printed with engravings after drawings by well-known artists, and it helped fuel the fashion for silhouettes. He wrote poems and religious epics, corresponded with Goethe and argued with Mendelssohn. He died in Zurich of a wound received when the French took the city.19.11.1770–24.03.1844
Bertel Thorvaldsen
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844) spent forty years in Rome, where he went on an academy scholarship, and built there one of the largest sculpture workshops in Europe. His success began with “Jason”, which Canova praised. Commissions came from Warsaw, Munich, Lucerne and the Vatican; he returned home in 1838, and the museum with his tomb opened only after his death.23.01.1688–24.11.1741
Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden
Ulrika Eleonora, the younger sister of Charles XII, declared herself queen in December 1718 on learning of her brother's death, and accepted a constitution that gave power to the Riksdag. She was crowned in Uppsala in March 1719 and abdicated in February 1720 in favour of her husband, Frederick of Hesse. She spent the rest of her life at his side as queen consort and twice governed the country in his absence.13.04.1860–19.11.1949
James Ensor
James Ensor spent almost his whole life in Ostend and painted the carnival masks and skeletons he had known since childhood from his mother’s souvenir shop. The huge canvas “Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889” was rejected by the group Les XX and was not shown publicly until 1929. Recognition came late: in that same year he was made a baron.11.06.1934–13.02.2018
Prince Henrik of Denmark
Prince Henrik, French by birth, wrote poetry in French, learned to model in clay from a Danish sculptor, and with Queen Margrethe II showed about 150 works at an exhibition in Aarhus that drew more than 285,000 visitors. Before that he had served in the French army and in the diplomatic service. From 1972 he was the first man in Danish history to be consort of a reigning monarch.26.04.1865–07.03.1931
Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Akseli Gallen-Kallela was born in Pori into a Swedish-speaking family and became the chief creator of the Finnish national-romantic style. He painted “Lemminkäinen’s Mother” and “The Defense of the Sampo” from the Kalevala, decorated the Finnish pavilion at the 1900 Paris World Fair and the Jusélius Mausoleum, worked in Kenya for about two years, and after 1918 designed state decorations and uniforms for independent Finland.08.01.1836–25.06.1912
Lawrence Alma-Tadema
A Frisian from Dronryp who trained in Antwerp, Alma-Tadema moved to London in 1870 and became one of the most popular Victorian painters. He painted scenes of ancient Rome and Egypt with such archaeological exactness that critics found them close to museum catalogues. He put opus numbers on 408 of his pictures, beginning with a portrait of his sister from 1851.17.12.1930–?
Armin Mueller-Stahl
Armin Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit and began as a violinist, then became the most popular actor in East Germany, and after leaving for West Berlin in 1980 worked with Fassbinder and Wajda and in Hollywood. He was nominated for an Academy Award for “Shine”. He also draws and writes: his drawings and watercolours have been exhibited since 2001, and he has published novels and poems.28.12.1882–13.09.1931
Lili Elbe
Born in Vejle as Einar Wegener, she studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, painted landscapes, received the Neuhausen Prize and exhibited in Denmark and Paris. In 1930 she received a passport in the name of Lili Ilse Elvenes and, after her operations, gave up painting. Her life became the basis of a book published in 1933 and of the film “The Danish Girl”.29.10.1875–18.07.1938
Marie of Romania
Marie of Romania, born Princess Marie of Edinburgh in Kent, was a granddaughter of two monarchs, Queen Victoria and Emperor Alexander II, and became the second and last queen consort of Romania. In the First World War she nursed the wounded in Iași, in 1919 she pressed in Paris for recognition of Greater Romania, and in 1926 toured the United States. As a princess she was known for her writing, painting and sculpture. She wrote the autobiography “The Story of My Life” and a diary kept from 1916.03.04.1863–25.10.1957
Henry van de Velde
Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) gave up painting around 1892, when he saw how much Van Gogh had already achieved in it, and turned to furniture, textiles, silver and book graphics. His first architectural work was his own house, Bloemenwerf, in Uccle. From 1901 he worked in Germany, where in Weimar he headed a school of applied arts that grew into the Bauhaus, and later he built the Boekentoren in Ghent and the Kröller-Müller Museum.29.10.1930–21.05.2002
Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle began as a fashion model and a young mother, and became known in 1961 when she fired a rifle at plaster reliefs filled with bags of paint. Later came the brightly coloured Nanas, the huge “Hon” in Stockholm, the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris and the Tarot Garden in Tuscany, on which she worked for about twenty years. She was the only woman among the New Realists.04.10.1917–05.02.1967
Violeta Parra
Violeta Parra (1917–1967) spent twenty years travelling around Chile and writing down folk songs, then began composing her own on the old forms. In April 1964 the Louvre opened an exhibition of her arpilleras (burlap embroideries), paintings and wire sculptures. “Gracias a la vida” and “Volver a los 17” are on her last album, of 1966.20.07.1895–24.11.1946
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) began as a poet and law student, served as an artillery officer, and became a teacher at the Bauhaus and the author of “The New Vision”: he argued that the camera shows the eye what it cannot see itself. In Berlin he made photograms and a light-kinetic apparatus; in Chicago he founded a school that is now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology.26.01.1877–28.05.1968
Kees van Dongen
Kees van Dongen grew up in Delfshaven, on the outskirts of Rotterdam, and at eighteen illustrated the Dutch edition of Kropotkin. From 1899 he lived in Paris, in 1905 he exhibited alongside the future Fauves, and later he became a fashionable portraitist who lengthened his female sitters and enlarged their jewels. He became a French citizen in 1929 and died in Monte Carlo.11.03.1886–02.12.1941
Edward Śmigły-Rydz
Edward Śmigły-Rydz studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, then gave it up for underground military work under Józef Piłsudski. He commanded a battalion and a regiment of the Polish Legions, led armies in the Polish–Soviet War of 1920, became a Marshal of Poland in 1936 and was named Commander-in-Chief on 1 September 1939. He died in occupied Warsaw under an assumed name.08.11.1916–10.05.1982
Peter Weiss
Peter Weiss (1916–1982) began as a painter: he studied in Prague, won the academy prize in 1938, and then spent ten years painting and drawing in Sweden. In the 1950s he made experimental and documentary films, and after that became a prose writer and playwright. His play Marat/Sade (1964) made him internationally known, and he worked for about ten years on his three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.14.07.1939–01.10.2019