Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, in 1848, in Paris. He was a leading Post-Impressionist French painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He spent his childhood in Lima (his mother was a Peruvian Creole). From 1872 to 1883 he was a successful stockbroker in Paris. He met Camille Pissarro about 1875, and he exhibited several times with the Impressionists. Disillusioned with bourgeois materialism, in 1886 he moved to Pont-Aven, Brittany, where he became the central figure of a group of artists known as the Pont-Aven school. Gauguin coined the term Synthetism to describe his style during this period, referring to the synthesis of his paintings' formal elements with the idea or emotion they conveyed. Late in October 1888 Gauguin traveled to Arles, in the south of France, to stay with Vincent van Gogh. The style of the two men's work from this period has been classified as Post-Impressionist because it shows an individual, personal development of Impressionism's use of colour, brushstroke, and nontraditional subject matter. Increasingly focused on rejecting the materialism of contemporary culture in favour of a more spiritual, unfettered lifestyle, in 1891 he moved to Tahiti. His works became open protests against materialism. He was an influential innovator; Fauvism owed much to his use of colour, and he inspired Pablo Picasso and the development of Cubism. Gauguin died on May 8, 1903, in Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

Paul Gauguin-Presentation1

Paule Gauguin-Presentation2

Paule Gauguin - Film on You Tube

Paul Cézanne (1)

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

House of Pére Lacroix (1873)

In 1852 Cézanne entered the Collège Bourbon where he met his good friends Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille. The three were famously close for a long period of time. Later Paul Cézanne enrolled at the local art school and attempted to work as a banker but was also unsuccessful in this venture. By this time he was good friends with Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and had met his future wife.

Three Skulls (1906)

In 1873 Cézanne met Vincent van Gogh and in 1874 he exhibited at the Impressionist's first showcase. In 1877 Cézanne showcased 16 of his paintings. Although still influenced by Pissarro's Impressionist style Cézanne continued to work inside his studio and didn't believe in always painting from nature. In the early 1880s Cezanne started to move even further away from the Impressionist's style of painting. In 1886 Cezanne married his mistress and inherited a large estate from his father, meaning he never had to worry about making money from his art. In November 1895 Paul Cézanne held his first solo exhibition in Paris and Ambroise Vollard bought every artwork. He then moved to Aix-en-Provence permanently. In the early 1900s his work was shown all around Europe to wide critical acclaim but throughout his life Cézanne was shy and hostile towards other painters and he maintained this attitude. He died in October 1906 of pneumonia and is buried in the cemetery in Aix-en-Provence. 

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Paul Cézanne (2)

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was born on 19 January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, in Provence in south of France. His father was a successful banker and his father wished him to pursue a 'respectable' career. To please his father, between 1859 and 1861 Paul Cezanne attended the law school of the University of Aix. However, in 1861, he became disillusioned with this career path and dropped out to pursue his life's passion - art.

With the encouragement of his great friend Emil Zola, Paul left for Paris and sought to further his artistic career. Initially his father was upset at his son's choice of career. But, on evidence of his talent, his father later became reconciled to his choice and on the death of his father, Paul inherited a substantial sum which enabled him to pursue art without any financial worries.

In Paris, he met the Impressionist artist, Camille Pissaro. Pissaro acted as Master to the young Paul. However, over time, the student became as respected as the Master.

In 1870, the Franco-Prussian war broke out and Paul Cezanne fled with his mistress to Marseille. He was caught as a draft dodger, but, soon after, the war fortunately ended. In this period in the south of France, Paul drew an increasing number of landscapes and abandoned the dark colours which had dominated his rather somber paintings. In this period Paul Cezanne became one of the leading impressionists though his difficult personality made it hard for him to mix with many of the leading artists of the time.

His final years of his life from 1878-1905 were spent in Provence. It was here that he increasingly developed the style of his paintings and moved beyond a classic impressionist style. He used planes and blocks of colour to give a more abstracted observation of nature. It was this abstract innovation that was said to be a key element in the link between the 19th Century impressionist art and the modern art of Matisse and Picasso of the Twentieth Century.

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Victor Borisov-Musatov

Victor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov, (April 14, 1870 - November 8,1905) was a Russian painter, prominent for his uniquePost-Impressionisticstyle that mixed Symbolism, pure decorative style and realism. Together with Mikhail Vrubel he is often referred as the creator of Russian Symbolism style. Borisov-Musatov had a very successful solo exhibition in a number of cities in Germany, and in the spring of 1905 he exhibited with Salon de la Société des Artistes Français and became a member of this society.

  

Technique:

Musatov's response was creating a half-illusory world of the 19th century nobility, their parks and country-seats. This world was partially based on the estate of princes Prozorvky-Galitzines Zubrilovka and partially just on Musatov's imagination. Borisov-Musatov also abandoned oil-paintings for the mixed tempera and watercolor and pastel techniques that he found more suitable for the subtle visual effects he was trying to create.

Musatov's best works:

Requiem (1905)

The Pool (1902)

Phantoms (1903)

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Film about this painter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjwhw3Bvas

Vorticism - 1914

Vorticism was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century.  It was partly inspired by Cubism. The movement was announced in 1914 in the first issue of BLAST, which contained its manifesto and the movement's rejection of landscape and nudes in favour of a geometric style tending towards abstraction. Ultimately, it was their witnessing of unfolding human disaster in World War I that "drained these artists of their Vorticist zeal". Vorticism was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.

Edward Wadsworth “Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool”

Vorticism combines the geometrical fragmentation of Cubism with Futurist-style machine-like imagery, in order to illustrate the dynamism of the modern world. Lewis considered Vorticism to be a genuinely independent alternative to both Cubism and Futurism. He was impressed by the strong structure of Cubist painting, but declared that it lacked life when compared to Futurist art. The latter, however, he criticized for its lack of structure. Vorticism was intended to combine the best elements of both. Although - optically - Vorticist painting can look very similar to Futurist works, philosophically they are relatively distinct. Because while movement was the key feature of Futurism, modern industrialization was the key motif of Vorticism, expressed in a 'dry', stripped-down, angular style.In a Vorticist painting modern life is shown as an array of bold lines and harsh colours drawing the viewer's eye into the centre of the canvas.

Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg, Sir Jacob Epstein, EdwardWadsworth, William Roberts were representatives of Vorticism.

Dada - 1916

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I, and the nationalism, and rationalism, which many thought had brought war about. Influenced by ideas and innovations from several early avant-gardes - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting and collage. Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups. The movement is believed to have dissipated with the arrival of Surrealist in France.

Key Ideas

Dada was born out of a pool of avant-garde painters, poets and filmmakers who flocked to neutral Switzerland before and during WWI. The movement came into being at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in February 1916. The Cabaret was named after the eighteenth century French satirist, Voltaire, whose play Candide mocked the idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of Zurich Dada wrote, "This is our Candide against the times." So intent were members of Dada on opposing all the norms of bourgeois culture that the group was barely in favor of itself: "Dada is anti-Dada," they often cried. Dada art varies so widely that it is hard to speak of a coherent style. It was powerfully influenced by Futurist and Expressionist concerns with technological advancement, yet artists like Hans Arp also introduced a preoccupation with chance and other painterly conventions.

Dances at the Spring

Key artists: Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray

Man Ray

Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

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