30.09.1933–27.05.2023
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Artists
Biographies, facts and images with open sources and verified rights.
Found: 1775
24.04.1889–25.05.1924
Lyubov Popova
In ten years Lyubov Popova (1889–1924) went from Cubo-Futurism through Suprematism to Constructivism. Her “Painterly Architectonics” of 1916–1918 are built from coloured planes laid one over another. After the “5×5=25” exhibition (1921) she gave up easel painting for the theatre, books, posters and textile designs; for Meyerhold she designed “The Magnanimous Cuckold” (1922).
17.07.1881–20.03.1944
Ilya Mashkov
Ilya Mashkov (1881–1944) started out as a teenager painting shop signs in Borisoglebsk, and in 1910 became one of the founders of the Jack of Diamonds. His still lifes of fruit, bread and food combine the lessons of Cézanne and Matisse with the lubok, the shop sign and the painted tray. For a quarter of a century he taught painting, first privately, then at Vkhutemas, and in the 1920s and 1930s he painted in the spirit of Soviet realism.07.07.1925–27.08.2012
Geliy Korzhev
Geliy Korzhev (1925–2012), a pupil of Sergei Gerasimov, made his name with the triptych “Communists” (1957–1960) and the series “Scorched by the Fire of War” (1962–1967): large, carefully modelled figures, restrained colour, hard-edged composition. He is counted among the painters of the “Severe Style”. He taught at the Stroganov School, was a People’s Artist of the USSR, and in his later years painted “Mutants”, Don Quixote and Gospel subjects.
14.08.1875–20.11.1957
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875–1957) painted the reverse side of St Petersburg: courtyards and back alleys instead of grand views. A member of the World of Art, he illustrated Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Leskov and designed productions for the Moscow Art Theatre, Diaghilev, the Lithuanian State Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera. In 1924 he took Lithuanian citizenship and left the USSR; he lived in Kaunas, Paris and New York.
07.05.1861–07.08.1941
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), the Bengali poet and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913), took up drawing seriously only at around sixty. He left some 2,500 drawings in ink, pen and watercolour; his first exhibition was held in Paris, and his work was then shown across Europe. He wrote “Gitanjali”, about 2,230 songs and the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
03.08.1953–present
Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas (born 1953), a native of Cape Town, has lived and worked in Amsterdam since 1976. She paints portraits and figures in oil on canvas and ink on paper from Polaroids and newspaper photographs, and what matters to her more than likeness is a person’s state of mind. In 1995 she represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale; in 2025 a cycle of nine paintings by her entered the Louvre’s permanent display.
29.12.1896–06.01.1974
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974), with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco one of the best-known Mexican muralists, painted murals with spray guns, from projections and on aluminium, designing them for a moving viewer. A communist who fought in two wars, he worked in Mexico City, Los Angeles, New York, Chile and Cuba; his last major work is the Polyforum in Mexico City (1971).
03.02.1894–08.11.1978
Norman Rockwell
For forty-seven years, from 1916 to 1963, Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) painted covers for The Saturday Evening Post, 322 in all. He painted the “Four Freedoms” series (1943), worked for the Boy Scouts for more than half a century, and in the 1960s painted about civil rights for Look magazine. He made more than four thousand original works in all; his museum in Stockbridge holds more than seven hundred.
09.03.1856–14.09.1931
Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts (1856–1931) came to Melbourne as a boy from Dorchester in England, and by the end of the 1880s he was regarded as the leader of the Heidelberg School, Australia's first plein-air movement. He set up artists' camps near Melbourne and Sydney, painted “Shearing the Rams” and “A Break Away!”, earned his living from commissioned portraits and, on commission, produced “The Big Picture”, showing the first sitting of the Australian Parliament.
11.05.1904–23.01.1989
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), from Figueres in Catalonia, joined the Surrealist group in 1929, painted “The Persistence of Memory” with its soft watches and became one of the movement's leading artists until Breton expelled him. He made objects, jewellery and stage designs, worked with Buñuel, Hitchcock and Disney, and in 1974 opened his own Theatre-Museum in his home town.
27.11.1886–29.01.1968
Tsuguharu Foujita
Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968) came to Paris from Tokyo in 1913, and in the 1920s he became famous in Montparnasse for nudes whose skin is barely touched with colour, for cats and for self-portraits in round glasses. During the war he became Japan's leading war artist; afterwards he left for France for good, became a Catholic under the name Léonard and painted his own chapel in Reims.
28.11.1970–present
Julie Mehretu
Julie Mehretu (b. 1970) was born in Addis Ababa, grew up in Michigan and works in New York. She paints huge, many-layered abstractions in which drawings of buildings, city plans and maps show through acrylic and ink. Her works include the mural in the lobby of a skyscraper on West Street, the “Grey Area” series about Berlin, a diptych for a museum in San Francisco and a glass window for the Obama Presidential Center.
23.11.1883–07.09.1949
José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949), together with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, launched Mexican muralism, but he painted the revolution more darkly than his fellows. His frescoes cover the walls of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City and of Pomona College and Dartmouth in the United States, and in Guadalajara he painted the Hospicio Cabañas, with “Man of Fire” at its centre.
04.05.1958–16.02.1990
Keith Haring
Keith Haring (1958–1990) began with chalk drawings on the black advertising panels of the New York subway, and in less than ten years he made more than fifty public murals, from Harlem to the Berlin Wall and Pisa. His crawling radiant baby and barking dogs became a recognisable language, and he used it to speak about crack, apartheid and AIDS.
08.04.1867–01.09.1943
Arthur Streeton
Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) painted landscapes in “gold and blue” around Melbourne and Sydney and was one of the leading artists of the Heidelberg School. His “Golden Summer, Eaglemont” was the first work by an Australian-born artist to be shown at the Royal Academy in London. He spent a quarter of a century living mainly in England, was a war artist in France during the First World War and was knighted in 1937.
14.07.1862–06.02.1918
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) began as a successful decorator of Viennese theatres, in 1897 became the first president of the Vienna Secession, and after the scandal over his ceiling paintings for the university stopped accepting state commissions. His fame rests on his portraits of women and the paintings of his “golden phase”, “The Kiss”, “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” and the frieze for the Stoclet Palace, as well as on his landscapes of the Attersee.
30.12.1842–24.02.1910
Osman Hamdi Bey
Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910) studied painting in Paris under Gérôme and Boulanger, and back home in Istanbul he ran the Imperial Museum for almost thirty years. He excavated at Sidon and Nemrut Dağı, secured a law against the export of antiquities, founded the Academy of Fine Arts and went on painting; his best-known picture is “The Tortoise Trainer” (1906).
1962–present
Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare (b. 1962) was born in London, grew up in Lagos and since 1994 has worked with brightly coloured “African” wax-printed fabric whose origins are in fact European. He dresses headless mannequins in eighteenth-century costume made from it, restages Gainsborough, Fragonard and Hogarth, and in 2010 placed “Nelson's Ship in a Bottle” on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
11.11.1911–23.11.2002
Roberto Matta
Roberto Matta (1911–2002) trained as an architect in Santiago, worked in Le Corbusier’s office in Paris and in 1937, at André Breton’s invitation, joined the Surrealist circle. His New York years produced the “inscapes”: diffuse light and sharp lines on an empty ground. Later he lived in Europe, painted large political canvases and supported the government of Salvador Allende.
12.01.1856–15.04.1925
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), an American born in Florence who spent almost his whole life in Europe, was considered the leading portrait painter of his generation. After the scandal over his “Portrait of Madame X” at the Salon of 1884 he moved to London. He left about 900 oil paintings, more than 2,000 watercolours and the murals in the Boston Public Library.07.04.1939–15.06.1992
Brett Whiteley
In 1961 the Sydney-born Brett Whiteley (1939–1992) became the youngest living artist to have a work bought by the Tate. He worked in London, New York and Fiji, and in the 1970s painted Sydney Harbour from his studio. He won the Archibald and Sulman prizes twice and the Wynne Prize three times, and in 1978 he took all three at once.
28.06.1577–30.05.1640
Peter Paul Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) spent eight years in Italy and then for three decades ran a huge workshop in Antwerp, through which the young Anthony van Dyck also passed. He painted altarpieces, mythologies, portraits and landscapes, and designed cartoons for tapestries. As a diplomat he negotiated between Madrid and London and was ennobled by the kings of Spain and England.
1901–05.09.1991