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[Jean] (Peter Wilhelm)

(b Strassburg, Germany [now Strasbourg, France], Sept 16, 1886; d Basle, Switzerland, June 7, 1966).

French sculptor, painter, collagist, printmaker, and poet of German birth. The son of a German father and French Alsatian mother, he developed a cosmopolitan outlook from an early age and as a mature artist maintained close contact with the avant-garde throughout Europe. He was a pioneer of abstract art and one of the founders of Dada in Zurich, but he also participated actively in both Surrealism and Constructivism. While he prefigured junk art and the Fluxus movement in his incorporation of waste material, it was through his investigation of biomorphism and of chance and accident that he proved especially influential on later 20th-century art in liberating unconscious creative forces.

Following a brief period at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Strasbourg (1900–01), Arp received instruction from 1901 from a friend and neighbour, the painter and printmaker Georges Ritleng (1875–1972). He then attended the Kunstschule in Weimar (1904–7) and the Académie Julian in Paris (...

Belgian, 20th century, male.

Born 1940, in Berchem (Antwerp).

Painter, sculptor, screen printer.

Neo-Constructivism.

Guy Baekelmans was briefly a member of the Centre International d'Art Constructif (International Centre of Constructive Art), and saw Constructivism as a framework within which he could develop his own spiritual aspirations. His three-dimensional works, in which he employs accents of light, are dynamic in character. Following visits to Japan, his paintings became more meditative, while the use of computers gave him new perspectives....

Russian, 20th century, male.

Active in Germany from 1922 to 1932, in France from 1933 to 1935, in England from 1936 to 1946, active from 1946 and naturalised in the USA.

Born 5 August 1890, in Bryansk; died 23 August 1977, in Waterbury (Connecticut), USA...

Hungarian, 20th century, male.

Born 21 March 1887, in Érsekujvár; died 1967, in Budapest.

Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, graphic designer, engraver, collage artist, sculptor.

Dadaism, Constructivism.

Lajos Kassák ran away from home aged 13. He started his working life as a blacksmith and locksmith. He came into contact with the workers' movement and contributed to the Social Democrat magazine ...

Latvian, 20th century, male.

Born 4 January 1895 , in Rŭjiena, Latvia; died 26 February 1938 , in Moscow

Painter, collage artist, photomontage artist, poster artist, lithographer, sculptor.

Constructivism, Vhutemas, Productivism, Suprematism.

Unovis, October.

Gustav Klucis studied at the City Art School in Riga (1913-1915), then at the school of design under the aegis of the Imperial Society for the Fostering of Art (1915-1917) in Petrograd (now St Petersburg). He completed his training at Vasily Meshkov’s school of design and painting, Il’ya Mashkov’s studio in the State Free Art Studio (Svoma) in Moscow, and the higher artistic and technical workshops (Vkhutemas) under the direction of Kazimir Malevich and Antoine Pevsner. An associate member of the INKhUK (Institute of Artistic Culture) productivist group in Moscow from 1921 to 1925, he taught courses at the Vkhutemas from 1924 to 1930. He was a founder member of the October group in 1928....

Swiss, 20th century, male.

Born 28 June 1893, in Zurich; died 1972, in Zurich.

Painter, sculptor, lithographer.

Constructivism.

Groups: Dada, Die Allianz.

Léo Leuppi studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (college of arts and crafts) in Zurich. He was aligned with the Zurich Dadaist movement and worked for a period as a Cubist. In 1937, he founded and presided over the ...

Russian, 20th century, male.

Born 1890 , in Polschinock, in the Smolensk region; died 1941 , in Schodnia, near Moscow.

Architect, painter, sculptor, draughtsman, graphic designer, typographer, poster artist, illustrator, lithographer, photomontage artist, photographer, writer, collage artist. Stage sets.

Constructivism, Suprematism.

Obshchestvo Khudoznikov 4 Iskusstva (Four Arts Society), Vkhutemas...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 10 February 1923, in Paris; died 1983, in Paris.

Painter, pastellist, collage artist, sculptor, draughtsman, engraver. Designs for tapestries.

Neo-Constructivism.

Mennessons followed courses in history and art from 1946. He made contact with Henri Laurens and Albert Gleizes, becoming a student of the latter for two years and working in his studio. When Gleizes died, Mennessons was forced to return to Paris in reduced circumstances. He travelled to Germany and Switzerland many times in the 1970s. From ...

[Peter]

(b Budapest, June 13, 1899; d London, Jan 19, 1967).

British sculptor, printmaker and painter of Hungarian birth. Although he originally intended to follow a legal career, he worked as a stone mason between 1916 and 1917 and in 1918 studied sculpture in Budapest, becoming a member of the MA Group. During the Béla Kun Communist regime in Hungary (1919), he joined a group of travelling actors; on the regime’s downfall, he moved to Vienna and then to Paris. He was expelled from France for left-wing activities and arrived in Berlin in 1920. His early drawings, many of them political satires, show Dadaist and Expressionist influence. In 1921 he produced his first Constructivist works, the Space Constructions, painted on shaped wood or canvas, or occasionally made out of concrete, such as Space Construction V (concrete, 1921; untraced, see 1973 exh. cat., p. 47), and the linocuts derived from them, such as the portfolio collection Linocut, 1922–3 (Berlin, Gemäldegal.). In ...

Croat, 20th century, male.

Born 1924, in Okucani.

Sculptor, painter (mixed media), engraver.

Neo-Constructivism, Op Art.

Exat 51 Group.

From 1943 to 1946 Yvan Picelj was a student at the fine arts academy in Zagreb where he settled. After his time at the academy, he made study trips to France, Sweden, Italy, Belgium and the USA. In ...

Hungarian, 20th century, male.

Active in France after 1928.

Born 31 December 1902, in Budapest; died 6 April 1983, in Paris.

Sculptor, painter, engraver, draughtsman, potter.

Constructivism.

Anton Prinner, who was probably born Anna Prinner but lived as a man throughout his life, studied painting at the Budapest school of fine arts in ...

Swedish, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active also active in France.

Born 1946, in Malmö.

Painter, sculptor, engraver.

Neo-Constructivism.

Torsten Ridell studied at the Forum school of fine arts in Malmö and at Paris University VIII/ Vincennes. He lives and works in Paris and Malmö. Since the 1960s, his artistic activity has taken a concrete, constructive direction. To show space and its implications, he paints lines or strips, generally black or white, forming abstract figures seen as a reduction of the elements of an image. His art tends logically towards serial development....

(b Łódź, May 3, 1924).

Polish sculptor, draughtsman, painter, ceramicist, printmaker and tapestry designer. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Łódź, graduating in 1951. His style derives from Constructivism and from the ‘Unism’ of his teacher Władysław Strzemiński. Starczewski’s complex art uses the complementary treatment in combination with different visual disciplines. He was particularly interested in rhythmic, precise arrangements of forms and signs (e.g. MF 7/9, embossed paper, 1972, see D. Wróblewska: Polish Contemporary Graphic Art (Warsaw, 1983), fig.). One of his earliest works was a large-scale ceramic bas-relief entitled Disposition for Two Hands (1959–60), a geometric abstraction made for the University Library in Łódź. In 1963 he produced his first Alphabet of sculptural signs, a series of works that led to his conception of Tables (examples of both in Łódź, Mus. A.), which he started to create in 1973. On a long, rectangular table covered with a white tablecloth, Starczewski arranged alternate rows of identical forms, such as potatoes or bread rolls (ceramic or real), or sequences of three objects (e.g. a wine glass, toothbrush and tube of toothpaste). These arrangements are accompanied by graphic compositions that explore different types of signs (print, braille, handwriting) and examine their relationship (e.g. ...

Czechoslovak, 20th century, male.

Born 3 February 1920, in Louny; died 12 July 2011.

Painter, sculptor, performance artist, engraver.

Neo-Constructivism.

With Demartini, Kubicek and Malich, Sykora represented Constructivism in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. He produced pictures with the use of a computer from 1961 to 1963...