Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 1900, in Marciana Marina (Livorno); died 1971, in Milan.
Painter, ceramicist, illustrator, scenographer, writer. Stage costumes.
Futurism.
Giovanni Acquaviva studied philosophy and law at the University of Pisa, while devoting himself to illustration at the same time. He founded the Futurist group ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 12 March 1876, in Bordeaux; died 15 October 1955, in Bordeaux.
Watercolourist, architect, writer. Landscapes.
Jean-Paul Alaux was the great grandson of the painter of the same name, known as Gentil, the nephew of Guillaume Alaux, also a painter, and the brother of François Alaux. He was involved in the founding of the Écoles d'Art Américaine in Fontainebleau in ...
Italian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 17 July 1947, in Milan.
Painter, sculptor, theorist.
Arte Povera, Conceptual Art.
Adriano Altamira put forward his first critical observations on the phenomena of vision in 1967. Next he began to use minimalist structures, plaits and interlacings, like some of the methods used in France by the ...
Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 1912, in Ferrara.
Film maker, painter, writer. Landscapes.
An intuitive painter, Michelangelo Antonioni uses watercolour, oil and sometimes unexpected materials. He then makes photographic enlargements of his paintings and exhibits the enlargements. On several occasions he has taken his painter's brush to his films, colouring in natural settings artificially, notably in ...
British, 20th century, male.
Born 13 November 1914, in Fulham, London; died 12 June 2000, in Aberdeen.
Painter, lithographer, wood engraver, poet. Still-lifes, landscapes, portraits.
Leonard Appelbee studied under Clive Gardiner at Goldsmiths College from 1931 to 1934, and under Barnett Freedman at the Royal College of Art ...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Draughtsman, watercolourist, illustrator, novelist.
Marcel Arnac illustrated François Villon's Works (1928) with miniature watercolours, and illustrated his own work, 83 Centimetres of Adventures (Les éditions Georges-Anquetil, 1925), with drawings. He also wrote and illustrated Le Brelan de Joie...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 16 September 1886, in Strasbourg; died 7 June 1966, in Basel.
Collage artist, engraver, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, poet.
Dadaism.
Der Moderne Bund, Dadaist groups in Zurich and Cologne, Artistes Radicaux, Das Neue Leben, Paris Surrealist Group, Abstraction-Création.
Hans Arp joined the École des Arts et Métiers in Strasbourg in 1902, at the age of 16. In 1903 he began painting and contributed to a local magazine. In 1904 he made his first trip to Paris. From 1905 to 1907 he studied under Ludwig von Hoffmann at the fine arts academy in Weimar, where he attended modern art exhibitions. He returned to Strasbourg, which his family then left for Weggis, on the edge of the Lac des Quatre Cantons in Switzerland. Between 1908 and 1910 he made a second trip to Paris and worked for a time at the Académie Julian. In Weggis he completed his first Abstract compositions and learned the art of modelling. In 1911 he co-founded the group...
British, 20th century, male.
Born 20 February 1921, in London, in Hoyland (Yorkshire) according to some sources; died 17 November 1975.
Painter, sculptor (bronze), illustrator, stage set designer, art critic, designer. Figures, landscapes, portraits, mythological subjects.
The son of the art critic and poet Gerald Gould and the feminist Labour Party activist Barbara Ayrton, Michael Ayrton travelled widely in his youth to Vienna, Paris and Italy. He received his artistic education at Heatherley's and St John's Wood art schools in London. In ...
German, 20th century, male.
Born 21 June 1876, in Stuttgart; died 15 January 1955, in Bavaria.
Architect, photomontage artist, collage artist, writer.
Dadaism.
Johannes Baader, who was active as an artist for three years, from 1918 to 1921, was a former architect who had created the plans for the famous Hagenbeck Zoo in Stellingen. After the age of 40, he became a follower and champion of the Dada movement in Berlin, calling himself ...
German, 20th century, male.
Born in Cologne; died 1927, in the Tyrol.
Poet, collage artist, photomontage artist.
Dadaism.
Johannes Baargeld was the son of a banker from Cologne and was involved in the revolutionary unrest following World War I as one of the founders of the Communist party in the Rhineland. He established a left-wing extremist newspaper of art and politics, ...
Croat, 20th century, male.
Born 1890, in Jastrebarsko.
Painter, art critic.
Ljubo Babic studied in Zagreb, Munich and Paris. His painting evolved from the 1920s Yugoslavian Neo-Realism to a style of Expressionism depicting simplified forms in vivid colours. He was also known as an art critic....
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1927, in Céret.
Painter, writer.
Figuration Libre.
Textruction group.
Georges Badin lives and works in Céret. It was through his writing in 1970, at a time when he was experimenting with broken-up words and linguistic analysis, that he became interested in painting. He joined the group ...
Belgian, 20th century, male.
Born 1879 or 1889, in Brussels; died 1954, in Paris.
Painter, illustrator, writer. History painting, nudes, portraits, landscapes, still-lifes.
Baes was a student of J. Stallaert at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; he also studied under Cabanel and Bonnat in Paris. Work by him was shown at the Salon de Bruxelles (1903-1904), at the Salon d'Automne in Paris (from 1928 to 1933), at the Salon des Artistes Français (between 1929 and 1938) and at the Salon des Tuileries (from 1933 to 1939)....
British, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1858, in Torquay; died 1939, in Marlow Common (Buckinghamshire).
Painter, watercolourist, art critic. Portraits, figures, landscapes.
Alfred Lys Baldry was initially a pupil at the Royal College of Art and then studied under and assisted Albert Moore. From 1880...
German, 20th century, male.
Active in Switzerland.
Born 1886, in Pirmassens; died 1927, in San Abbondio, Switzerland.
Mixed media, poet.
Dadaism.
Zurich Dadaist.
Ball was a poet, producer and founder of the
British, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in the UK.
Born 1958, in Georgetown, Guyana.
Video artist, film maker, photographer, journalist, broadcaster. Scratch videos.
George Barber has a BA from St Martin’s School of Art in London (1980) and an MA from the Slade School of Art in London (...
German, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 2 January 1870, in Wedel (Holstein); died 1938, in Rostock.
Sculptor, painter, engraver, dramatist, writer.
Barlach was the son of a country doctor. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule Hamburg from 1888 to 1891 and was then a student of Robert Dietz at the academy in Dresden from 1891 to 1895. He then went to Paris where he worked for a year at the Académie Julian. He became interested in the work of Millet, Meunier and Van Gogh - art with social implications. When he returned to Germany in 1898 he worked as a designer on the journal ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1915, in Cherbourg; died 1980, in Paris.
Draughtsman, watercolourist, writer, semiotician.
A famous essayist and philosopher of Structuralism of the 1960s, Roland Barthes was a talented amateur musician, a piano player and artist. Whilst Barthes is known for his writings about painters and his admiration for the work of Klee, Michaux and Cy Twombly, his own artistic efforts are less well-known. He explained that his work was executed with the right hand, while the colour was applied with the left in order to preserve 'the impulse'. These drawings, produced at moments of leisure or relaxation, could be mistaken for the doodling of a distracted listener. On the other hand, the fact that they have been coloured implies a deliberate intention. Barthes used one of his own works, dated 'Juan-les-Pins, Summer ...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 4 April 1872, in Nîmes; died 1922, in Rueil (Hauts-de-Seine).
Draughtsman, engraver (dry-point/etching), lithographer, dramatist, poet. Figures, nudes, portraits. Posters.
Henry Bataille intended originally to be a painter. He studied for four years at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the private Académie Julian in Paris. As an engraver, he learned the dry point, etching and lithography techniques. He was also attracted by literature and published his first collection of poetry in ...
British, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in London.
Born 17 July 1955, in Dundee, Scotland.
Painter, sculptor, writer.
David Batchelor studied at Trent Polytechnic in Newcastle upon Tyne (1975-1978) and at the University of Birmingham (1978-1980). From 1995 to 2001 he was senior tutor in critical theory at the Royal College of Art and then became a research fellow there. In ...
