15.01.1869–28.11.1907
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Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
28.12.1865–29.12.1925
Félix Vallotton
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) came to Paris from Lausanne at sixteen and became known through his woodcuts: broad flat masses of black and white, street scenes and the ten-sheet series “Intimités”. He belonged to the Nabis, became a French citizen in 1900, and painted portraits, nudes and landscapes. He kept a catalogue of his own works, which by the end of his life listed about 1,700 entries.14.03.1853–19.05.1918
Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) took over his stepfather’s workshop at twelve to feed his family, and at thirty-seven painted “Night”, which was pulled from a Geneva exhibition as obscene. He developed his own system, “parallelism”, painted frescoes for the Swiss National Museum and made Alpine landscapes. His “Woodcutter” and “Reaper” appeared on Swiss banknotes in 1911.08.03.1894–30.05.1966
Wäinö Aaltonen
Wäinö Aaltonen, the son of a tailor from a village near Turku, shaped the look of Finland's public monuments almost single-handedly from the 1920s: the statue of the runner Paavo Nurmi, the figures on the bridge in Tampere, the sculptural group “Work and the Future” in the Parliament chamber. He began as an expressionist, turned to Cubism and Futurism after a trip to Italy in 1923, and worked in granite, bronze, marble and gilded wood.25.04.1921–03.05.2006
Karel Appel
Karel Appel grew up above his father’s barbershop in Amsterdam and in 1948 became one of the founders of the CoBrA group. His mural “Questioning Children” in Amsterdam City Hall caused a scandal and spent ten years hidden under wallpaper. From 1950 he lived in Paris, travelled widely and worked in paint, wood, glass and, later, sculpture.17.03.1988–?
Grimes
The Canadian artist Claire Boucher, who performs as Grimes, began releasing music in Montreal and reached a wide audience with her third album, “Visions” (2012). She writes and produces her own records, directs videos and draws her album covers and merchandise. Her drawings have been shown in galleries, and her songs have been heard in games and television series.07.02.1741–16.04.1825
Henry Fuseli
The Zurich pastor Johann Heinrich Füssli gave up the church and became an artist on the advice of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In England he is known as Henry Fuseli. He painted scenes from Shakespeare and Milton and relieved their tension with the grotesque; his best-known picture, “The Nightmare”, was shown in 1782. He became Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy in 1799 and its Keeper in 1804.20.06.1887–08.01.1948
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) used the word Merz for his collages of tickets, scraps of newspaper and found rubbish, and then for a whole system of art: poems, a magazine, typography, rooms turned into sculpture. His best-known poem was “An Anna Blume” (1919), his longest sound text the “Ursonate”. In 1937 he left Germany to avoid the Gestapo, and he died in England.04.06.1882–20.11.1918
John Bauer
John Bauer studied at the Stockholm academy alongside his future wife, Ester Ellqvist, and became known for the watercolours he made for the Christmas anthology “Among Gnomes and Trolls”. He built the costumes of his trolls on details sketched during a month-long trip to the Sami in 1904. He died in 1918 on Lake Vättern, together with his wife and their three-year-old son.23.08.1924–29.01.2005
Ephraim Kishon
Ephraim Kishon was born in Budapest as Ferenc Hoffmann, came to Israel in 1949 and two years later was already printing humorous columns in Hebrew. From 1952 he wrote the column “Chad Gadya” for the newspaper Maariv for almost thirty years, wrote plays and directed five films, among them Sallah Shabati and The Policeman. His books were especially popular in Germany and Austria.20.06.1930–20.04.2017
Magdalena Abakanowicz
In the 1960s Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017) began hanging huge three-dimensional forms of sisal and rope from the ceiling; they came to be called Abakans after her surname. Later she turned to headless human figures made of burlap, bronze and cast iron. Her best-known works are “Agora” in Chicago, with 106 figures, and “Unrecognized” in Poznań.29.04.1936–25.09.1972
Alejandra Pizarnik
Alejandra Pizarnik was born to emigrants from Rovno and as a young woman changed her birth name, Flora. She studied philosophy and journalism, took painting lessons from Juan Batlle Planas, spent four years in Paris and translated Artaud, Michaux and Bonnefoy. Her main books of poems appeared between 1962 and 1971; her prose text “The Bloody Countess” is devoted to Elizabeth Báthory.24.05.1899–19.10.1984
Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux (1899–1984) was born in Namur, studied medicine, worked as a sailor, and by his early thirties was the author of strange books in prose and verse. He began to draw in 1925, after an exhibition of the Surrealists, and his first exhibition of paintings was held in 1937. He wrote about travel, dreams and experiments with mescaline, refused honours and prizes, and became a French citizen in 1955.06.06.1950–05.10.2015
Chantal Akerman
At eighteen Chantal Akerman left a Brussels film school to make the short “Saute ma ville”, and at twenty-five she made “Jeanne Dielman”: more than three hours in the life of a widow, in her kitchen and bedroom. In 2022 Sight & Sound magazine placed the film first in its poll of the greatest films ever made. From the mid-1990s she also made video installations for museums and biennials.23.09.1865–12.11.1947
Baroness Orczy
Baroness Orczy was born into a Hungarian baronial family, grew up in Brussels, Paris and London, and first trained as a painter. Her novel and play “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1903–1905) made her name: the London production ran for more than two thousand performances. In her stories about Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, a woman became the lead of a detective series for the first time.21.05.1902–01.07.1981
Marcel Breuer
Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) left his job at eighteen to study art and became one of the first students at the Bauhaus. At twenty-three he headed its furniture workshop. He invented tubular steel furniture, then in the United States built houses, the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.29.06.1911–01.12.2004
Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld
Prince Bernhard was born in Jena as Count of Biesterfeld and died in Utrecht as a Prince of the Netherlands: in 1937 he married Juliana, heir to the Dutch throne. In London during the war he served as aide to Queen Wilhelmina, and from 1944 he commanded the Dutch armed forces. In 1961 he became the first president of the World Wildlife Fund, and in 1976 he gave up all his posts because of the Lockheed affair.28.01.1929–18.07.2022
Claes Oldenburg
In 1961 Claes Oldenburg (1929–2022) rented a shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and filled it with sculptures in the form of food and clothing. Later he enlarged everyday objects to the scale of city monuments: a trowel, a baseball bat, a spoon with a cherry, a needle and thread. From 1976 he worked with Coosje van Bruggen, and from 1981 he signed all his work with her.28.01.1968–?
Sarah McLachlan
Sarah McLachlan grew up in Halifax, sang in a school rock band at seventeen, and in her early twenties moved to Vancouver to sign with the label Nettwerk. Her album Surfacing (1997) sold more than 16 million copies. In 1997 she founded the touring festival Lilith Fair, with only women on the bill, and in 2002 she opened a free music school for children.19.04.1981–?
Catalina Sandino Moreno
Catalina Sandino Moreno got her first film role after an audition in which she was chosen from several hundred candidates: the lead in “Maria Full of Grace” (2004). It brought her the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and an Oscar nomination, the first for a Colombian actress. She later worked with Steven Soderbergh in “Che”, in the film of García Márquez’s novel, and in the series “From”.16.12.1905–17.04.1996
Piet Hein
Piet Hein is known as the author of seven thousand short poetic aphorisms called grooks, written in Danish, and about four hundred in English; the first was printed in the newspaper Politiken in 1940, during the German occupation of Denmark. He also invented the Soma cube and the game of Hex, and proposed the superellipse for Sergels Torg in Stockholm. He died in Denmark in 1996.03.05.1934–23.05.2013
Georges Moustaki
Georges Moustaki was born in Alexandria to a bookseller's family from Corfu and came to Paris at seventeen. He wrote “Milord” for Édith Piaf, then songs for Barbara, Serge Reggiani and Yves Montand, and from 1968 he sang for himself. “Le Métèque” (1969) became his best-known song. In 1985 he received French citizenship.09.09.1935–08.03.2023
Chaim Topol
Chaim Topol began as a soldier in the Nahal army entertainment troupe and played in kibbutz theatre companies, then won international fame as Tevye the dairyman in “Fiddler on the Roof”: he played the part more than 3,500 times, from London in 1967 to a farewell tour in 2009. His screen Tevye brought a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. He also drew, illustrated books, and received the Israel Prize in 2015.01.12.1944–?