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(b Chatou, nr Paris, June 17, 1880; d Garches, Sept 8, 1954).

French painter, sculptor, illustrator, stage designer and collector. He was a leading exponent of Fauvism. In early 1908 he destroyed most of his work to concentrate on tightly constructed landscape paintings, which were a subtle investigation of the work of Cézanne. After World War I his work became more classical, influenced by the work of such artists as Camille Corot. In his sculpture he drew upon his knowledge and collection of non-Western art.

Derain abandoned his engineering studies in 1898 to become a painter and attended the Académie Carrière. He also sketched in the Musée du Louvre and painted on the banks of the Seine. On a visit to the Louvre in 1899 he met the painter Georges Florentin Linaret (1878–1905), who had been his companion at school, and who was copying Uccello in an extraordinary manner; he was studying under Gustave Moreau and later introduced Derain to a fellow pupil, Henri Matisse. Derain’s painting was already influenced by the work of Cézanne, and in ...

[Krichevsky, Vasily]

(b Vorozhba, Kharkiv province, Jan 12, 1873; d Caracas, Venezuela, Nov 15, 1952).

Ukrainian architect, painter, illustrator and collector. He received no systematic artistic education and first became known because of his interest in Ukrainian folklore. His prizewinning design for the City Council building in Poltava (1900) formed the basis of a new style, founded on traditions of Ukrainian folk art, and initiated a movement in Ukrainian architecture. Among his other buildings are the People’s House in Lokhvitsa (1904) and the Shevchenko Memorial Museum in Kaniv (1931–4). As a painter, he was influenced by the French Impressionists. The pure, harmonious colours of his southern Ukrainian landscapes convey the lyrical atmosphere of his native land, and he took part in the annual exhibitions of the Union of Russian Watercolourists in St Petersburg (1899–1902) and in the exhibitions of Kiev painters (1910–13). Krychevsky was one of the founders of contemporary Ukrainian book design, reviving the technique of the woodcut and producing over 80 cover designs. He produced set and costume designs for 15 plays and operas in the Sadovs’ky Theatre in Kiev (...

(de Sousy)

(b Geneva, Oct 2, 1866; d London, Oct 7, 1931).

English painter, designer, writer and collector. He trained as an illustrator at the City and Guilds Technical Art School, Lambeth, London, where he met and formed a lifelong relationship with Charles Shannon. He identified with the ideals of the Aesthetic Movement, finding inspiration in Renaissance art as well as in the French artists Gustave Moreau and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. In 1888 he took over James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s house, The Vale, in Chelsea and drew together an artists’ colony. Inspired by the work of A. H. Mackmurdo and William Morris, he set up a small press over which he exercised complete control of design and production, producing art journals and books that included Oscar Wilde’s A House of Pomegranates (1891) and The Sphinx (1894). Ricketts later designed founts, initials, borders and illustrations for the Vale Press (1896–1904), blending medieval, Renaissance and contemporary imagery. His crisp woodcut illustrations often incorporated the swirling lines of Art Nouveau and androgynous figures....

[Warhola, Andrew ]

(b Pittsburgh, PA, Aug 6, 1928; d New York, Feb 22, 1987).

American painter, printmaker, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, film maker, writer, and collector. After studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1945 to 1949, he moved to New York and began working as a commercial artist and illustrator for magazines and newspapers. His work of the 1950s, much of it commissioned by fashion houses, was charming and often whimsical in tone, typified by outline drawings using a delicate blotted line that gave even the originals a printed appearance; a campaign of advertisements for the shoe manufacturers I. Miller & Sons in 1955–6 (Kornbluth, pp. 113–21) was particularly admired, helping to earn him major awards from the Art Directors Club.

Warhol continued to support himself through his commercial work until at least 1963, but from 1960 he determined to establish his name as a painter. Motivated by a desire to be taken as seriously as the young artists whose work he had recently come to know and admire, especially Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, he began by painting a series of pictures based on crude advertisements and on images from comic strips. These are among the earliest examples of ...