"The Wedding" by Henri Rousseau

"The Wedding" by Henri Rousseau.

       Henri Rousseau, called Le Douanier , was born in Laval, Mayenne, France in 1844 and he died in 1910. Joined the Army when he turned eighteen and was assigned to play the saxophone in a regimental band. Served in the Franco-Prussian War, was discharged in 1871, and settled in Paris with Yadwigha, the Polish girl he had married in 1869. He got a job as a second-class clerk in the Customs Service, from whence came the nickname he has become known by, Le Douanier.

       Without any formal training, he began to paint in the 1880's. In 1886, in his early forties, he retired from the Customs Service on a small pension - which he supplemented by giving drawing and music lessons to the neighborhood children - and devoted most of his time to painting. He began submitting to the Salon des Independants in 1886, and exhibited regularly for the next twenty years without notice more favorable than ridicule. In 1905 he began exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne, and gradually attracted the attention of artists and writers like Gauguin, Derain, Vlaminck, Delaunay, Picasso, Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Raynal. In 1907 he met Wilhelm Uhde, the famous art critic, who wrote the first monograph on him a few years later. In 1908 Picasso gave a banquet for him at the Bateau-Lavoir, and he was heralded as the pet of the avant-garde. The pleasure of success in his last few years was somewhat spoiled for him by personal difficulties, particularly the heartbreak of being turned down by a woman he wanted to marry. (He was already twice a widower.) He died of pneumonia on October 2, 1910, and was buried in a pauper's grave; his remains were later transferred to Laval, and an epitaph written by Apollinaire and engraved in stone by Brancusi and Orthiz de Zarate was placed on his grave.

       Henri Rousseau was an outstanding example of the Naive painter. Though untaught and ingenuous, he produced a remarkable body of work that includes scenes of family occasions, military events and sports, landscapes of Paris and its environs, bouquets of flowers and exotic and allegorical scenes such as "The Dream" and "Sleeping Gypsy." His paintings have won universal recognition, and are found in the Louvre and important museums of modern art throughout the world.

"Composition in Primary Colors" by Mondrian

"Composition in Primary Colors" by Piet Mondrian

       Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was born in Amersfoort, Holland. He studied to be a teacher, then decided to be a painter instead, and in 1892 enrolled in the Academy of Amsterdam. From 1895 to 1907 he painted naturalistic landscapes in delicate but rather dull colors, then a stay at Dombourg on the island of Walcheren in 1 908 changed his manner and brightened his palette. He arrived in Paris in 191 1, where he was influenced by Cubism and inclined toward abstraction. He spent the war years in Holland, continuing his experiments with abstraction until in 1916 he produced openly non-figurative paintings, rhythms consisting of horizontal and vertical lines which later became known as the "plus and minus" series. While in Holland, he became the center of a group of artists interested in geometrical proportions as the basis of art. With Theo van Doesburg, a member of this group, Mondrian founded an art magazine called De Stijl, which gave its name to the group and in which its ideas of Neo-Plasticism were set forth. Mondrian elaborated on these theories in his book LeNeo-Plasticisme, published in 1920 after his return to France. In Paris he became a member of the Circle and Square Group and, later, of the Abstraction-Creation group. He participated in large international exhibitions of abstract art in Paris and the United States. He lived in London from 1938 to 1940, then came to New York, where he was very warmly received, and had two exhibitions at the Valentine Gallery in 1 942 and 1 943 . He began painting in the more exuberant mood of "Broadway Boogie-Woogie," which is still geometrically abstract but uses bright, garish color in insistently repeating patterns that suggest the jangling pulse of Times Square at night. Since his death at Murray Hill Hospital in February, 1944, important retrospective exhibitions of Mondrian's work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Municipal Museum at The Hague. His canvases, which inaugurated a new style, are in the principal museums of modern art throughout the world.

"Eagle" by Alexander Calder

"Eagle" by Alexander Calder in the Olympic Sculpture Park,
Seattle WA. photography by Steven Pavlov.

       Alexander Calder was born on July 22, 1898  and died on November 11, 1976. He was an American sculptor known as the originator of the mobile, a type of moving sculpture made with delicately balanced or suspended shapes that move in response to touch or air currents. Calder’s monumental stationary sculptures are called stabiles. He also produced wire figures, which are like drawings made in space, and notably a miniature circus work that was performed by the artist. Read more... 

"Blue Vase" by Cezanne

 "Blue Vase" by Paul Cezanne

       Paul Cézanne was born on the 19th of January 1839 and died on the 22nd of October 1906. He was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of color and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

       Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic inquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all."

"The Gates of The Cemetary" by Marc Chagall

"The Gates of The Cemetery"
by Marc Chagall, painted in 1917, oil on canvas

 

      "With World War I raging through Europe, Chagall stayed on in Russia after his marriage to Bella, instead of taking his bride back to Paris. He was called up for military service right after the wedding, but ended up in a rear echelon job in Petrograd where he continued to paint in off-duty hours. In 1917, the year Russia was torn by revolution, Chagall returned to Vitebsk as Minister of Art for the town, and founded a school. During this period he painted a number of landscapes that demonstrated his technical virtuosity in this genre. It is not surprising that in such troubled times Chagall should have been deeply concerned again with death, and that among the landscapes are paintings of cemeteries. In this picture of the cemetery gates, the angular geometry of his Paris work is back in full force, only now, instead of being used arbitrarily as abstract design, it bears resemblance to rays of light -dancing in atmosphere, bounding off reflecting surfaces, and casting long shadows. The Hebrew characters on the gate remind us that while Chagall was a teen-age art student in Petrograd, he had also worked briefly in a sign painter's shop." Abrams

       Marc Zakharovich Chagall was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints. Read more...

"Boum Boum Bird saying its prayer at the onion skin head" by Joan Miro'

"Boum Boum Bird saying it's prayer at the onion skin head" by Joan Miro'.

       MIRO, Joan Born in Montroig, Catalonia, Spain, April 20, 1893. Studied at the School of Fine Arts and the Gali Academy in Barcelona. Had his first exhibition at Dalmau's in Barcelona in 1918, at which time he appeared to have been influenced by Van Gogh. Arrived in Paris in 19 19. Met Picasso and painted a series of Cubist still lifes. Had his first Paris exhibition at the Galerie Licorne in 1921. An anarchist, opposed to all rules and tradition, he discovered a kinship with the Surrealists. In 1924 he signed his first Surrealist picture "Terre Labouree," and, in 1925, participated in the exhibition of this group at the Galerie Pierre. Since then he has been considered one of the foremost representatives of Surrealism. With Max Ernst, he designed decors for the Ballets Russes production of Romeo and Juliette, and in 1 93 1 he did dehors for Jeux d'Enfants for the Ballets de Monte Carlo. In 1937 he painted a large mural for the Spanish Pavilion of the International Exposition in Paris. Forced by the war to return to Catalonia in 1940, he continued to paint, took up lithography, and collaborated with Artigas in the production of ceramics. He returned to France in 1944, and has since divided his time between Paris and Barcelona. He visited the United States in 1947 and executed a large mural for the Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati. Miro is represented in most of the museums of modern art throughout the world.

"Matador" by Buffet

"Matador" by Buffet

       Buffet was born in Paris, France, and studied art there at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (National School of the Fine Arts) and worked in the studio of the painter Eugène Narbonne. Among his classmates were Maurice Boitel and Louis Vuillermoz.

       Sustained by the picture-dealer Maurice Garnier, Buffet produced religious pieces, landscapes, portraits and still lifes. In 1946, he had his first painting shown, a self-portrait, at the Salon des Moins de Trente Ans at the Galerie Beaux-Arts. He had at least one major exhibition every year. Buffet illustrated "Les Chants de Maldoror" written by Comte de Lautréamont in 1952. In 1955, he was awarded the first prize by the magazine Connaissance des arts, which named the 10 best post-war artists. In 1958, at the age of 30, the first retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie Charpentier.

       On 12 December 1958, Buffet married the writer and actress Annabel Schwob. His daughter Virginie was born in 1962, and later, daughter Danielle in 1963. His son Nicolas, was born in 1973, the same year that he was named "Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur".

       At the request of the French postal administration in 1978, he designed a stamp depicting the Institut et le Pont des Arts – on this occasion the Post Museum arranged a retrospective of his works. He created more than 8,000 paintings and many prints as well.