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Article

Adam, Henri Georges  

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1904, in Paris; died 27 August 1967, in Perros-Guirec (Côtes-d'Armor).

Sculptor (including bronze), engraver (burin). Monuments, designs for tapestries, stage costumes and sets.

Henri Adam's father, a goldsmith and jeweller, taught him the rudiments of the trade while he was studying at the Collège Lavoisier. He also took classes in drawing, first at the École Germain-Pillon and subsequently at the Atelier de la Ville de Paris in Montparnasse, before moving to the École des Beaux-Arts. He exhibited various paintings between ...

Article

Amann, Hermann  

German, 20th century, male.

Active in France from 1960.

Born 1934, in Bad Bellingen.

Painter (including gouache), performance artist, watercolourist, engraver (etching), monotype artist, draughtsman. Stage sets, artists' books, posters.

Hermann Amann is very active. He has published written works and given numerous lectures on painting. As a painter, he produces very colourful, very musical works, with a dynamic rhythm, made up of geometric figures in thick lines or black rings, biomorphic forms and graphic signs. He also produces engravings (etchings and monotypes), artists' books ( ...

Article

Annus, Siim-Tanel  

Estonian, 20th–21st century, male.

Born 4 January 1960, in Tallinn, Soviet Union (now Estonia).

Graphic artist, painter, performance artist, printmaker (relief printing, serigraphy).

Siim-Tanel Annus began training as an artist in 1974, attending private sessions at fellow non-conformist Tõnis Vint’s Studio 22 in Tallinn, where he pursued drawing and developed an interest in printmaking. He continued to frequent Vint’s studio while studying anthropology and history at Tartu University from ...

Article

Arroyo, Eduardo  

Inmaculada Julián

(b Madrid, Feb 26, 1937).

Spanish painter, sculptor, potter, printmaker and stage designer . As a painter he was mainly self-taught. After working as a journalist in 1957, he left Spain in 1958 to avoid military service, settling in Paris. There he continued to work both as a journalist and painter. From 1968 to 1972 he lived in Milan, returning to Paris in 1973. His work developed from expressionism to realism (Nueva figurina), which reflected on the pictorial language and function of painting and the artist’s role in society. He manipulated ready-made images, words and elements derived from commercial art and the work of other painters. His pieces formed series whose titles referred to the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the contemporary political situation to help make their critical point. His work frequently provoked controversy, for example his series Arcole Bridge and St Bernard’s Pass (1962–6) was based on the theme of Napoleon Bonaparte as a symbol of imperialism (e.g. ...

Article

Ayrton, Michael  

Justine Hopkins

(b London, Feb 20, 1921; d London, Nov 16, 1975).

English sculptor, painter, printmaker and writer . He left school at 14 to begin his painting career. After spending time in France, Ayrton returned to England in 1939, finding success in stage design and art criticism. His writings in The Spectator (1946–8) were important in the acceptance of Neo-Romanticism. From 1946 he travelled widely in Italy, admiring the Quattrocento painters, especially Piero della Francesca. At Cumae he began the preoccupation with Greek mythology that continued throughout his life; he visited Greece regularly from 1957. After 1955 sculptures became his preferred medium, although drawing remained essential and he produced etchings and lithographs. However, his many bronzes of the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus (e.g. Icarus III, 1960; London, Old Change Court) remain his best-known images. The Arkville Maze (1968), built of brick and masonry, contains two lifesize bronze sculptures and still stands in the estate of Armand Erpf in the Catskill Mountains, New York (see Hopkins, p. 402)....

Article

Baertsoen, Albert  

Danielle Derrey-Capon

(b Ghent, Jan 9, 1866; d Ghent, June 9, 1922).

Belgian painter and etcher . The son of a successful mill-owner and an excellent musician, he was a pupil and friend of Gustave Den Duyts (1850–97), and later, at the Ghent Académie, of Jean Delvin (1853–1922). He was involved in the exhibiting society L’Essor in Brussels as well as the triennial salons held in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent in rotation. Among his earliest important works are The Scheldt at Dendermonde (1887; Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), which he painted beside Isidore Meyers (1836–1917) and Franz Courtens in a Realist style characteristic of the Dendermonde school. In 1889–90 he attended the studio of Alfred Roll in Paris, where he met Jacques-Emile Blanche and Charles Cottet, and became particularly closely associated with Frits Thaulow, Emile-René Ménard and Edmond Aman-Jean. He exhibited regularly at the Salon in Paris. Although Baertsoen is considered to be one of the first Belgian ...

Article

Baev, Georgi  

Juliana Nedeva-Wegener

(b Burgas, Nov 8, 1924).

Bulgarian painter, printmaker and stage designer . In 1949 he graduated from the National Academy of Arts (Natsionalna Hudozhestvena Academia) in Sofia, having studied painting under Dechko Uzunov. In the early part of his career he made prints and did stage designs, but in the late 1950s he began to focus exclusively on painting. Although he depicted both industrial and urban landscapes (e.g. Industrial Landscape, 1979; Sofia, N.A.G.), he became better known as a painter of seascapes. His compositions are extremely tactile and consist of highly coloured planes and contrasting tones, tending towards abstraction and expressive drama. Seascapes are usually painted in intense hues of ultramarine and cobalt blue, forced together to create a sense of movement. Among his most popular marine paintings are Fishermen (1963) and Seaport (1969; both Sofia, N.A.G.) and Old Boats (1978; Sofia, City A.G.). After 1983 new philosophical tendencies appear in his paintings, although his seascapes continue to be his most expressive works....

Article

Bálint, Endre  

Éva Bajkay

(b Budapest, Oct 14, 1914; d Budapest, May 3, 1986).

Hungarian painter, printmaker, critic and stage designer . He studied at the School of Applied Art, Budapest (1930–34). Bálint went to Paris for a short time and then attended János Vaszary and Vilmos Aba-Novák’s private school in Budapest, where he met his future brother-in-law Lajos Vajda, whose Constructivist–Surrealist style had a great influence on him. They spent their summers together at the Szentendre colony. Béla Czóbel’s lyrical expressive paintings also influenced Bálint’s early work. From 1939 to 1942 he edited the art column of the newspaper Népszava, to which his father had contributed until 1925, and also published his own articles. He destroyed many of his early works after World War II. The persecution of the Jews was the theme of a series of linocuts, By Candlelight (1939–41; see Román, nos 21–4). In 1946 he became a member of the European School in Budapest, and in 1947 he went to Paris and took part in the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (Gal. Maeght). Subsequently his work changed, and in his ...

Article

Bertholle, Jean  

French, 20th century, male.

Born 26 June 1909, in Dijon; died 6 December 1996, in Paris.

Painter, collage artist, engraver, draughtsman. Wall decorations, designs for mosaics, stained glass windows, tapestries, stage costumes and sets.

A pupil at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyons in 1930, Bertholle studied in Paris from 1932-1934, and subsequently attended classes run by the painter Roger Bissière at the Académie Ranson, where he met his friends and associates Manessier, Etienne-Martin, Le Moal and Véra Pagava. He was artistic director of the Gien porcelain factory from 1943-1957, and taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1965-1980. He was a member of the Institut de France, a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Initially an admirer of Puvis de Chavannes, whose work he had encountered at the city museum in Lyons, Bertholle later discovered Manet (at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1932), and through the latter, Van Gogh and Renoir. Following his early, highly-coloured Expressionist period, Bertholle was greatly influenced by the Flemish fantasies of Breughel and Heironymus Bosch, and ultimately by the Surrealists - as may be seen in his painting of the ...

Article

Beuys, Joseph  

German, 20th century, male.

Born 1921, in Krefeld; died 23 January 1986, in Düsseldorf.

Performance artist, installation artist, assemblage artist, engraver.

Neo-Dadaism, Fluxus, Conceptual Art.

Joseph Beuys spent his youth in Cleves. Relatively little is known about his early years, but he is thought to have begun studying natural sciences when he was mobilised in 1941 as a bomber pilot in the Luftwaffe. In winter 1943, his plane was shot down over the Russian steppes near Sevastopol. According to Beuys, some Tatars found him buried in the cabin wreckage and just managed to save his life by smearing the wounds of his half-frozen body with animal fat and wrapping him in felt. There is some doubt as to the truth of parts of this story, but certainly the metaphorical power of the fat and felt became a recurring theme throughout the rest of his career....

Article

Beuys, Joseph  

Heiner Stachelhaus

revised by Ina Blom

(b Krefeld, May 12, 1921; d Düsseldorf, Jan 23, 1986).

German sculptor, performance artist, printmaker teacher, and political activist. He opposed a concept of art based on such autonomous genres as panel painting and sculpture. Instead he pursued in his performance art (‘Aktionen’) and sculpture an ‘expanded concept of art’, aimed at a total permeation of life by creative acts. By his provocative and often misunderstood statement that ‘each person is an artist’, he did not mean that everyone is a painter or a sculptor. Rather, he wanted to express the idea that any person could become creatively active. This concept culminated logically in his idea of ‘social sculpture’, an art designed to activate the creative power possessed by every individual to form his or her own life situation.

As a schoolboy Beuys was strongly interested in natural science, which remained significant for his later work. After taking his Abitur in 1940 in Kleve on the Lower Rhine, where he grew up, he first wanted to become a paediatrician. However, in ...

Article

Bo, Lars  

Danish, 20th century, male.

Active from 1947 active in France.

Born 20 or 29 May 1924, in Kolding; died 21 October 1999, in Paris.

Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman, engraver, illustrator, newspaper cartoonist. Stage sets, stage costumes.

Lars Bo was the son of an architect and painter who duly followed in his father's footsteps. His earliest drawings were of animals of every description. He enrolled at the academy of applied arts in Copenhagen in ...

Article

Bonnevalle, Oscar Hector  

Belgian, 20th century, male.

Born 1920.

Painter (including gouache), draughtsman, engraver, illustrator, decorative designer. Stage costumes and sets, postage stamps.

Oscar Bonnevalle studied at the Ghent academy and went on to produce postage stamp designs which demonstrate a genuine feeling for realism and traditional folklore....

Article

Bottinelli, Wolf Adam  

German, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1950.

Painter, lithographer, performance artist, photographer. Artists' books.

Fluxus.

Wolf Adam Bottinelli trained at the art academy in Kassel. He appears to have a very free idea of the act of creation, which has brought him close to the ...

Article

Brauer, Arik  

Ingeborg Kuhn-Régnier

[Erich]

(b Vienna, Jan 4, 1929).

Austrian painter, printmaker, stage designer and singer. He studied from 1945 to 1951 with Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, where his colleagues included Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter (b 1928) and Anton Lehmden (b 1929), with whom he helped develop the style known as Phantastischer Realismus. He first exhibited his works with the Art-Club at the Zedlitzhalle. In 1950 he cycled from Vienna to Paris, also travelling to Spain, North Africa, Israel and Yemen. During this period he struggled to earn a living as a folk singer. From 1958 he lived and worked as an artist in Paris, but from 1964 he divided his time between Vienna and the house he had decorated himself in Ein Hod, an artists’ village in Israel.

Brauer’s early paintings were strongly influenced at first by the peasant paintings of Pieter Bruegel I in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and then by the work of Hieronymus Bosch; Brauer developed an anecdotal style, mainly depicting rustic landscape genre scenes. After ...

Article

Brayer, Yves  

French, 20th century, male.

Born 18 November 1907, in Versailles; died 29 May 1990, in Paris.

Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, engraver (etching), lithographer, draughtsman (including ink), monotype artist, illustrator, decorative designer. Figures, portraits, scenes with figures, genre scenes, landscapes with figures, landscapes, architectural views, seascapes, still-lifes...

Article

Bret, François  

French, 20th century, male.

Born 7 July 1918, in Blois.

Painter, engraver. Figure compositions, figures, portraits, interiors with figures, landscapes, urban landscapes, harbour views, seascapes, gardens, still-lifes. Stage sets, stage costumes.

François Bret studied in Paris during his teens and in 1936 became a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, studying under André Dewambez, Charles Guérin and Nicolas Untersteller. He made several visits, both for study and pleasure, to Italy in ...

Article

Bruneau, Jean  

French, 20th century, male.

Born 3 September 1921, in La Baule.

Painter, lithographer, illustrator. Scenes with figures, portraits, nudes, landscapes, still-lifes. Stage sets, stage costumes, church decoration.

Jean Bruneau was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes from 1938 to 1945 and won the Prix de la Ville de Nantes in his final year. In ...

Article

Cassel, Axel  

German, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active in France.

Born 1955, in Germany.

Painter, sculptor, engraver, illustrator, performance artist.

Alex Cassel arrived in the south of France with his family in 1970, and moved to Paris in 1972. He embarked on a course in law and economics, but in ...

Article

Charnotet, Jean  

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1930; died 1978.

Painter, poster artist, lithographer. Figures, landscapes, scenes with figures, horse racing scenes. Stage costumes, advertising art.

Jean Charnotet trained under Paul Colin and Vertès. He exhibited in Paris, Deauville, Brussels and Rome. He did a great deal of work in the advertising industry....