Russian, 20th century, male.
Also active in France from 1910.
Born 1889, in Vinnitsa; died 1970, in Leningrad (now St Petersburg).
Painter, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator. Stage sets.
Bubnovy Valet (Jack of Diamonds) group.
A student at the school of fine art in Odessa between 1903...
Russian, 20th century, male.
Also active in France.
Born 11 July 1889, in Petropavlosk (Kamchatka); died 1974, in Paris.
Painter, collage artist, sculptor, illustrator, draughtsman. Stage costumes and sets, film sets.
The son of a political exile in Kamchatka, Yuri Annenkov was able to go to St Petersburg in 1898 and study at the school of fine art and at several artists’ workshops between 1908 and 1911, developing a passion for the theatre and theatrical production. He went to Paris in 1911 and studied with Maurice Denis and Félix Vallotton and then went to Switzerland in 1913. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1912 and 1913 and then returned to Russia where he joined the...
British, 20th century, male.
Born 20 February 1921, in London, in Hoyland (Yorkshire) according to some sources; died 17 November 1975.
Painter, sculptor (bronze), illustrator, stage set designer, art critic, designer. Figures, landscapes, portraits, mythological subjects.
The son of the art critic and poet Gerald Gould and the feminist Labour Party activist Barbara Ayrton, Michael Ayrton travelled widely in his youth to Vienna, Paris and Italy. He received his artistic education at Heatherley's and St John's Wood art schools in London. In ...
Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 10 July 1888, in Volos (Thessaly); died 20 November 1978, in Rome.
Painter, illustrator, sculptor writer. Scenes with figures, portraits, nudes, animals, landscapes, flowers, still-lifes. Stage sets.
Dadaism, Surrealism, Pittura Metafisica (Metaphysical Painting).
Les Artistes Italiens de Paris.
Giorgio de Chirico’s father, Evaristo, was originally from Palermo, and his mother, Gemma, from Genoa. He was born in Thessaly in Greece, where his father worked as a railway engineer – one of those ‘19th-century European engineers, bearded and powerful’, as Giorgio later described him. This Mediterranean background was an important factor in Giorgio’s development, and classical order and the harsh light of Attica continued to influence his vision, as did his classical education....
Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 1913, in Milan; died 1993.
Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, engraver, sculptor, illustrator. Figures, landscapes, still-lifes, animals. Stage sets.
Clerici was a keen reader of the Surrealist review Le Minotaure in his youth, and this strongly influenced his later work.
From the outset of his career, he was active in creating stage sets for opera, ballet and the theatre, at the Fenice in Venice, the Rome opera house and other venues, for the works of Monteverdi, Purcell, Lulli, Goldoni and Stravinsky. He also worked as a book illustrator. In his more personal work, he first gained a reputation as a sculptor. After ...
Czech, 20th century, female.
Active from 1946 active in, and from 1957 naturalised in France.
Born 26 December 1908, in Prague.
Painter, engraver, illustrator, sculptor, art critic. Stage sets.
Zdenka Datheil made her debut in Prague, creating about 30 sets for the national theatres of Prague, Brno, Bratislava and Zagreb. She arrived in Paris in ...
(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 ...
(b Lille, Feb 8, 1861; d Ghent, Jan 7, 1938).
Belgian painter, sculptor, illustrator, and stage designer. He studied music at the Koninklijk Muziekconservatorium and sculpture at the Gewerbeschule, Ghent (after 1877). He visited Paris in 1887 and Italy in 1890, with a grant from the city of Ghent. He was deeply impressed by the masters of the Quattrocento, and was encouraged to take up painting after meeting Constantin Meunier (1891). He painted Symbolist scenes and was influenced by Art Nouveau. After exhibiting his work with Les XX in Brussels (1893), he made decorative panels for Oostakker Castle.
As an illustrator Doudelet worked on Pol De Mont’s Van Jezus (Antwerp, 1897) and books by Maurice Maeterlinck, for example Douze chansons (Paris, 1896) and Pelléas et Mélisande (Brussels, 1892 or 1922). He illustrated the periodicals Réveil (1895–1896), De Vlaamsche school, Mercure de France, Pan, L’Eroica, Nuovo Convito, De Vlaamsche School, Woord en beeld...
Russian, 20th century, male.
Active from 1910 in France.
Born 1892, in St Petersburg; died 21 April 1990, in Paris.
Painter (including gouache), sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, stylist, decorative designer. Stage costumes and sets, designs for jewellery, furniture.
Art Deco.
The son of an admiral in the Imperial navy, Erté was a pupil of Ilya Repin in St Petersburg. He went to Paris at the age of eighteen, apparently attended the Académie Julian and was admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Jean-Paul Laurens' workshop. He began his career in 1913 with the couturier Paul Poiret. From that year onwards, he designed stage costumes for Mata-Hari, Mistinguett and Gaby Deslys and in 1914 he worked for the journals ...
Austrian, 20th century, male.
Born 1930, in Vienna.
Painter, draughtsman, engraver, illustrator, sculptor, collage artist, decorative designer. Scenes with figures, figures. Stage sets.
Groups: Hundsgruppe (Dog’s group), Phantastischer Realismus group.
Ernst Fuchs enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna in 1945. From 1946 to 1950, he was a pupil of Gütersloh, whom Salvador Dalí considered the most important painter of his time (after himself). In around 1950, he was one of the founders of the Viennese ...
Spanish, 20th century, male.
Born 20 March 1927, in Barcelona; died 2007.
Painter (including gouache/mixed media), collage artist, sculptor, illustrator. Designs for tapestries, murals, stage sets.
Taüll Group.
Josep Guinovart started out doing painting as well as decorations, but in 1943 he went to study at the school of graphic art in Barcelona and from 1951 became a full-time painter. In 1952 he lived in Paris. He was founder of the group ...
(b Budapest, April 17, 1904; d Budapest, Jan 26, 1986).
Hungarian painter, illustrator, mosaicist, tapestry designer, stage designer, poster designer, printmaker, sculptor, teacher and administrator. From 1922 to 1929 he studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Magyar Kepzőmüvészeti Főiskolá) in Budapest under Gyula Rudnay (1878–1957) and János Vaszary (1867–1939). In the mid-1920s he became acquainted with Béla Uitz’s General Ludd series (1923; Budapest, N.G.) and in Venice he saw the work of such Russian avant-garde artists as Rodchenko and El Lissitzky and such Italian Futurists as Severini. In 1926 in Paris he studied the works of Léger, Braque, Picasso and others in the collection of Léonce Rosenberg. He was also influenced by the art of Brancusi and Joseph Csáky, as well as André Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme (Paris, 1924). From the outset, Hincz’s work revealed a number of different objectives. Although he experimented with abstraction, the reference to the figure is always present in one form or another. His profound interest in humanity and its social interaction was based on, and motivated by, this interest in the figure. His early paintings are expressionist in mood and are composed of flattened forms in a shallow space in a manner reminiscent of Cubo–Futurist art. Elements of Purism and Surrealism are also present. After World War II he became increasingly preoccupied with realism, political agitprop art and the problems inherent in creating new symbols; a study trip to Korea, China and Vietnam in ...
Bulgarian, 20th century, male.
Born 1 January 1932, in Assenovgrad.
Painter, sculptor, mosaicist, illustrator. Decorative panels, frescoes, stage sets, patterns (fabrics).
Ivan Kirkov studied at the national academy of fine arts in Sofia where he attended painting classes with Ilia Petrov and Kirk Tsonev, completing his training there in ...
Czechoslovak, 20th century, male.
Born 11 December 1925, in Orlová.
Draughtsman, sculptor, installation artist, illustrator, painter. Stage sets.
Stanislav Kolibal lived and worked in Prague. From 1945 to 1950 he studied at the school of decorative arts in Prague and at the academy of dramatic art ...
French, 20th century, male.
Active in Paris.
Born 18 February 1885, in Paris; died 1954, in Paris.
Painter (gouache), collage artist, sculptor, engraver, draughtsman, illustrator. Stage sets.
Henri Laurens had barely left school when he started sculpting first as an apprentice with an interior designer, then as a carver-setter whilst attending night school and teaching himself modelling. In 1910 he stayed briefly at that sanctuary for down-and-out artists, La Ruche, where Archipenko and Léger were also staying. Until 1911 and the advent of Cubism, he worked in total isolation. Then he met Braque, with whom he formed a lasting friendship, as well as Fernand Léger and Juan Gris, though he did not join their group. Only after World War II would his work meet with a degree of recognition....
French, 20th century, male.
Born 18 May 1940, in Alençon.
Painter, collage artist, lithographer, draughtsman, illustrator, sculptor, writer. Stage sets.
Alain Le Yaouanc spent time in the USA in 1956 where he executed his first paintings. In 1957 he held his first exhibitions in the New Britain Museum, Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury and Connecticut. In ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 4 January 1896, in Balagny (Oise); died 28 October 1987, in Paris.
Painter (including gouache), draughtsman, sculptor, engraver, illustrator. Stage sets.
Paris Surrealist group.
André Masson came from the region of Compiègne, Beauvais and Senlis. His father sold wallpaper. He lived in Balagny until the age of eight. Following a short stay in Lille his father's work took the family to Brussels, where he attended school until the age of 12. He then became an apprentice, working in the afternoons as a draughtsman in an embroidery studio and studying at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in the mornings and evenings....
Greek, 20th century, male.
Born 1916, in Arta.
Painter, illustrator. Designs for mosaics, stage sets, low reliefs.
Yannis Moralis studied at the Athens school of fine art from 1931 to 1936 and the École des Arts et Métiers in Paris from 1937 to 1939. He also trained in Italy. In ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1931, in Nice; died 3 June 2005.
Draughtsman, painter (gouache), sculptor, engraver, poster artist, illustrator, designer. Religious subjects, figures, portraits. Postage stamps.
Raymond Moretti lived and worked in Courbevoie. After producing strictly figurative painting he undertook, around 1970, an enormous construction which he showed mainly in Paris in ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 9 April 1932, in Caen.
Painter, watercolourist, engraver, lithographer, illustrator, sculptor. Scenes with figures, landscapes. Murals, church decoration, stage costumes and sets.
Jacques Pasquier built up an entomological collection from 1946 to 1956, while also drawing comic strips. He started oil painting in ...
