07.10.1923–12.10.2012
Research · Sources · Context
Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
1754–05.04.1835
Ivan Martos
Ivan Martos was born into a Cossack officer family in Ichnia, arrived at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg at the age of ten and spent almost his whole life in the capital. He made the monument to Minin and Pozharsky on Red Square, which occupied him for fourteen years, and a large number of marble tombs. From 1814 he headed the sculpture department of the Academy.16.11.1861–27.12.1932
Arvid Järnefelt
Arvid Järnefelt (1861–1932) was born in Pulkovo into a general’s family, trained as a lawyer and served in the courts, but in the mid-1890s he left the service under the influence of Leo Tolstoy and settled on a farm near Lohja. He wrote novels and plays, translated, corresponded with Tolstoy and in May 1917 preached in Helsinki churches. He was the brother of the painter Eero Järnefelt.17.12.1944–27.03.1973
Timo K. Mukka
Timo Mukka was born in Sweden, where his family had been evacuated from Lapland, and grew up in the village of Orajärvi. His first novel, “The Earth Is a Sinful Song”, appeared when he was nineteen, and in 1966 he won the Finnish State Prize for Literature. In six years he wrote nine books. He also drew and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, and the Ateneum holds more than a hundred of his paintings and drawings.1832–13.06.1904
Nikiforos Lytras
Nikiforos Lytras was born on Tinos, the son of a marble carver. He studied in Athens and under Karl von Piloty in Munich, then for thirty-eight years ran the painting class at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He painted formal portraits of Athenian high society, genre scenes and Oriental subjects brought back from trips to Asia Minor and Egypt. After his death his chair went to Georgios Jakobides.17.03.1837–29.06.1907
Konstantinos Volanakis
Volanakis began as a bookkeeper for a sugar merchant in Trieste and drew ships on the pages of the account books. His employer sent him to study at the Munich Academy, and a competition announced by Emperor Franz Joseph won him three years of voyages aboard Austrian warships. From 1883 he lived in Piraeus and taught at the Athens School of Fine Arts.14.12.1885–16.04.1913
Miroslav Kraljević
Miroslav Kraljević lived for twenty-seven years and left paintings, drawings and sculptures that Croatians regard as the beginning of modern art in their country. He studied in Vienna and Munich, painted “Self-portrait with Dog” in Požega, worked for a year in Paris and published drawings in the magazine Panurge. His first solo exhibition took place in Zagreb in 1912.06.01.1949–?
Sanja Iveković
In 1979 Sanja Iveković (b. 1949) stepped out onto the balcony of her Zagreb flat as Tito's motorcade passed, sat down with a whisky and a book of sociology, and eighteen minutes later the police rang her doorbell. She works in video, photography, performance and urban space, and for many years has examined how the media portray women. Her work has been shown at Manifesta, MoMA and documenta.31.01.1928–14.01.2009
Dušan Džamonja
Dušan Džamonja (1928–2009) was born in Strumica, studied at the Zagreb Academy and from 1953 worked in his own studio. He created memorials at Podgarić, on Mrakovica and in Barletta, Italy, and in Istria built a house with a studio and a sculpture park to his own design. He worked in bronze, iron, concrete, glass and Corten steel.22.11.1820–14.10.1932
Katherine Plunket
Katherine Plunket (1820–1932) was born in County Louth, the daughter of a future bishop and granddaughter of a Lord Chancellor of Ireland. With her sisters she sketched flowers in France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Ireland; the album “Wild Flowers from Nature” was presented to a college in 1903. She lived 111 years and 327 days and is on record as the oldest person ever born and dying in Ireland.05.03.1897–22.04.1983
Gunta Stölzl
Gunta Stölzl (christened Adelgunde) came to the Bauhaus as a student in 1919, and in 1927 became the sole person in charge of the school's weaving workshop and the first woman among its masters. She added mathematics and experiments with synthetic fibres to the curriculum and turned the workshop from a student studio into a production unit. In 1931 she had to leave, and she went on working in Zurich.1909–12.12.1991
Moshe Castel
Moshe Castel (1909–1991) grew up in the Bukharim quarter of Jerusalem, entered the Bezalel art school in the early 1920s and went to study in Paris in 1927. After a visit to an ancient synagogue at Korazin he began to paint with a mixture of ground basalt, sand and glue. His works hang in the Knesset and the residence of the President of Israel, and a museum bearing his name stands in Ma’ale Adumim.04.03.1876–05.04.1958
Ásgrímur Jónsson
Ásgrímur Jónsson was born on the farm of Suðurkot, left for Copenhagen in 1897 and became one of the first Icelanders for whom painting was a full-time occupation. He painted the mountains and the light of Iceland in oil and watercolour, illustrated sagas and folk tales, and decorated churches with murals. He bequeathed his house in Reykjavík, with hundreds of works, to the state.20.09.1925–09.11.2019
Džemma Skulme
Džemma Skulme (1925–2019) grew up in a family of two artists and became one of the most prominent figures in Latvian painting of the second half of the twentieth century. She worked in oil, acrylic and watercolour, returning to the images of the caryatid, the mother and the folk song. From 1982 to 1992 she chaired the Artists’ Union of Latvia, and in the late 1980s she joined the Popular Front.1630–1704
Lorenzo Gafà
Lorenzo Gafà began as a stone carver in his father’s workshop and became the leading builder of churches in seventeenth-century Malta. He designed St Paul’s Cathedral in Mdina, consecrated in 1702, and the Cathedral of the Assumption in Victoria on Gozo. His elder brother was the sculptor Melchiorre Cafà. The dates of his life are disputed: he was born between 1630 and 1639 and died in 1703 or 1704.21.01.1636–04.09.1667
Melchiorre Cafà
Melchiorre Cafà was born in Malta, took the name Melchior the Maltese in Rome, and before the age of thirty-one produced the marble “Saint Rose of Lima” and the relief “Ecstasy of Saint Catherine”. In 1667 the Accademia di San Luca elected him its president, but he declined. A few months later he was dead: material fell on him in the foundry of Saint Peter’s.21.11.1857–06.11.1929
Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro
Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (1857–1929) painted portraits of nearly all the notable Lisbon writers and thinkers of his day, among them the poet Antero de Quental (1889). He studied in Lisbon, worked in Paris for about a year, took part in the Golden Lion circle, and after 1910 joined the commission for Portugal’s new flag and became director of the museum of contemporary art.07.04.1893–15.06.1970
Almada Negreiros
Almada Negreiros (1893–1970) was born on the island of São Tomé, grew up from childhood in a Jesuit boarding school in Lisbon, and at twenty-two joined Fernando Pessoa in the circle of the magazine Orpheu. He wrote manifestos, novels and plays, drew caricatures, and made stained glass, tapestries and the murals of Lisbon’s maritime terminals. His 1954 portrait of Pessoa is counted among his main paintings.02.05.1926–11.12.2011
Mario Miranda
Mario Miranda (1926–2011) began in an advertising studio and became known for cartoons in Bombay newspapers and in The Illustrated Weekly of India. He drew village life in Goa and the customers of cafés and markets, but avoided political cartoons. His murals decorate buildings in Goa and Mumbai, and in 2012 he was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan.28.04.1855–26.10.1933
José Malhoa
José Malhoa began in a shop selling women’s clothing and ended by painting the ceilings of Lisbon palaces and portraits of King Carlos I. His best-known pictures, “The Drunks” and “Fado”, show ordinary people; for them he chose scenes from popular life. His house in Lisbon is now a museum, and his studio “Casulo” in Figueiró dos Vinhos is open to visitors.13.04.1886–27.02.1940
Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza (1886–1940) worked as a church painter, a newspaper editor and a political cartoonist before he found his subject: portraits of children with large round eyes, painted at Vălenii de Munte. He fought at Turtucaia and was taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, joined the Group of Four in the mid-1920s and from 1933 taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Iași.12.02.1909–25.04.2005
Zoran Mušič
Zoran Mušič (Mušič in Slovene) grew up in a family of teachers near Gorizia and studied in Maribor and Zagreb. In 1944 he was arrested in Venice and sent to Dachau, where he drew on scraps of paper, and after liberation he left dozens of sheets showing dead bodies. These drawings grew into the cycle “We Are Not the Last”. From the 1950s he lived between Venice and Paris.25.12.1935–20.01.1997
Albín Brunovský
Albín Brunovský studied under Vincent Hložník in Bratislava, taught at the same school for twenty-four years, and in 1967 helped found the Bratislava Biennial of Illustrations of Children’s Books. He is known for illustrations to Andersen, Hoffmann and Cervantes, for bookplates, stamps and the designs for the last series of Czechoslovak banknotes. In 1985 he was named National Artist of Czechoslovakia.1930–24.07.2012