nelson street

Bridget Riley


Born in London in 1931, she spent her childhood in Cornwall until the end of the war in 1945.Studied at Goldsmiths College 1949-52, and at the R.C.A 1952-55. In the late 1950s Riley works for an advertising agency to support her painting career. Her work becomes heavily influenced by the Pointillist ideas of Seurat and also the Futurist ideas of conveying movement. This lead to the bold black and white paintings of the early 1960s that we now call Op Art. During the late 1960s Riley started to introduce colour in to her work, from the 1970s onwards, pure colour dominates her paintings. Riley`s travels to the Sub Continent and North Africa have a large influence on her work.

In 1968 she became the first ever woman to win the international prize for painting at the Venice Biennale and in 1999 she was awarded the Companion of Honour. Today she is regarded as one of the great painters of recent times.

FRANCISCO DE PAULA JOSE DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES


1746-1828

Goya was born in the small village of Fuendetodos near Saragossa in 1746. Upon leaving school he was apprenticed to a local artist. In 1763 he went to Madrid and failed to gain entry into the Academy but continued to study at the studio of the court painter Francisco Bayeu, whose sister, Josefa, Goya married in 1773. After a trip to Italy to study the Renaissance masters, Goya returned to Spain and began to build a successful career as a portrait painter. In 1786 he was appointed court painter to the king, Charles 111 and his successor Charles 1V.

Goya’s life and art changed dramatically in1792 after suffering a mysterious and traumatic illness, which left him deaf. Whilst recovering Goya’s friendship with the recently widowed Duchess of Alba grew causing a great scandal in Spanish society. His work took a darker tone, he slowly turned away from society portraiture and his paintings became much more personal, dealing with the morbid, the bizarre and the menacing. A prime subject matter of this period was the war in Spain after Napoleon’s invasion and the ousting of the Spanish royal family. Dark times continued for Goya, his wife died in 1812, and after the restoration of the king in 1814, he was called in front of the Inquisition to answer charges of obscenity. This was followed by another serious illness in 1819. All this led to Goyas retreat from public life and he devoted himself to his sombre black paintings (pinturas negras) full of demons, the grotesque and mis-shapen people. He eventually retired to Bordeaux and died there in 1828,

ALESSANDRO DI MARIANO DI VANNI FILIPEPI


SANDRO BOTTICELLI or IL BOTTICELLO

(The Little Barrel)

Italian painter of the Florentine School during the Early Renaissance, he was born in March 1445 and died in May 1510.

Details of Botticelli’s life are sparse; most of what we know about him comes from the writing of Vasari, the chronicler of Italian Renaissance art. He initially trained as a goldsmith with his brother Antonio, but by 1462 he was an apprentice painter in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi. By 1470 Botticelli had his own studio workshop and had acquired the patronage of the Medici family the rulers of Florence. He produced work for them in numerous churches across Florence and Umbria as well as paintings for their private palaces. In 1481 he was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus 5th and commissioned to paint three frescos in the Sistine Chapel. On his return to Florence, which at this time was under the influence of a humanist philosophy called Neo-Platonism, Botticelli created some of his best-known works including Primavera and the Birth of Venus.

Political turmoil then hit Florence in the 1490s, a combination of an invading French army, the fall of the Medici Family and the rise and fall of Savonarola. It seems the Botticelli produced little work during this period and the work that he did create form 1500 onwards show a greater religious piety and a return to an older style of his predecessors.

PETER BLAKE

PETER BLAKE 1932

Blake was born in Dartford in 1932, in his late teens he studied at Dartford Technical School, where he was on the graphic design course and studied a range of subjects including technical drawing, printing and sign writing. From Dartford he went on to study fine art at the RCA in London.

After finishing his studies he continued at the RCA as a lecturer and taught the generation of British Pop artists in the late fifties.



His early work shows an influence of the Kitchen Sink style, an post war realist movement of the 1950s, this was combined with the influences of popular culture in Blake’s life including pop music, fair grounds, wrestling and advertising.

He was also influenced by the Dada and Surrealist ideas, particularly the work and ideas of Duchamp. Blake was interested in the use of the ready made, ideas of transformation as well as portraying the popular culture of everyday life.

Blake output of work continues today, throughout his career so far he has always produced outstanding work in a variety of media including paintings, prints, three-dimensional objects and commercial graphics such as record sleeves.

Peter Blake is the outstanding artist of late 20th century Britain, his work is all encompassing and extremely innovative. He is deeply revered as an artist not only by his contemporaries but those generations of British painters that came after him, his influence on Pop art is immeasurable and his influence on others such as the Ruralists, the Brit Art of the 1990s and contemporary painters of today is rightly recognised.

MATISSE PICASSO

MATISSE                                                            PICASSO

1869-1954                                                           1881-1973

These two names are probably top of the list when we think of modern art, Matisse and Picasso changed the idea of painting and caused the biggest upheaval since the Renaissance. They made the art world rethink the whole idea of what art is and what it should look like.

Matisse first came to prominence with his Fauve style, creating pictures full of sensuous bright colours. He quickly established himself as one of the leading painters of the day and began to collect patrons who were prepared to commission many works and with in a short space of time his fame spread around the world. After WW1 his painting took on a slightly more realistic tone which combined with his use of line and colour produced some outstanding work. He explored the use of colour and pattern with influences from North Africa and Arabia as well as the light and colour of the south of France where he based himself from 1919 until his death in 1954. His subject matter was essentially interiors, still life and the female form, his ongoing experimentation of the use of line and colour created paintings of great beauty which were often saturated with deep sensuous colour. His work held a large influence over a great many painters (Picasso once said that Matisse was the only painter he could look in the eye as an equal) and has subsequently maintained his position as one of the greatest painters of the modern age if not of all time!

If we consider Matisse to be the great colourist then we should consider Picassos use of form. From the earliest days of his cubist experiments to the day he died he continuously pursued new ways of representing three dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface. Picassos painting style varied greatly throughout his career, he once said that his style was decided by his subject. He continually pushed the boundaries of painting with new ways of seeing and representing what he saw, the 20th century became filled with style and movements that Picasso created, flirted with, influenced or inspired. His sheer diversity influenced every painter that came after him, even if it is not consciously acknowledged. Throughout his long career his work rate never dropped, he tirelessly and ceaselessly painted all the time he had, at one point it is thought that he was producing three canvas’s a day, today we estimate that there are over 20,000 works of art by Picasso.

As we look back at the art created in the 20th century these two giants are often considered equals, how ever human nature often requires us to judge who was the greatest, the most endearing, the most influential, perhaps after long analysis Picasso would be just one tiny step ahead, to many modern historians he is the greatest painter of them all.

ST IVES

The St Ives artists were a loose group of artists working in Cornwall from the late 1930’s to the 1970’s, during this time they were considered to be the avant-garde of British art. They took the concept of abstraction into many new areas. Now they are internationally renowned and considered to be among the great painters of the 20th century. When Nicholson and Wood went to Cornwall on a painting trip in the 1920s they were following an all ready established tradition, many painters (Turner,Sickert etc) had gone there to experience the light, atmosphere and landscapes, and the Newlyn School had already become an important part of English art history. This new generation of painters, that began to establish themselves in the 30s and 40s brought with them a new modernism from Europe, following on from Cubism and Constructivism, this combined with the naïve style of folk art of Alfred Wallis ( a Cornish fisherman ) produced a unique modern style now known as ‘St Ives’.


As London became isolated during WW11 the St Ives community flourished, by the 1950s a second generation had continued to develop this unique English abstract style, and they began to gain attention around the world, comparisons to the New York school( a subject of much discussion) helped to bring their work to a wider audience.

By the 1960s the attention of the art world was drawn else where, but the legacy of the St Ives style remains and can be recognised in British abstract painting today.

Abstract Expressionism

Although the term Abstract Expressionism was first used in 1919 in relation to the work of Kandinsky, today we associate it with post war American painting, the art critic R. Coates coined the phrase in 1946, when referring to the work of Gorky, Pollock and DeKooning, by the 1950s the term was in general use to describe all types of contemporary abstract painting.


Not all the artists associated with the term produced work that was either purely abstract or purely expressionist. What connected them was an artistic philosophy, based on existentialist ideas, which emphasized the importance of the act of creating (painting) and not necessarily the finished work and a shared interest in Jung’s ideas of myth, ritual and memory. They conceived a romantic view of the artist and saw them selves as disillusioned commentators of contemporary American life after the Depression and the Second World War

There were two distinct groups within the movement; one has become known as Action Painting, largely because of the gestural techniques of the painters which includes the Surrealist theory of Automatism (subconscious mark making) as well as bold brush strokes, dribbles and splashes. The second group became known as the Colour Field painters whose work was generally large in size and consisted of more simplified and unified blocks of colour, both groups shared the same ideas, as mentioned above, and sought to express their subconscious through their art.

Abstract Expressionism evolved in the 1940s, peaked in the 50s but had declined by the end of that decade.

MARC CHAGALL

MARC CHAGALL 1887-1985


Russia - Paris - Russia 1906-1922

Chagall was born in 1887 in Vitebsk a small Jewish town in Russia. The oldest of eight children Chagall had a conventional Jewish childhood. After finishing his elementary education at the cheder, Chagall was enrolled at the official state school; it is unsure how this happened as Jews were banned from state education. It was here that he took violin, singing and drawing lessons, and learned to speak Russian.

Chagall’s desire to become a painter took him to St Petersburg in 1906 to study art, he eventually gained a residents permit (required by Jews to travel and reside in different areas) and ended up studying under Leon Bakst. Chagall discovered the world of art and a desire to visit Paris, which he eventually did in 1910. Like many other painter at this time Chagall was exposed to the different styles of painting and in particular Cubism. His work matured during this time and he developed an individual style that is unclassifiable, it contained a magical, poetic quality. Chagall started to achieve some success and held numerous exhibitions. He became friends with many of the great painters and poets including Picasso, Apollinaire and Modigliani.

In 1914 he gained a three-month visa to return to Russia, where he hoped to reacquaint himself with Bella Rosenfeld, a young lady he had fallen in love with in 1909. Chagalls three month stay was extended, he became trapped in Russia as the borders closed at the outbreak of the war in 1914. He married Bella in 1915 and had a daughter Ida, in 1916. During the revolution Chagall sided with the Bolsheviks and in 1917 was made Fine Arts Commissar for the Vitebsk region. He founded a modern art school in 1918 and taught along side Malevich and Lissitzky. By the 1920s Chagall had become disillusioned by the dictatorial behaviour of both the government authorities and the Constructivists and returned to Paris in 1922.

Frida and Tamara, Contrasting Visions

TAMARA DE LEMPICKA      




Born Maria Gorska, in Warsaw in 1898 or Moscow 1895(she preferred Warsaw 1902), of a wealthy middle class parents. After her parents divorced, she spent time with her rich grandmother who spoiled her with expensive clothes, travel and schooling in Switzerland. Later she moved to St Petersburg and lived with her millionairess aunt. She developed a taste for the high life that was to stay with her for life.

During the war she met and fell in love with a Russian count, Taduesz Lempicki, they married in 1916, then fled to Paris during the revolution. Now known as Tamara De Lempicka, she studied art and through out the 1920s established her self as a society portrait painter and became part of the exotic, sexy and glamorous Parisian social set that she epitomized in her paintings.

During the 1930s her glamorous life style continued with her second husband Baron Kuffner, a wealthy Hungarian. As the threat of war loomed they fled to America in 1939. In California Tamara became the toast of Hollywood as portrait painter of movie stars, in 1943 they moved to New York, where her success continued and the gossip columns dubbed her the “ Baroness with a brush”.

Her career halted in the 1950s, a combination of advancing age, ill health and the dominance of abstract expressionism made her work unfashionable. In 1978 she moved to Mexico and died there in 1980.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FRIDA KAHLO 




Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderon was born in Coyoacan, Mexico City in 1907 ( she prefers 1910 ). Frida contracted polio as a child, which left her with a deformed right leg and foot. As a student of the National Preparatory School, she came across the work of Diego Rivera and considered the idea of becoming an artist.

In 1925 she was seriously injured in a collision between a tram and the bus she was travelling on, it left her with multiple injuries which led doctors to doubt whether she would survive. During her convalescence she began to paint. Although she made an initial recovery, the injuries left her unable to have children, for the rest of her life she under went a continuing series of operations on her spine, pelvis and legs and had to endure long periods of great suffering.

In 1928 she joined the communist party and came in to contact with Rivera, they fell in love and married the following year. Frida’s work developed into paintings of intense self expression, often relating to her physical and mental health. She was greatly influenced by many aspects including her political beliefs, pre Columbian art, naïve folk art of Mexico and Surrealism. Her tempestuous relationship with Rivera is also an influence in her painting.

Although she died young (she was only 47) due to ongoing ill health, her paintings of the 1930s and 40s shows us that she is truly of the greatest artists of the 20th century, her work has the power to move people on all levels. In 1958 the Mexican government opened the Frida Kahlo Museum and gave her the status of national treasure.

These two female painters are contemporary, both worked in the 1930s and 40s, yet their work is in starck contrast to each other. Tamara's work shows the  lifestyle of glamour, she led the high life of sex, drugs and cocktail parties and the lives of the rich and famous are reflected in her paintings. Frida on the other hand comes from the opposite end of the spectrum, an ardent communist and a political activist. Her work shows her own personal suffering and is full of self expression. When looked at in comparison these two painters show us two very different attitudes to society. Tamara is often looked down on in the art world, she is seen as frivilous and shallow, a creator of pretty pictures and not much more. Whilst Frida is considered a very important artist, a feminist icon, who's self expression is a long and lasting influence in the world of painting.