Latvian, 20th century, male.
Born 25 July 1922, in Riga, Latvia; died 1 March 1983, in Riga, Latvian SSR (now Latvia).
Painter and theorist. Historical, still-life, cartographic, environmental, and abstract subjects.
Ojārs Ābols distinguished himself in later years by transcending political orthodoxy and stylistic parochialism in his own work and by enabling colleagues and younger artists to do likewise. His studies began under modernist Romans Suta at Riga’s Second Gymnasium ...
Filipino, 20th century, male.
Born 1930, in Bohol, Philippines.
Sculptor. Figures, historical subjects, religious subjects, allegory, myths.
Napoleon Veloso Abueva graduated in 1953 from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts (UPCFA), where he was mentored by the first National Artist for Sculpture, Guillermo Tolentino. He received another scholarship from the Fulbright/Smith–Mundt Foundation and in 1955 finished his master’s degree at the Cranbook Academy of Art in Michigan. He also studied at the University of Kansas and Harvard University. Regarded as pioneer of Philippine modern sculpture, Abueva also works in the figurative style and uses a variety of material, such as local hardwood, metal, marble, adobe, and cement. Among his early innovations are his ‘buoyant sculptures’, which he introduced in 1951. Many of his works are at the University of the Philippines campus in Quezon City, including the Crucifix of the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice (1957...
American, 20th century, male.
Active in the USA from 1933.
Born 19 March 1888, in Bottrop (Westphalia), Germany; died 25 March 1976, in New Haven (Connecticut).
Painter.
Post-painterly Abstraction, Op Art.
American Abstract Artists (AAA).
Josef Albers joined the fine art academy in Berlin in 1913. He trained as an art teacher there in 1915, before continuing his studies at the school of applied arts in Essen from 1916 to 1919 and in Munich. In 1920, he became a student at the Bauhaus, which had just opened in Weimar the previous year. In 1923, just before the Bauhaus moved to its new premises in Dessau, Gropius appointed him a teacher, initially in the stained glass workshop on the basis of experiments he had been conducting since 1921 in ‘pictures of coloured glass’, and then in the furniture workshop, where he created industrial prototypes, most notably an armchair made from shaped laminated wood, dating from 1928. In 1928, Albers took over management of the preliminary course (‘Vorkurs’) founded by Johannes Itten....
French, 20th century, male.
Born 12 February 1914, in Baugé (Maine-et-Loire).
Painter.
Marcel Albert emerged as an Informal Abstract painter in 1951, showing his work in solo exhibitions, and group exhibitions with other Informal Abstract artists.
German, 20th century, male.
Active in the USA (naturalised).
Born 1910, in Dresden.
Painter.
American Abstract Artists (AAA).
Alcopley studied a very wide variety of subjects, attending faculties of medicine, biology, art, history of literature and philosophy. In 1935, he left Germany, then under the Third Reich, and lived in Switzerland until ...
Japanese, 20th century, male.
Born 1915, in Tokyo.
Painter, sculptor.
Jiro Asazuma was educated and greatly influenced by the painter Saburo Hasegawa, a theoretician of Abstract art.
Iranian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1976, in Tehran, Iran.
Painter. Abstraction.
Ali Banisadr grew up in Iran during the early years of the Islamic Revolution and Iran-Iraq war. During this time, he drew the sounds he heard from tanks, guns, bombs, and vibrations. Referring to these drawings as ‘monsters’ that gave a visual reading to the sounds, Banisadr later recognized his sound drawings as a manifestation of synaesthesia, the ability for one sense to stimulate other bodily senses. Forced to flee his homeland at age 12, the artist relocated with his family to Turkey and then to San Francisco, California, in 1988. Banisadr was inspired by the graffiti artists he met in California to create drawings and paintings in his studio. Resurrecting his memories of Iran, he concentrated on remembering the sounds of the Iran-Iraq war. He studied psychology in order to better understand his synaesthesia as well as the work of Russian and German theorists....
Greek, 20th century, male.
Born 1939, in Kalamoto.
Engraver.
Georges Behrakis studied at the schools of fine arts in Athens and then Paris. He produces works of abstract art involving the layering of different materials. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Greece, Paris, Rome, São Paulo and Geneva and featured in the Paris Biennale in ...
British, 20th century, male.
Born 21 November 1910, in the Transvaal, South Africa; died 9 August 1943, in Newark-on-Trent, Great Britain, on a training flight.
Painter.
Objective Abstraction.
Euston Road School.
Graham Bell studied at Durban Art School, and then moved to England in 1931...
Moroccan, 20th century, male.
Born 1936, in Fez.
Painter, draughtsman.
Karim Benanni was one of the first artists to chair the AMAP (Association Marocaine des Arts Plastiques), set up in 1973. After a series of studies in the field of abstract art, he returned to the realm of signs, with a sensual, albeit rigorous, style involving a subtle gradation of colours....
Latvian, 20th century, male.
Born 7 October 1930, in Riga, Latvia; died 11 February 2002, in Riga.
Painter, graphicist, draughtsman, and academician. Landscape, genre, still-life, human figure, and abstract subjects.
Boriss Bērziņš’s artistic training began in childhood when the electrician’s son was exposed to Russian Orthodox icons. He copied reproductions of famous paintings and took lessons from watercolourist Jānis Skučs. He studied at Riga’s Janis Rozentāls Art High School ...
Spanish, 20th century, male.
Born 1926, in San Sebastian.
Painter.
Beti took fine art courses in Valencia and Madrid. Between 1942 and 1948 he had an Expressionist period but by 1959 he had turned to Abstract Art. From there he developed into Art Informel, preoccupied with experimenting with new materials. In ...
Latvian, 20th–21st century, male.
Born 6 September 1943, in Riga, Reichskommissariat Ostland (now Latvia).
Painter, scenographer, poster designer, graphicist, and book illustrator. Literary, allegorical and historical subjects; abstractions and symbolic representations; installations, performance, and soundworks.
Ilmārs Blumbergs spent his childhood in Siberian exile, then studied in the Department of Stage Design at Riga’s Secondary School of Applied Arts ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 1 July 1907, in St Petersburg; died 1984, in New York.
Painter, sculptor.
Groups: The Ten, American Abstract Artists (AAA).
Ilya Bolotowsky studied in Baku (in present-day Azerbaijan), then in a French institution in Constantinople. He arrived in the USA in ...
Canadian, 20th century, male.
Born 1938, in Nelson (British Columbia).
Painter.
Claude Breeze studied in Saskatoon under Ernest Lidner, a painter who belonged to the magic realist group. From 1957 to 1959, he studied under the abstract artists Arthur McKay, Kenneth Lochhead and Ronald Bloore at Regina Art School, and finally at Vancouver School of Art ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 1907, in Yonkers (New York); died 1961, in New York.
Painter (including gouache/tempera), draughtsman. Figures.
American Abstract Artists (AAA).
Byron George Browne was influenced by the work of John Graham, Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning. He was a founding member in 1936 of the American Abstract Artists group, an organisation based in New York that was dedicated to the exhibition of abstract art. Browne often specialised in colourful still-life paintings in the Synthetic Cubist style. Although an abstract painter, he seldom painted works that did not contain references to figures or nature, distilling them into geometric shapes, as in his tempera painting ...
American, 20th century, female.
Born 1916; died 1979.
Painter (including gouache), draughtswoman. Murals.
American Abstract Artists (AAA).
Rosalind Browne studied under George Bridgman at the Art Students League in New York from 1930 to 1934, and then under Hans Hofmann. In the late 1930s, she worked with Burgoyne Diller as one of the artists involved in painting murals for the Work Progress Administration. She was one of the founders of the ...
Canadian, 20th century, male.
Born 1909, in Toronto; died 1977, in Toronto.
Painter.
Post-painterly Abstraction.
Painters Eleven.
Jack Bush spent his childhood in Montreal and at the age of 19 returned to his native city of Toronto where he worked as a commercial artist, specialising in illustration. He painted the great Canadian prairies from life in his leisure time and was influenced by John Layman, a disciple of Matisse....
Italian, 20th century, male.
Active in the USA.
Born 1904, in Sorio; died 1989.
Painter.
American Abstract Artists (AAA).
Giorgio Cavallon went to the USA at the age of 16 and studied at the National Academy of Design in New York between 1925 and 1930...
Latvian, 20th century, male.
Born 24 October 1943, in Vildogas parish, Riga district, Latvia.
Designer, sculptor. Environmental and kinetic sculpture, paintings, photomontage.
Valdis Celms played a crucial role in introducing kinetic and environmental art to Soviet-era Latvia, taking inspiration from both his Latvian predecessor, the constructivist Gustav Klucis, and his contemporaries in the Russian group Dvizhenie. After concluding studies at Riga’s Secondary School of Building (now Riga Construction College) in ...
