Category Archives: Art History

July 14

Gustav Klimt’s Secessionist ‘Medicine’

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On the 14th of July 1862, Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, the Austrian Empire. In 1894, Klimt and his partner, Franz Matsch were commissioned by the Austrian Ministry of Culture and Education to create three paintings for the University of Vienna. The canvases were to be installed on the ceiling of the […]

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July 13

Piero Manzoni: Scatology and Art

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On the 13th of July 1933, Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni was born in Soncino Cremona, Italy. Called, by some, the enfant prodige of Italian art in the late 1950s and early 60s, Manzoni became most famous for a series of artworks that dealt with the presence of the artist’s character and physiology in art. […]

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July 11

Nash and the Neo-Romantic Landscapel

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On the 11th of May 1889, English surreal war artist Paul Nash was born in London. Malcolm Yorke identified him as part of a group of nine British artists who worked in what he defined as a ‘neo-romantic’ vein. The Neo-Romantic landscape was a reaction to naturalism, and stressed external observation, by focusing on feeling and […]

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July 10

Bernard Buffet – Picasso’s Nemesis?

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On the 10th of July 1928, French artist Bernard Buffet was born in Paris. Buffet belonged to a group – “L’Homme Témoin (The Witness)” – along with Bernard Lorjout and André Minaux, considered as a new school of figurative painting. Going against the emerging trend of abstraction in modern painting, Buffet remained an Expressionist through […]

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July 09

Warhol, Pop Art, and Autism: Case Unravelled

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On the 9th of July 1962, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans exhibition opened at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. It was Warhol’s first solo gallery exhibition as a fine artist. The size of the show was determined by the number of varieties of Campbell’s soup available at the time. The 32 paintings were presented […]

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July 08

The Raw Art of Käthe Kollwitz

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On the 8th of July 1867, German artist Käthe Kollwitz, nee Schmidt, was born in Königsberg (Prussia), now Kaliningrad (Russia). “The artist grew up in a liberal middle-class family and studied painting in Berlin (1884–85) and Munich (1888–89). Impressed by the prints of Max Klinger, she devoted herself primarily to graphic art after 1890, producing […]

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July 07

Suzuki Harunobu and Japanese Erotica

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On the 7th of July 1770, allegedly, Japanese woodblock print artist Suzuki Harunobu died of a sudden illness. The place and real cause of his death remain unknown. In fact, except for his artistic endeavours, very little is known about his life at all. Born in Edo (modern Tokyo), Harunobu was the first to successfully produce […]

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July 05

Chuck Close: The Master of Photorealism

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On the 5th of July 1940, American painter Chuck Close, broadly known for his photorealist portraits,  was born in Monroe, Washington. His adventures in Photorealism began in the late 1960s when he started using photography to help him paint large-scale portraits, mostly in acrylic. The artist method consists of applying a grid on the photo and on the canvas and […]

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June 28

The Wings of Rubens’ Virgin as Woman of the Apocalypse

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On the 28th of June 1577, Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia (now Germany). The Getty Museum in Los Angeles holds one his more unusual works, an oil sketch entitled Blessed Virgin Mary as Woman of the Apocalypse (ca. 1623-24, Oil on panel, 25 x 19 3/8 in). The piece is […]

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June 23

Mark Gertler: Figurative Painting and ‘Women in Love’

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On the 23rd of June 1939, British figurative painter Mark Gertler gassed himself in his London studio. His suicide ended the period of the artist’s prolonged depression caused by growing financial difficulties, unfavourable reviews after the exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, and the recent break up with his wife. He had also never fully recovered […]

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