Syrian, 20th century, male.
Born 1934, in Hama.
Painter. Figures, scenes with figures. Stage sets.
Symbolism.
Group of Ten.
Khouzayma Alwani trained at the academy of fine art in Rome in 1957 and received his diploma as a theatre artist in 1964. In 1973, he was awarded another diploma, this time from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He has been Professor at the school of fine arts in Damascus since ...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 27 February 1846, in Rouen; died 1917.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative artist. Stage sets.
The son of an actor, Amable had his stage debut in a pantomime at the Funambules Theatre on Boulevard du Temple in 1852, which casts doubt on his accepted date of birth, and then played at the Comte Theatre in ...
(Izrailevich)
(b Beltsy, Bessarabia [now in Moldova], Oct 14, 1879; d Waterford, CT, Dec 4, 1973).
Russian painter and stage designer. He was a Symbolist artist who, like many of his colleagues in the World of Art group, made his foremost contribution to the development of Russian art in the fields of graphic art and stage design. He first studied at the Drawing School of the Odessa Society of Fine Arts (1895–1900) and then at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts (1901–9), where his tutors included Dmitry Kardovsky and Il’ya Repin. His participation in exhibitions included the World of Art (St Petersburg and Moscow, 1906–18), the Union of Russian Artists (Moscow and St Petersburg, 1906–10), the Salon d’Automne (Paris, 1906), Wreath (St Petersburg, 1908) and the Izdebsky International Salon (Kiev and Odessa, 1909–10). His painting attracted considerable critical acclaim for its exotic themes and colouring. Simultaneously, he worked as a caricaturist, creating grotesque and fantastic images for satirical magazines as well as executing wall paintings for houses in St Petersburg. His prolific career as a stage designer began in ...
Russian, 20th century, male.
Born 1879, in Beltsy; died 1973, in Stonington (Connecticut).
Painter (gouache), draughtsman. Scenes with figures. Stage costumes and sets.
Symbolism.
Boris Anisfeld studied at the academy of fine art in St Petersburg. He spent some time in the south of France working on the Spanish border around 1913 and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, of which he became a member. He then returned to work in Petrograd, only to leave again in 1917. From 1918 to 1920, he took part in a touring exhibition in the United States: Brooklyn Museum in New York, Allbright Knox Museum in Buffalo, Chicago Art Institute, Museum of Art in St Louis and in San Francisco....
Swiss, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1 September 1862, in Geneva; died 29 February 1928, in Nyon.
Painter, scenographer. Stage sets.
Appia was a man of the theatre: a musician, stage designer and director. He created stage decors where space is punctuated by simple vertical, horizontal and slanting lines, playing on the contrasts between black, grey and white....
British, 20th century, male.
Born 14 November 1893, in Hastings; died 1973.
Painter (gouache), illustrator, designer. Figure compositions. Murals, film and stage sets.
Symbolism.
Unit One group.
John Armstrong studied at Cambridge University and St John's Wood School of Art. From 1933, the year he was appointed a member of the influential Unit One group, he was influenced by the repercussions of Surrealism. During World War II he served as an official war artist. At the beginning of the 1950s, he abandoned Surrealism, returning to his former attraction for the language of symbols, which for him meant working out a personal symbolic syntax, implemented in a series of ambitious compositions with titles that revealed their ideological content: ...
[Rosenberg, Lev (Samoylovich)]
(b Grodno, Belarus, May 10, 1866; d Paris, Dec 27, 1924).
Russian painter and stage designer of Belorussian birth. Born into a middle-class Jewish family, Bakst was educated in St Petersburg, attending a gymnasium and then the Academy of Arts (1883–6). He began professional life as a copyist and illustrator of teaching materials but quickly moved on to illustration for popular magazines. His tastes were influenced and horizons enlarged when he met Alexandre Benois and his circle in 1890. Bakst travelled regularly to various countries in Europe and North Africa and studied in Paris with a number of notable artists including the French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Académie Julian and, from 1893 to 1896, the Finnish landscape painter Albert Edelfelt. Returning to St Petersburg, he became active as a book designer and fashionable portrait painter. With Benois and Serge Diaghilev he was a founder and leading member of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) group in 1898...
(b Turin, Aug 18, 1871; d Rome, March 1, 1958).
Italian painter, sculptor, stage designer, decorative artist and actor. He was one of the originators of Futurism (see Furttenbach [Furtenbach; Furttembach], Josef [Joseph], the elder) and was particularly concerned with the representation of light and movement. His personal interest in scientific methods of analysis contributed to both the practical and ideological bases of the movement. His oeuvre from the Futurist period overshadowed the work of later years.
Balla was self-taught and began painting in Turin. In 1895 he settled in Rome. At the age of about 25 he painted some lively sketches of urban life that are characterized by a thick impasto, for example the series Machietta romana (1898; Rome, priv. col., see Lista, 1982, nos 12–17) and landscapes showing familiarity with the divisionism practised by the northern Italian artists Giuseppe Pelizza da Volpedo, Giovanni Segantini and Vittore Grubicy de Dragon, for example Luci di marzo (...
(b Rome, March 5, 1873; d Rome, March 30, 1939).
Italian architect. His father, Luigi Bazzani, was a painter and stage designer. Bazzani graduated in civil engineering from the university in Rome in 1896. In 1899 he won the competition for the international art scholarship with a plan for a cathedral in an Italian Gothic Revival style. His first significant building was the Alterocca printing company building (1907) at Terni, in Stile Liberty. He was joint winner with Raimondo D’Aronco and Ernesto Pivovano of the architectural prize at the Esposizione de Sempione, Milan (1906). A number of important competition-winning schemes followed. In 1905 Bazzani won the competition for the façade of S Lorenzo (unexecuted) in Florence, which stood him in good stead for his entry for the Biblioteca Nazionale (won 1907; completed 1935) at Santa Croce. An eclectic Renaissance building, its structure picked out in grey against white, it already suggests a putative monumentalism and sits awkwardly in its Florentine context. In ...
Belgian, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1875, in Verviers; died 1936, in Heusy.
Painter, draughtsman. Nudes, portraits, flowers. Posters, stage costumes and sets.
A student of Omer Ierickx at the academy of fine arts in Liège, he decorated the ceilings of the town hall in Louvain, produced sets and costumes for the stage and made posters....
Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 1921, in Florence.
Painter.
Vinicio Berti started exhibiting in 1939. He went through a realist stage but went on to work as an abstract expressionist. He showed his work at the 1959 Rome Quadriennale and was awarded the Fiorino Prize in Florence in ...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1860, in Lyons; died 3 March 1905, in Paris.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative artist. Figures. Stage costumes.
Charles Bianchini began as a designer of costumes for revues and in 1893 was appointed artist to the Paris Opéra. He also produced costume designs for the Opéra-Comique and other companies, designs which were always right for the roles and for the physique of the actors involved....
(Yakovlevich)
(b Tarkhovka, St Petersburg, Aug 4, 1876; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], Feb 7, 1942).
Russian graphic artist and stage designer. The son of a naval doctor, Bilibin was educated in St Petersburg, studying law at the University (1896–1900) and art at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1895–8); then, under Il’ya Repin, he studied at both Princess Maria Tenisheva’s Art School (1898–1900) and the Academy of Arts (1900–04). From 1899 he exhibited with the group known as the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) and was elected chairman of its reconstituted exhibition society in 1916. He also contributed to the Mir Iskusstva journal. Meanwhile he taught graphic art at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1907–17).
Bilibin had a strong interest in Russian medieval and folk art and became famous for his book illustrations of Russian fairy tales, especially those by Pushkin. His most celebrated theatrical works were his set and costume designs for operas by ...
Danish, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 21 February 1867, in Helsingør; died 1930.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative designer. Figures, scenes with figures, genre scenes, interiors with figures. Stage sets.
Gerhard Blom attended courses at the Kunstakademi in Copenhagen from 1885 to 1887, then studied under Zahrtmann. He taught at a municipal school in ...
Spanish, 19th – 20th century, male.
Active in France.
Born 5 July 1870 or or, in Barcelona; died 31 October 1927, in 1932 at Plessis-Robinson (Hauts-de-Seine) according to some sources.
Painter. Local scenes, portraits, landscapes. Stage sets.
Claudio Castelucho Diana, the son of Antonio Castelucho Vendrell, received his early training in his father's studio and at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Barcelona before moving on to the Académie Julian in Paris. In his early years he had compiled a treatise on scenography with his father, published in Barcelona in 1896. His portraits were also shown there in collective exhibitions in the closing years of the century. He lived in Paris for many years, where he was a familiar figure in Montparnasse, having set up a private academy where he also taught. He also exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants from 1904 and at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1910....
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 17 March 1868.
Painter, designer.
Émile Chaperon was the son of Philippe Marie Émile Chaperon, and took over from his father as set designer at the Opéra, the Comédie Française and the Odéon theatres. As well as producing stage sets, he also painted church interiors. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, where he became a member, also taking part in the Salon d'Hiver and the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in Paris....
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 2 February 1823, in Paris; died 1907, in Paris.
Painter, watercolourist, designer. Church interiors, landscapes, urban landscapes, architectural views. Stage sets.
Philippe Chaperon was set designer at the Opéra in Paris, producing most of the sets for French subsidised theatres, as well as the main theatres in France and abroad and the Expositions Universelles. He painted watercolours based on nature. He was the father of Eugène and Émile Chaperon, who took over from him....
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1863, in Paris; died 23 September 1942.
Painter (including gouache), watercolourist. Genre scenes, rustic scenes, landscapes, waterscapes, urban landscapes. Stage sets.
Pierre Chapuis participated in all the major Paris salons, notably the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, from ...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1865, in Paris; died 1933.
Painter, designer. Genre scenes, landscapes with figures, landscapes, seascapes.
Clary-Baroux started out as a stage set designer but went on to become a landscape painter who favoured views of the Seine. He was greatly influenced by the work of Alfred Sisley and initially set out to paint in the latter's style. He was subsequently drawn to the compositional approach of Camille Pissaro. In short, he worked essentially in the Impressionist manner, but his draughtsmanship was at times less than assured....
Belgian, 20th century, male.
Born 1929, in Renaix.
Painter. Landscapes, figures. Stage sets.
Roger Cnudde studied at the fine arts academies in Ghent and Oudenaarde. During a phase in his early career he produced Post-Impressionist landscapes, then, at a later date, painted figures in a more Expressionist style before finally turning to scenes of contemporary life....
