Search Results

(Henry) [Spinky]

(b Charlotte, NC, Nov 29, 1907; d April 27, 1977).

African American painter, sculptor, graphic artist, muralist and educator. In 1913, Charles Alston’s family relocated from North Carolina to New York where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School. In 1929, he attended Columbia College and then Teachers College at Columbia University, where he obtained his MFA in 1931. Alston’s art career began while he was a student, creating illustrations for Opportunity magazine and album covers for jazz musician Duke Ellington.

Alston was a groundbreaking educator and mentor. He directed the Harlem Arts Workshop and then initiated the influential space known simply as “306,” which ran from 1934 to 1938. He taught at the Works Progress Administration’s Harlem Community Art Center and was supervisor of the Harlem Hospital Center murals, leading 35 artists as the first African American project supervisor of the Federal Art Project. His two murals reveal the influence of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957). His artwork ranged from the comic to the abstract, while often including references to African art. During World War II, he worked at the Office of War Information and Public Information, creating cartoons and posters to mobilize the black community in the war effort....

(Rossi)

(b Alderstone, England, Jan 27, 1851; d Bondi, Sydney, April 27, 1942).

Australian painter and writer . He attended the West London School of Art and, following the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1878 the newspaper owner David Syme invited Ashton to Melbourne to produce black-and-white illustrations for the Illustrated Australian News. After a disagreement with the management he transferred to the rival Australasian Sketcher. In 1883 he went to Sydney, where he joined the staff of the Picturesque Atlas of Australia and also contributed to the Sydney Bulletin. Ashton was an ardent disciple of Impressionist painting and claimed to have executed the first plein-air landscape in Australia: Evening, Merri Creek (1882; Sydney, A.G. NSW). Much of his work, as in the watercolour A Solitary Ramble (1888; Sydney, A.G. NSW), had a strong sentimental streak. In addition to his outdoor works Ashton painted a number of portraits, such as that of Helen Ashton...

(Mikhailovich)

(b Moscow, June 10, 1925; d Feb 29, 2012).

Russian painter, sculptor, theorist and teacher. He attended the Surikov Institute of Art in Moscow (1942–7), where he completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies; his teachers there were Aristarkh Lentulov, Pavel Kuznetsov and Lev Bruni. He obtained a doctorate in art history and was a specialist in the historiography of Russian art. In 1948 he established an independent studio, which was unique for its time and which provided the base for the New Realist movement, a kind of monumental tachism. Over several years approximately 600 artists and architects passed through the studio. In 1962 he organized one of the first public exhibitions of avant-garde art in Moscow. Displayed at the Central Exhibition Hall (Manezh), it was wildly slandered by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the moment that proved most symptomatic of the end of a period of political thaw. From 1964 artists of the New Realist movement worked at Belyutin’s dacha at Abramtsevo, north of Moscow; unofficial exhibitions of their work were held there annually. In ...

(b Liverpool, Aug 15, 1845; d Horsham, W. Sussex, March 14, 1915).

English painter, illustrator, designer, writer and teacher. He showed artistic inclinations as a boy and was encouraged to draw by his father, the portrait painter and miniaturist Thomas Crane (1808–59). A series of illustrations to Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (Cambridge, MA, Harvard U., Houghton Lib.) was shown first to Ruskin, who praised the use of colour, and then to the engraver William James Linton, to whom Crane was apprenticed in 1859. From 1859 to 1862 Crane learnt a technique of exact and economical draughtsmanship on woodblocks. His early illustrative works included vignette wood-engravings for John R. Capel Wise’s The New Forest: Its History and its Scenery (1862).

During the mid-1860s Crane evolved his own style of children’s book illustration. These so-called ‘toy books’, printed in colour by Edmund Evans, included The History of Jenny Wren and The Fairy Ship. Crane introduced new levels of artistic sophistication to the art of illustration: after ...

(b Görlitz, Feb 21, 1871; d Lüneburg, March 10, 1948).

German designer, painter, teacher and theorist. A self-taught artist, he made several study trips to Italy and the Tyrol. In painting he found inspiration in late German Romanticism, before turning to the English Arts and Crafts Movement. His designs were exhibited in 1899 at the exhibition of the Bayerische Kunstgewerbeverein (Munich, Glaspal.) and in 1901 at the first Ausstellung für Kunst im Handwerk in Munich. In 1902 he founded the Lehr- und Versuch-Atelier für Angewandte und Freie Kunst with the Swiss artist Hermann Obrist, developing a modern co-educational teaching system based on reformist pedagogy and popular psychology. In preliminary courses, classes and workshops, a broad practical training was offered primarily in arts and crafts. This precursor of the Bauhaus encouraged contact with dealers and collectors and was widely accoladed. When Obrist resigned from the school in 1904, Debschitz founded the Ateliers und Werkstätten für Angewandte Kunst and the Keramischen Werkstätten production centres attached to the school. In ...

(b Buffalo, NY, 1950).

Tuscarora artist, writer, educator, and museum director. Hill studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1968–70), and was awarded a Master of Arts degree from SUNY, Buffalo, NY (1980).

Intrigued with Seneca General Ely Parker (General Grant’s Military Secretary), Hill investigated Parker’s life, which took him to Washington, DC, for two years. Hill began to identify with Parker’s experience and realized he would devote himself to enlightening others about Native American arts, knowledge, education, and culture.

Hill was skilled in painting, photography, carving, beading, and basket weaving, and many of these works are located at the Canadian Museum of Civilizations, Quebec; the Woodland Indian Cultural Center, Brantford, Ontario; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Washington, DC; and the Seneca Iroquois National Museum, Salamanca, NY. He taught at McMaster University, Mohawk College, Six Nations Polytechnic, and SUNY at Buffalo. Hill developed a culturally based Seneca Language curriculum and training models for teaching....

(Georg Albert)

(b Weissenberg, Bavaria, March 21, 1880; d New York, Feb 17, 1966).

American painter, teacher and theorist of German birth. He moved with his family to Munich in 1886 and in 1896 left home to become assistant to the director of public works of the State of Bavaria; he distinguished himself with a number of inventions, including an electromagnetic comptometer, a radar device for ships, a sensitized light bulb and a portable freezer unit for military purposes. In spite of his parents’ strong objection and their hopes for his career as a scientist, in 1898 he enrolled in the art school run by Moritz Heymann (b 1870) in Munich. Hofmann subsequently studied with a succession of teachers and was particularly influenced by Willi Schwarz (b 1889), who familiarized him with French Impressionism, a style that affected his earliest known paintings, such as Self-portrait (1902; New York, Emmerich Gal., see Goodman, 1986, p. 14).

In 1903 Hofmann was introduced by Schwarz to ...

New Zealand, 20th–21st century, female.

Born 1948, in Auckland (New Zealand); died 2014, in London.

Painting, photography, writing.

Alexis Hunter was a painter, photographer, and author from New Zealand whose work was strongly influenced by feminist theory of the 1970s. Hunter focused on the portrayal of women in advertisements at the time and played a key role in the development of Conceptual, Feminist art in London.

After completing her studies in New Zealand, Hunter moved to London in 1972 where she joined the Artists Union Women’s Workshop alongside other feminist photographers and film makers such as Tina Keane, Annabel Nicolson, and Mary Kelly. Hunter’s aesthetic in her conceptual work was strongly influenced by storyboarding in advertising, photographic sequences, and filmic chronology.

The male body and masculine expressivity were reoccurring themes in Hunter’s work, often disrupting the portrayal of male identity at the time. Object Series (1974–1975) for instance places a shirtless man in front of the backdrop of the New York skyline, the Twin Towers strategically placed right above the man’s crotch. By turning her subjects into sex objects, Hunter inverts the male gaze that was so dominant in visual culture at the time. The photographic sequence ...

(b Südern-Linden, Nov 11, 1888; d Zurich, May 25, 1967).

Swiss painter, textile designer, teacher, writer and theorist. He trained first as a primary school teacher in Berne (1904–6), where he became familiar with progressive educational and psychoanalytical ideas. He was, however, interested in art and music, and in 1909 he decided to become a painter. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva but was so disappointed that he returned to teacher training in Berne. He read widely and developed an interest in religion and mystic philosophy. After qualifying he returned to Geneva and greatly enjoyed the course on the geometric elements of art run by the Swiss painter Eugène Gilliard (1861–1921). After travelling in Europe, in 1913 Itten went to Stuttgart to study at the academy of Adolf Hölzel, a pioneer of abstraction who was also convinced of the importance of automatism in art. Greatly impressed, Itten absorbed his teaching on colour and contrast and his analyses of Old Masters paintings. Encouraged by Hölzel, he made abstract collages incorporating torn paper and cloth....

Native American (Tongva-Acjachemen), 20th–21st century, female.

Born 1952, in California.

Painter, writer, tribal scholar, cartoonist, basket weaver, illustrator, indigenous language activist.

As cofounder of Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, L. Frank Manriquez, a California Indian artist and activist, has become particularly associated with the movement for language revitalisation and recovery of indigenous knowledge in the state. A multi-talented figure with a gift for humour, especially in her cartoon works, she has exhibited nationally and internationally, and is a board member of the Cultural Conservancy, supporting indigenous rights, self-determination and the protection of native lands. She also makes and teaches about baskets and is a board member of the California Indian Basketweavers Association. As the author of ...

(b Caracas, Sept 10, 1890; d Caracas, April 16, 1948).

Venezuelan painter and art historian. He studied at the Academia de Bellas Artes, Caracas (1904–9), under Emilio Mauri (1855–1908) and Antonio Herrera Toro. In 1912 with Leoncio Martínez, Manuel Cabré and other artists, he co-founded the anti-academic group Círculo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. Between 1916 and 1919 he came into contact with the traveller-artists Samys Mützner, Nicolas Ferdinandov and Emilio Boggio; Mützner in particular offered helpful advice. In 1920, when Monsanto had established himself as a painter through his technical skill and clarity of concept (e.g. Seascape, 1920; Caracas, Gal. A.N.), he began to feel dissatisfied with his work and to call himself a ‘former painter’. He retired from painting, failing to develop work that had shown much promise, and between 1921 and 1928 he dedicated himself to enhancing his knowledge of art history. He also undertook the restoration of works of art, thereby maintaining his connection with painting. In ...

[MoMA] (New York)

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was founded in 1929 by patrons Lillie P(lummer) Bliss, Cornelius J. Sullivan and Rockefeller family §(1) to establish an institution devoted to modern art. Over the next ten years the Museum moved three times and in 1939 settled in the Early Modern style building (1938–9) designed by Philip S. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone that it still occupies at 11 West 53 Street. Subsequent renovations and expansions occurred in the 1950s and 1960s by Philip Johnson, in 1984 by Cesar Pelli and in 2002–4 by Yoshirō Taniguchi (b 1937). MoMA QNS, the temporary headquarters during this project, was subsequently used to provide art storage. In 2000, MoMA and the contemporary art space, P.S.1, Long Island City, Queens, announced their affiliation. Recent projects are shown at P.S.1 in Queens in a renovated public school building.

According to founding director, Alfred H(amilton) Barr...

(b Prague, June 26, 1900; d Prague, Nov 1, 1974).

Czech painter, draughtsman, typographer, stage designer, writer and teacher. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1919 to 1924, under Jakub Obrovský (1882–1949), Karel Krattner (1862–1926) and, later on, Jan Štursa. In 1921 he became a member of the important group of avant-garde artists Devětsil, and in 1922 he participated in their Spring exhibition with a group of 12 paintings. In 1923 he also joined the Mánes Union of Artists. After graduating from the Academy he spent a year at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He attended lectures by František Kupka and was in contact with Josef Šíma and Jan Zrzavý. In 1927 he started working with the Prague publishing house Aventinum as a book designer, typographer, caricaturist and art critic. At the same time he began to work for the theatre, and from 1927 to 1947 he created 107 stage designs. He took part in the international ...

(b Bradford, Jan 29, 1872; d Far Oakridge, nr Stroud, Feb 14, 1945).

English painter, printmaker, teacher and writer. He was the son of a wool merchant and delighted in the grim landscape of his native Yorkshire, which was the subject of some early watercolours. At 16 he left Bradford to attend the Slade School of Art, London (1888–9), where he was a pupil of Alphonse Legros, and the Académie Julian, Paris (1889–93). His talent was recognized as early as 1891, when an exhibition of his work and that of Charles Conder at the Galerie Hadrien Thomas in Paris attracted the attention of many artists including Pissarro and Degas. The latter invited Rothenstein to visit his studio and became a major influence on his development. After an inspiring four years he left Paris for Oxford where he made a number of portrait lithographs—among others of Walter Pater and Max Beerbohm—published as Oxford Characters (London, 1893–6). It was the first of several such publications, including ...

(b Columbus, OH, Aug 21, 1869; d Columbus, OH, Nov 6, 1955).

American watercolorist, painter, and miniaturist. A leading watercolorist during the first half of the 20th century, Schille was known for her Post-Impressionist and modern depictions of markets, landscapes, women with children, and portraits. She enrolled at the Columbus Art School from 1891 to 1893 and subsequently traveled to New York to attend the Art Students League. At the League she studied with the American painters William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox. Throughout her career Schille traveled throughout North and Central America, Europe, and Africa to paint, often exhibiting her subsequent work in watercolor exhibitions across the United States. In 1903 she studied at the Académie Colarossi in Paris and although she returned to Ohio to teach at the Columbus Art School in 1904, she returned each summer to France until the outbreak of World War I. She maintained her teaching position at the Columbus Art School until she retired in ...

Culture of images and visuality that creates meaning in our world today. This includes media forms such as photography, film, television, and digital media; art media such as painting, drawing, prints, and installations; architecture and design; comic books and graphic novels; fashion design, and other visual forms including the look of urban life itself. It also encompasses such social realms as art, news, popular culture, advertising and consumerism, politics, law, religion, and science and medicine. The term visual culture also refers to the interdisciplinary academic field of study that aims to study and understand the role that images and visuality play in our society; how images, gazes, and looks make meaning socially, culturally, and politically; how images are integrated with other media; and how visuality shapes power, meaning, and identity in contemporary global culture.

The emergence of the concept of visual culture as a means to think about the role of images in culture and as an academic field of study is a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging in the late 1980s and becoming established by the late 1990s. There were numerous factors that contributed to the idea that images should be understood and analysed across social arenas rather than as separate categories, including the impact of digital media on the circulation of images across social realms, the modern use of images from other social arenas (such as news and advertising) in art, and the cross-referencing of cultural forms displayed in popular culture and art. It was also influenced by the increasingly visible role played by images in political conflict and a general trend toward interdisciplinarity in academia....

American, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1946, in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), United States.

Painter, graphic artist.

Stanley Whitney was born in Philadelphia in 1946. After receiving his bachelor of fine arts degree from Kansas City Art Institute, he moved to Brooklyn, where he supported himself by doing odd jobs (including carpenter’s assistant and bookstore clerk) while trying to navigate the burgeoning New York art scene. Having received a military deferment from the draft due to a history of childhood asthma, Whitney was free to pursue his career as an artist. After a few years of struggling to make ends meet, he was admitted to the prestigious Yale University master of fine arts program, which he completed in 1972.

Whitney was heavily influenced by the work of Bob Thompson (a fellow African American artist), and both artists cite the effect of jazz on their paintings. Whereas Thompson’s work is loosely figurative (in the manner of Romare Bearden), his palette—like Whitney’s—is composed of strong, pure colours. Whitney, like many of his contemporaries in the 1960s and 1970s New York scene, rejected figuration; unlike those who would take a purely formal, conceptual path, he continued to pursue his passion for colour. Interestingly, Whitney’s mature canvases represent a stylistic crossover, as they employ a loose, painterly version of the grid structure so prevalent in minimal art. Slightly off-kilter patterns make Whitney’s grids wobble and dance, in contrast to the rigid, architectonic structures employed by the artist’s minimalist counterparts, including Sol LeWitt. Like pages in Josef Albers’ ...

[Wang Wuxie; Wang Wu-hsieh]

(b Dongguan, Guangdong Province, 1936).

Hong Kong painter and educator of Chinese birth, active also in the USA. Born in Guangdong Province, Wucius Wong moved to Hong Kong in 1938. He joined the Modern Literature and Art Association in 1956 as an aspiring poet, but focused on painting under the tutelage of Lui Shou-kwan. From 1961 to 1965, Wong earned a BFA and MFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design and Maryland Institute respectively. In 1967 he served as Assistant Curator of the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery (later Hong Kong Museum of Art) until 1970, when he received the John D. Rockefeller III grant. Wong taught graphic design from 1974 to 1984 at Hong Kong Polytechnic (later Hong Kong Polytechnic University). In 1984 Wong resigned from teaching to devote himself full time to painting, and then emigrated to the United States. In 1996 he relocated to Hong Kong permanently.

Raised and educated during Hong Kong’s colonial period and with formal art training from the United States, Wucius Wong’s career had a distinct trajectory that was least politically motivated when compared to other modern Chinese artists. He felt a deep-seated rootlessness and identity crisis for much of his life, as is illustrated in his ...