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Finnish, 20th century, male.

Born 3 February 1898, in Kuortane; died 11 May 1976, in Helsinki.

Architect, designer, painter, draughtsman, watercolourist. Figures, landscapes, landscapes with figures, urban landscapes, still-lifes. Models (furniture/glass).

Alvar Aalto was adamant that his experience as a painter was an indispensable adjunct to his profession as an architect, noting repeatedly that modern architecture had its roots in painting. As an architecture student, he took private lessons with the Finnish painter Eero Järnefelt. He moved in artistic circles and was frequently to be found in the company of the sculptor Wäinö Altonen and the painters Henry Ericsson and Eemu Myntti. For a period, he also worked as an art critic....

(b Reykjavík, Feb 4, 1922).

Icelandic painter, writer and designer. He studied engineering in 1941–2 at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík, and architecture privately. He then studied at the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts (Myndlista-og handíÐaskóli Íslands), Reykjavík (until 1943), the Kongelige Kunstakademi in Copenhagen (1945–6), the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1947–8) and with Marcel Gromaire in Paris (1949–50). He promoted the movement towards abstract art in Iceland in 1948–52, particularly in its theoretical aspects.

Ágústsson came to geometric abstraction through an interest in Renaissance compositional theory and the theories of the Bauhaus. His meeting with Victor Vasarely in Paris in 1953 encouraged him to continue with a highly reductive series of paintings on which he had embarked shortly before. Later that year Ágústsson was one of the organizers of the Autumn Exhibition (Haustsýningin), the first group show of geometric abstraction in Iceland. At its opening he gave a lecture that became a kind of manifesto for the movement. He followed it up with a series of articles in the cultural review ...

(b Melbourne, May 5, 1951; d Melbourne, July 22, 1999).

Australian painter. While studying painting at Prahran College, Melbourne, from 1969 to 1971, he discovered airbrushes, technical tools employed by commercial artists which he adopted with alacrity as his favoured instrument for picture-making. At art school Arkley met the collage artist and painter Elizabeth Gower, who had a significant influence over his work. They married in 1973, later separating in 1980. In 1977 he travelled to Paris and New York on residencies, and it was during this time that he became fascinated by architectural motifs as inspirations for painting. In Paris he assiduously photographed Art Nouveau and Art Deco doorways in black and white, intending to use these images as reference points for paintings on his return to Australia. Once back there, however, he decided that he needed to find imagery and subject-matter relevant to his own identity as an Australian. While ringing the doorbell of his mother’s house in suburban Melbourne, he noticed the flywire screen door and realized at once that this indigenous architectural feature, banal and disregarded, would be a much more suitable subject than the artistic doorways of Paris. Following this revelation, he made a succession of identically sized paintings in an elongated vertical format corresponding to these flywire screens, but betraying an astonishing variety of motifs and colour schemes. ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born February 1903, in Tunis; died 24 January 1978, in Aix-en-Provence.

Painter, architect, decorative designer, designer, poster artist. Wall decorations, stage costumes and sets, furniture, advertising art.

Art et Lumière.

Félix Tahar Marie Aublet was the son of the Orientalist painter Albert Aublet. He was brought up both in Neuilly, France, and in a Moorish palace in Tunis, where the family spent six months of the year. His second forename, Tahar, means 'blessed one' in Arabic. In ...

British, 20th century, female.

Born 10 May 1898, in London.

Watercolourist, miniaturist, draughtswoman.

Winifred Barnes exhibited in Leeds and Manchester. She worked in commercial design.

(b Haag, Austria, April 5, 1900; d Santa Barbara, CA, Sept 30, 1985).

American painter, designer, photographer and typographer, of Austrian birth. After serving in the Austrian army (1917–18), Bayer studied architecture under Professor Schmidthammer in Linz in 1919 and in 1920 worked with the architect Emanuel Margold in Darmstadt. From 1921 to 1923 he attended the Bauhaus in Weimar, studying mural painting (with Vasily Kandinsky) and typography; it was at this time that he created the Universal alphabet, consisting only of lowercase letters. In 1925 he returned to the Bauhaus, then in Dessau, as a teacher of advertising, layout and typography, remaining there until 1928. For the next ten years he was based in Berlin as a commercial artist: he worked as art manager of Vogue (1929–30) and as director of the Dorland advertising agency. Shortly after his first one-man exhibitions at the Galerie Povolotski, Paris, and at the Kunstlerbund März, Linz (both 1929), he created photomontages of a Surrealist nature, such as ...

French, 20th – 21st century, female.

Active also active in Italy.

Born 31 October 1957, in Bordeaux.

Architect, designer, draughtswoman. Furniture, rug design.

Martine Bedin was awarded a bursary to study architecture in Florence in 1978, and then graduated from the École d'Architecture in Paris. She began her formal research in ...

German, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 14 April 1868, in Hamburg; died 27 February 1940, in Berlin.

Painter, draughtsman, engraver, architect, designer, decorative artist, graphic designer. Posters, furniture, wallpaper, carpets, glassware, ceramics, table services, jewellery, silverwork, objets d'art, typefaces.

Jugendstil, functional school.

Die Sieben (Group of Seven), Deutscher Werkbund...

(b Hamburg, April 14, 1868; d Berlin, Feb 27, 1940).

German architect, designer and painter. Progressing from painting and graphics to product design and architecture, Behrens achieved his greatest successes with his work for the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), in which he reconciled the Prussian Classicist tradition with the demands of industrial fabrication.

After attending the Realgymnasium in Altona, he began his painting studies in 1886 at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe. From there he moved to Düsseldorf, where he studied with Ferdinand Brütt. In December 1889 Behrens married Lilli Krämer, and the following year the couple moved to Munich, where he continued his studies with Hugo Kotschenreiter (1854–1908). Behrens was one of the founder-members of the Munich Secession (see Secession, §1) in 1893 and, shortly afterwards, a founder of the more progressive Freie Vereinigung Münchener Künstler, with Otto Eckmann, Max Slevogt, Wilhelm Trübner and Lovis Corinth. He also joined the circle associated with the magazine Pan, which included Otto Julius Bierbaum, Julius Meier-Graefe, Franz Blei, Richard Dehmel and Otto Eckmann....

American, 20th century, male.

Born 6 December 1939, in Chicago.

Painter (mixed media), sculptor, designer (furniture).

Finish Fetish, Light and Space.

Larry Bell grew up in San Fernando Valley. In 1957 he joined the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a draughtsman at Disney. However, inspired by the teaching of Robert Irwin and his peers, he resolved to become a painter and left the school before graduating in ...

British, 20th century, female.

Born 13 May 1879, near London; died 7 April 1961, in Sussex.

Painter, engraver, illustrator, designer, graphic designer. Still-lifes, landscapes, portraits. Designs for wallpapers and fabrics, furniture, stage sets.

Bloomsbury Group, Omega Workshops, London Group, Euston Road School.

Vanessa Bell was the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, the sister of Virginia Woolf and the wife of the art historian Clive Bell. She started her training with the Royal Academician Sir Arthur Cope, and continued it at the Royal Academy of Art under the direction of the American portrait painter John Singer Sargent between 1900 and 1904....

Swiss, 19th – 20th century, male.

Active in Germany.

Born 31 December 1849, in St Gall; died 1921, in Planegg.

Architect, painter, decorative designer, theorist. Designs (furniture/fabrics/metal objects/ceramics).

Jugendstil.

From 1868 to 1871 Hans Eduard von Berlepsch-Valendas was a student of architecture with Gottfried Sempers in Zurich. After graduating he abandoned architecture while he was living in Frankfurt, to go and train as a painter in Munich (...

Swiss, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 31 July 1863, in Rolle (Vaud); died 1948, in Lausanne.

Painter, engraver, decorative artist. Figure compositions, figures, portraits. Murals, designs for stained glass, furniture.

Art Nouveau.

Ernest Bieler was the uncle of André Charles Bieler. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. He divided his time between the mountainous regions of the Valais and the shores of Lake Geneva; his body of work evokes the everyday life of the peasant communities in the Valais and the Canton of Vaud at the beginning of the twentieth century. Bieler was commissioned to paint compositions for the ceiling of the Victoria hall in Geneva; decorative panels and windows for the federal government building in Bern; stained glass windows for the Vevey church of St-Martin; and decorations for the vintners' festival. Additionally, he exhibited woodcut engravings and designed furniture....

(b Winterthur, Dec 22, 1908; d Zurich, Dec 9, 1994).

Swiss architect, sculptor, painter, industrial designer, graphic designer and writer. He attended silversmithing classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich from 1924 to 1927. Then, inspired by the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925), Paris, by the works of Le Corbusier and by a competition entry (1927) for the Palace of the League of Nations, Geneva, by Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer (1894–1952), he decided to become an architect and enrolled in the Bauhaus, Dessau, in 1927. He studied there for two years as a pupil of Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee and Vasily Kandinsky, mainly in the field of ‘free art’. In 1929 he returned to Zurich. After working on graphic designs for the few modern buildings being constructed, he built his first work, his own house and studio (1932–3) in Zurich-Höngg; although this adheres to the principles of the new architecture, it retains echoes of the traditional, for example in the gently sloping saddle roof....

Swiss, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 11 September 1848, near Schaffhausen.

Draughtsman.

Jakob Billeter was a businessman until 1882, when he decided to study art at the college of industrial design in Winterthur and subsequently in Munich. He taught at the college of industrial design in Basel in ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 8 January 1930, in Lyons.

Engraver, draughtsman.

René Bord began his career as an industrial designer, but gravitated towards engraving in 1968. He exhibited at collective events like the Kanagawa Biennale at Yokohama in Japan, the Osaka Festival, the Cracow Biennale and the Paris Biennale, and he also exhibited in Italy. Bord made a medal to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Silk Workers' Revolt in Lyons in April ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1 October 1942, in Paris.

Painter.

Borgnis uses techniques such as metallisation which, integrated into his paintings, give them an original look. He featured in the exhibition Furniture-Paintings ( Meubles-Tableaux) at the Centre Georges-Pompidouin Paris in 1977. He exhibited in Chicago at the Hirsch Gallery and in Paris at the Galerie Art Contact in ...

French, 20th century, female.

Born 19 November 1889, in Verdun; died 25 June 1972.

Painter, draughtswoman, humorist artist, watercolourist, illustrator, designer. Religious subjects, figures, portraits, genre scenes. Church decoration, furniture, frescoes, designs for tapestry, posters, costumes.

The third child of Edouard Branly, a doctor, Elisabeth Branly trained with Claire Chevalet, as well as with Jacques Cancaret at the Académie Julian until ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1903; died 1979.

Draughtsman, poster artist, illustrator.

After training as an artist at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, René Brantonne took up commercial drawing. He spent World War II in the USA where he produced posters for films. When he returned to France after the war he began producing cartoons. However, he remains best known as one of the first and most celebrated illustrators of science fiction. He produced the covers for the Anticipation collection published by Fleuve Noir ...

American, 20th century, male.

Born 1904.

Draughtsman, designer.

Hin Bredendieck was an industrial designer and lived and worked in Atlanta. He studied in Stuttgart and Hamburg and was a student at the Bauhaus between 1927 and 1930. From 1937 to 1945, he was director of the foundation course at the New Bauhaus in Chicago....