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Swiss, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 28 March 1868, in Solothurn; died 1961, in Oschwand (Bern).

Painter, watercolourist, pastellist, engraver, lithographer, sculptor. Figure compositions, portraits, landscapes, still-lifes.

Die Brücke group. School of Pont-Aven.

Cuno Amiet began his artistic training under Frank Buchser in Feldbrunnen from 1884 to 1886. From 1886 to 1888 he trained at the academy of fine art in Munich. From 1888 to 1891 he trained under the guidance of William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian in Paris. Up to that point he had been influenced by Impressionism, which was still very much in evidence. Then in 1892, he went to Pont-Aven and made contact with O'Connor, Émile Bernard, Sérusier and Armand Seguin. They introduced him to the ideas and techniques suggested by Gauguin to those who would soon be classed as the École de Pont-Aven. They would also call themselves 'Nabis'....

(b Wedel, nr Hamburg, Jan 2, 1870; d Rostock, Oct 24, 1938).

German sculptor and printmaker. He experimented with several media because he believed that conventional forms of communication were too formulaic and often failed to make tangible the essence of artistic vision. In his plastic and literary oeuvres Barlach sought to define and externalize the inner processes of humanity and nature through depriving his subject of its superficial mask and extraneous detail.

Barlach studied sculpture at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg (1888–9) and at the Dresden Akademie (1891–5), where he became the chief pupil of the sculptor Robert Diez (b 1844). After two brief visits to the Académie Julian in Paris, he returned to Germany and collaborated with his friend Karl Garbers (b 1864) on a commission for architectural sculptures for the city halls of Hamburg and Altona. Barlach’s early work was influenced by the sinuous, wavy line of Jugendstil. In 1899 he moved to Berlin, where he lived for two years, but he later returned to Wedel, hoping to find inspiration in a familial environment. In the winter of ...

[Gust; Gustaaf]

(b Ghent, Jan 21, 1877; d Deurle, Oct 8, 1943).

Belgian painter and printmaker. He studied from 1889 to 1896 at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Ghent, and together with his younger brother Léon De Smet (1881–1966), also a painter, he helped his father Jules De Smet with the decoration of inns, stores and fairground buildings. From c. 1902 Gustave de Smet spent time in Deurle and with Frits Van den Berghe at Laethem-Saint-Martin near Ghent, where he was part of the second generation of artists who sought out the rural surroundings of the river Leie to live and paint. From 1911 he once again lived in Ghent. When World War I broke out he fled with his wife and son to the Netherlands and worked there in close contact with Van den Berghe, who had also left Belgium. He stayed in Amsterdam and in the villages of Laren and Blaricum.

During the years up to World War I, De Smet painted mostly cityscapes and landscapes in an impressionistic style, derived from the example of Emile Claus and Albert Baertsoen, for example ...

(b Delfshaven, nr Rotterdam, Jan 26, 1877; d Monte Carlo, May 28, 1968).

French painter and printmaker of Dutch birth. He took evening classes in geometric drawing from 1892 to 1897 at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Rotterdam. In 1895 he began working intermittently for the newspaper Rotterdamsche Nieuwsblad, for which he made, among other things, a series of bright watercolour drawings of Rotterdam’s red-light district and illustrations of Queen Wilhelmina’s coronation. Van Dongen’s first paintings used dark tones in imitation of Rembrandt, who remained the most important model for his work; his later book on Rembrandt was, in fact, a projection of his own life. By the mid-1890s he was using more vivid contrasts of black and white, for example in Spotted Chimera (1895; priv. col., see Chaumeil, pl. 1), his palette soon becoming brighter and his line more animated. In Le Muet Windmill (1896; priv. col., see Chaumeil, pl. 7), a red ochre monochrome painting, he successfully enlivened the colour by means of broad, energetic brushstrokes....

(Valdemar) [Gallén, Axel until 1904]

(b Pori [Swed. Björneborg], Finland, April 26, 1865; d Stockholm, March 7, 1931).

Finnish painter, graphic artist and designer. He learnt the elements of drawing and painting in Helsinki at the School of the Finnish Arts Society and the studio of the painter Adolf von Becker (1831–1909).

His first significant painting, The Boy and the Crow (1884; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.), shows his ambition to keep abreast of developments in Naturalism, a style introduced to him through the works of young Finnish and Scandinavian painters in Paris. In the autumn of 1884 he arrived in Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian and the studio of Fernand Cormon. In 1885 he completed his oil painting Old Woman with a Cat (Turku, A. Mus.), a veristic study of poverty and deprivation. Gallén’s single-figure compositions of this period followed a formula exploited by Jean-François Millet, Jules Breton and Jules Bastien-Lepage. In these seemingly static images, the life story of the protagonist was suggested through significant attributes, physiognomic elaboration and background details....

(b Amsterdam, Dec 4, 1868; d Bloemendaal, Dec 31, 1938).

Dutch painter, printmaker, illustrator, writer and stained-glass artist. He trained at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (1886–90), under the directorship of August Allebé. Having initially painted and drawn Impressionistic landscapes, he started working in the ’t Gooi region in 1892, where, influenced by Vincent van Gogh and Jan Toorop, he made a number of Symbolist drawings and lithographs. In 1896 he married the Dutch writer Henriette van der Schalk. They both devoted themselves to the recently founded Sociaal Democratische Arbeiders Partij. In the years up to c. 1900 Holst produced among other things a series of lithographs of political cartoons with socialist content, as well as serene landscapes and paintings of girls from the village of Huizen. His allegorical murals (1902; in situ), on topics such as ‘Industry’ or ‘Commerce’, in the new Koopmansbeurs in Amsterdam by H. P. Berlage (1876–1903), marked an important point in his career as his first opportunity to construct a monumental piece of work. Partly inspired by the murals in the town hall at ’s Hertogenbosch by Antoon Derkinderen, he developed a tight, stylized type of design, which he believed to be ideal for visually representing idealistic and exalted thoughts. In his murals (...

[Yavlensky, Aleksey (Georgevich); Alexis; Alexej von]

(b Torzhok, Russia, March 26, 1864; d Wiesbaden, March 15, 1941).

Russian painter and printmaker, active in Germany. When he was ten, his family moved to Moscow. Following family tradition, he was originally educated for a military career, attending cadet school, and, later, the Alexander Military School in Moscow. However, while still a cadet, he became interested in painting. At the age of 16, he visited the Moscow World Exposition, which had a profound influence on him. He subsequently spent all of his leisure time at the Tret’yakov State Gallery, Moscow. In 1884 he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Samogita Infantry–Grenadier’s Regiment, based in Moscow. In 1889 he transferred to a regiment in St Petersburg, and later enrolled in the Academy of Art (1889–96), where he was a student of Il’ya Repin. Indeed his works of this period reflected some of the conventions of Realism (e.g. W. W. Mathé Working, 1892; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.). Seeking to escape the limitations on expression exhorted by the Russian art establishment, in ...

[Vassily; Wassily] (Vasil’yevich)

(b Moscow, Dec 4, 1866; d Neuilly-sur-Seine, Dec 13, 1944).

Russian painter, printmaker, stage designer, decorative artist and theorist. A central figure in the development of 20th-century art and specifically in the transition from representational to abstract art, Kandinsky worked in a wide variety of media and was an important teacher and theoretician. He worked mainly outside Russia, but his Russian heritage continued to be an important factor in his development.

Kandinsky grew up in Odessa and from 1886 to 1893 studied economics, ethnography and law in Moscow, where he wrote a dissertation on the legality of labourers’ wages. He married his cousin Anya Shemyakina in 1892 (divorced 1911). In 1896 Kandinsky decided to become an artist and went to Munich. There he studied from 1896 to 1898 at the art school of Anton Ažbe, where he met Alexei Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, and then in 1900 at the Akademie with Franz von Stuck. The following year he was a co-founder of the ...

(b Münchenbuchsee, nr Berne, Dec 18, 1879; d Muralto, nr Locarno, June 29, 1940).

Swiss painter, draughtsman, printmaker, teacher, and writer. Klee’s work forms a major contribution to the history of 20th-century art. He is associated most commonly with the Bauhaus school in Weimar and Dessau. He is regarded as a major theoretician among modern artists and as a master of humour and mystery. In much of his work, he aspired to achieve a naive and untutored quality, but his art is also among the most cerebral of any of the 20th century (e.g. Disturbance, 1934; Turin, Gal. A. Mod.). Klee’s wide-ranging intellectual curiosity is evident in an art profoundly informed by structures and themes drawn from music, nature, and poetry.

Klee was brought up in Berne, where his father was a music teacher. As a boy, he displayed great talent both as a violinist and as a draughtsman. On leaving school he decided to study art in Munich, first with ...

(b Hamburg, Sept 14, 1876; d Pansdorf, nr Lübeck, May 13, 1954).

German painter, printmaker, poster and stage designer. He attended the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg (c. 1894), and art academies in Düsseldorf and Berlin (c. 1897). In the first decades of the 20th century he exhibited with the New Secessionists. He drew and painted still-lifes and figures in landscapes and interiors in a strongly Expressionist style, which revealed his admiration for Cubism and for the work of Ferdinand Hodler. He was an assiduous worker; besides paintings, woodcuts and lithographs, he designed stained-glass windows, mosaics (e.g. Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, Berlin), murals and painted ceilings. He also decorated the interiors of a number of Berlin theatres, as well as the Marmorhaus cinema (1913). Klein and Gerhard Marcks joined Gropius to organize the 1914 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne.

In the post-World War I ferment of cultural and political activity, Klein, with Max Pechstein and others, founded the Novembergruppe in Berlin in ...

[Coubine, Othon]

(b Boskovice, Oct 22, 1883; d Marseille, Oct 17, 1969).

Czech painter, printmaker and sculptor, mostly active in France. He studied at the School of Stone Sculpture at Hořice (1898–1900) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1900–04). From being trained in early Post-Impressionism he moved to Expressionist painting by about 1905, strongly influenced by his experience of the works of van Gogh. In 1907 he took part in the first exhibition of Eight, the: his paintings were criticized for being too crude. At this time he visited France, Italy, Belgium and Holland. His painting View of Montmartre (1907; priv. col.) formed a link between his Expressionist sources and his visionary side, which was influenced by El Greco. His study tour prevented him taking part in the second exhibition of The Eight (ii) in 1908. Up to 1910 Kubín mainly painted landscapes and country themes (e.g. Harvest at Boskovice, 1908; Prague, N.G.). His painting became more angular and stereometric, and, especially in ...

(b Liebau, Silesia [now Libawka, Poland], Oct 16, 1874; d Breslau [now Wrocław, Poland], Sept 24, 1930).

German painter and printmaker. His mother was said to have been a gypsy, although this was never proved. He began his artistic training with an apprenticeship as a lithographer from 1890 until 1894 in Görlitz, Silesia. From 1894 to 1896 he studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden. He returned to Silesia, however, travelling occasionally, for example to Switzerland, Italy and Munich. Towards the end of 1908 he moved to Berlin, where he joined the Neue Sezession, an exhibiting group formed in 1910 in protest at the rejection of younger artists’ work by the Berliner Sezession (see Secession, §2), which had a conservative tendency. In this circle he met some of the painters of Brücke, Die and he became a member of the group in 1910.

As each artist moved from Dresden to Berlin, Mueller’s contact with Die Brücke intensified. In 1911 he worked in Berlin with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein. He travelled to Bohemia with Kirchner and spent the summer with Kirchner and Erich Heckel on the Baltic island of Fehmarn. After the early influences of Symbolism and Post-Impressionism, and in particular the art of Arnold Böcklin and Ludwig von Hofmann (...

German, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 7 August 1867, in Nolde; died 13 April 1956, in Siekbüll (Schleswig).

Painter, engraver, lithographer, sculptor. Religious subjects, figure compositions, figures, landscapes, seascapes.

Die Brücke, Dachau Artists’ Colony.

The son of a farmer, Emil Nolde’s early economic and social conditions were not conducive to an artistic career. He developed his talents as an apprentice woodcarver from 1884 to 1888 in Flensburg, with Heinrich Sauermann. He then worked as a designer in furniture factories in Munich, Karlsruhe, and Berlin. It was in Karlsruhe, from 1888, that he took up drawing and painting, initially at evening classes, then full-time at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts). From 1889 to 1892, he lived in Berlin, where he worked as a design draughtsman for the Pfaff furniture factory. In 1892, he taught ornamental draughtsmanship at the Gewerbemuseum at St Gall, Switzerland, where he stayed for seven years. It was here that he began to draw and paint watercolours of landscapes and faces in his spare time....

(b Nolde, Schleswig-Holstein, Aug 7, 1867; d Seebüll, Schleswig-Holstein, April 13, 1956).

German painter, watercolourist, and printmaker. He was one of the strongest and most independent of the German Expressionists. Nolde belonged to the Dresden-based group known as Brücke, Die from 1906 to 1907. Primarily a colourist, he is best known for his paintings in oil, his watercolours, and his graphic work. His art was deeply influenced by the stark natural beauty of his north German homeland, and alongside numerous landscapes, seascapes, and flower paintings, Nolde also produced works with religious and imaginary subjects.

Nolde first trained as a wood-carver under Heinrich Sauermann (1842–1904) in Flensburg and worked as a designer in furniture factories in Munich, Karlsruhe, and Berlin. From 1892 to 1897 he taught industrial design at the Saint-Gallen crafts museum, during which time he also became known as a mountaineer. The commercial success he enjoyed with a series of postcard drawings depicting the Swiss mountains as characters from fables and fairy tales finally won him the freedom to become a full-time artist, as their sale guaranteed him an income for several years. Studying in Munich at the private school of ...

Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 1922, in Bologna.

Painter, engraver. Figures.

Bruno Pulga studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna. From 1950 he evolved from a personal form of naturalism to informal expressionism, producing evanescent images containing a mere suggestion of reality.

He showed work in a number of collective exhibitions, including Spoleto in ...

(b Niendorf, Holstein, Dec 22, 1849; d Hagen, Jan 8, 1938).

German painter and printmaker. He studied painting at the Kunstschule in Weimar (1870). Prolonged illness forced him to interrupt his studies, which he resumed in 1874 under Ferdinand Schauss (1832–1916) and Alexandre Struys (1852–1941). Through visits to Paris in the 1870s, he came into contact with the art of the Barbizon school, painting en plein-air on his return to Weimar. Under the influence of Struys he painted figurative works, such as Roman Builders (1879; Münster, Westfäl. Landesmus.), and nudes in the tradition of academically enlightened Realism. In 1881 Rohlfs worked in a studio under Max Thedy (1858–1924). From c. 1883 he painted mainly landscapes with the approval of Ludwig von Gleichen-Russwurm (1836–1901), who was studying with Theodor Hagen (1842–1919), and was influenced in an indirect way by Albert Brendel (1827–95), who had taught at Weimar from ...

(Henri)

(b Paris, May 27, 1871; d Paris, Feb 13, 1958).

French painter, draughtsman and printmaker. Although he first came to prominence with works displayed in 1905 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, in the company of paintings by Henri Matisse and other initiators of Fauvism, he established a highly personal and emotive style. His technique and palette were also highly personal, and they ranged from watercolour blues to a rich, thick application of materials. These demonstrate, in their very complexity, not only originality but also the craft of the artist always in search of a greater form of expression. Even though he never stopped observing mankind, his deep religious feeling allowed him to imbue his work with great spirituality.

Rouault was born to a humble family during the brief period of the Paris Commune. Through his maternal grandfather, Alexandre Champdavoine, an unassuming post office employee, he discovered artists such as Courbet, Manet and Honoré Daumier at an early age. Having shown a lively interest in drawing at school, at the age of 14 Rouault became a glazier’s apprentice with ...

(b Brussels, April 28, 1879; d Brussels, Jan 10, 1957).

Belgian painter, printmaker and writer. He learned to draw in his father’s lithography studio. In 1900 Tytgat entered the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and studied under Constant Montald. His first paintings were influenced by Symbolism and in particular the work of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, whom he admired. He met Rik Wouters in 1907, and the two became friends. World War I drove him into exile, and he lived as a refugee in England until 1920. There, he not only painted but also made prints, including woodcuts and linocuts with the help of his wife, Maria. She was also his model for the numerous canvases painted in London, for example The Pose (1918; Brussels, Mus. A. Mod.). His early work was full of sensitivity, using bright tones that accentuated delicate greys in an impressionistic manner. Towards 1925 Tytgat became aware of Expressionism. His plasticity grew stronger, and his colours darker, and his desire for simplification came to dominate the forms (e.g. ...

Mexican, 20th century, male.

Born 1908, in Patzcuaro.

Painter, engraver, lithographer.

Alfredo Zalce studied fine art at the Academia de San Carlos, Mexico. His ability to handle all media made him a versatile artist. A realist expressionist, he frequently painted frescoes in the tradition of 20th-century Mexican painting. He excelled in graphic arts and was one of the founder members of the popular studio of graphic arts. He brought back from a four-month trip to Yucatan numerous sketches that subsequently provided him with a basis for several drawings, engravings and paintings. He evokes the work of peasants and fishermen as well as of town-dwellers. He exhibited since ...

Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 2 April 1924, in Cervignano del Friuli (Veneto).

Painter, engraver. Landscapes with figures, still-lifes.

Giuseppe Zagaina was a member of the realist movement and was initially influenced by Rouault's expressionism. From 1950, he stuck scrupulously to the tenets of Social Realism. His technique was academic, and the subject matter taken from everyday life. After ...