Article
a.r. group
Ewa Mikina
[Pol. artysci rewolucyjni: ‘revolutionary artists’]
Polish group of avant-garde artists that flourished between 1929 and 1936. Its members were the sculptor Katarzyna Kobro, the painters Władysław Strzemiński and Henryk Stażewski, and the poets J. Brzękowski and J. Przyboś. It was founded by Strzemiński after he, Kobro and Stażewski left the Praesens group. The group’s programme chiefly reflected the views of Strzemiński. In two leaflets entitled Kommunikaty a.r. (‘a.r. bulletins’) the group declared itself in favour of a ‘laboratory’ version of Constructivism and an avant-garde art that influenced social life in an indirect and gradual manner. It opposed the politicization and popularization of art, which it regarded as a debasement of artistic expression, but the group also believed that rigorous, formal discipline, the organic construction of a work, its coherence, effectiveness and economy of means, made art somewhat synthetic or contrived. From 1933 the group’s announcements regarding its programme appeared in the Łódź art magazine Forma...
Article
Aachen
Charles B. McClendon and Rosamond D. McKitterick
[Fr. Aix-la-Chapelle]
City in Nordrhein-Westfalia, Germany. It was the birthplace and residence of Charlemagne, ruler of the Frankish Kingdom, and remained associated with German rulers throughout the Middle Ages; most Holy Roman emperors were crowned there until 1531. Founded by the Romans in the 1st century
Article
Aachen [Aach; Ach; Acha], Hans [Johann; Joan] von
C. Höper
(b Cologne, 1552; d Prague, March 4, 1615).
German painter and draughtsman, active also in Italy and Bohemia. One of the foremost painters of the circle gathered at the Prague court of Emperor Rudolf II (see Habsburg, House of family, §I, (10)), he synthesized Italian and Netherlandish influences in his portraits and erudite allegories.
Hans’s surname is derived from his father’s native town. According to Karel van Mander, he probably studied c. 1567–73 with the portrait painter Georg Jerrigh, who had trained in Antwerp. Von Aachen subsequently became a member of the Cologne guild of painters. He travelled to Italy c. 1574, first working in Venice as a copyist and for the painter Gaspar Rem (1542–1615/17), before going in 1575 to Rome, where he copied antique sculptures and the works of Italian masters; he also painted an Adoration of the Shepherds for the church of Il Gesù in Rome (1580s; untraced, but known from an engraving (...
Article
Aagaard Andersen, Gunnar
Rigmor Lovring
(b Ordrup, July 14, 1919; d Munkerup, nr Dronningmølle, Hillerød, June 29, 1982).
Danish painter, sculptor, designer and writer. He studied at the Kunsthåndvaerkerskole (1936–9) and the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi (1939–46), both in Copenhagen. He experimented with non-figurative forms of expression in numerous media. He was a co-founder of Groupe Espace in 1951, and his work was important for the development of Concrete art internationally.
From 1947 to 1950 Aagaard Andersen developed a new, pure pictorial dynamic, moving from fine-lined drawings and faceted landscapes towards an abstract formal language that explored form in terms of light, shadow and reflection. His ‘picture boxes’, in which various elements manifested rhythmic and dynamic growth, explored the concept of painting as object. He began to use the techniques of folding and pleating (e.g. Black Picture Surface with Three Folded Sections, 1964; Esbjerg, Kstpav.), and his work was dominated by his interest in light and shadow.
Besides paintings, Aagaard Andersen produced a number of sculptures, for example the abstract steel work ...
Article
Aalto, (Hugo) Alvar
Göran Schildt
(Henrik)
(b Kuortane, Feb 3, 1898; d Helsinki, May 11, 1976).
Finnish architect and designer, active also in America. His success as an architect lay in the individual nature of his buildings, which were always designed with their surrounding environment in mind and with great attention to their practical demands. He never used forms that were merely aesthetic or conditioned by technical factors but looked to the more permanent models of nature and natural forms. He was not anti-technology but believed that technology could be humanized to become the servant of human beings and the promoter of cultural values. One of his important maxims was that architects have an absolutely clear mission: to humanize mechanical forms.
His father was a government surveyor working in the lake district of central Finland and became a counterforce to his son’s strong artistic calling. Instead of becoming a painter, which tempted him for a long time, Alvar chose the career of architect as a possible compromise. He never became a planner dominated by technological thinking, however, but always gave his creations an artistic, humanistic character. He studied at the Technical College in Helsinki (...
Article
Aaltonen, Wäinö
Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse
(Waldemar)
(b Marttila [Swed. St Mårtens], March 8, 1894; d Helsinki, May 30, 1966).
Finnish sculptor and painter. He was the most significant sculptor of the early decades of Finnish independence (after 1917). His style combined classical tranquillity with a modern sensitivity and disclosed the beauty of granite as a sculptural material. He studied painting at the School of Drawing of the Turku Art Association between 1910 and 1915 but on graduation began to practise moulding techniques and to teach himself stone sculpting. In 1916 his firm instincts and talent for monumental sculpture were remarked on at a general exhibition. His Granite Boy (1917–20; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.) is one of the masterpieces of his youth, the timid austerity of the child’s figure conveying an Egyptian quality. The marble sculptures Little Wader (1917–22; priv. col., see Okkonen, 1926) and Wader (1924; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.) are both good examples of Aaltonen’s tonal carving. His main concerns were light and shadow and the atmosphere they create around the sculpture. In ...
Article
Aarts, Johannes Josephus
Jan Jaap Heij
(b The Hague, Aug 18, 1871; d Amsterdam, Oct 19, 1934).
Dutch printmaker and painter. He trained at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague, where he subsequently taught graphic art (1893–1911). In 1911 he succeeded Pieter Dupont as professor in graphics at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam under the directorship of Antoon Derkinderen. In the early years of his career Aarts produced some paintings using the pointillist technique, mostly landscapes (The Hague, Gemeentemus.); he also carved some sculptures in wood. He is, however, best known for his graphic work. In technique and subject-matter, his prints have a great deal in common with those of Dupont. As the latter’s successor he devoted himself to the revival of engraving, which his predecessor had reintroduced; his own experiments in this medium (in particular his scenes with diggers and beggars, all c. 1900) are considered milestones in early 20th-century Dutch printmaking. He also applied his skills to etching, lithography, woodcutting and wood-engraving; of the latter his ...
Article
Aas, Nils
Ingeborg Wikborg
(Sigurd)
(b Inderøy, Nord-Trøndelag, April 21, 1933).
Norwegian sculptor, designer and medallist. He became familiar with handicraft in his father’s furniture workshop. In 1954 he began five years’ study as a commercial artist at the Håndverks- og Kunstindustriskole in Oslo and from 1957 to 1963 he worked as an illustrator for a newspaper. He studied at the Kunstakademi in Oslo from 1959 to 1962 under the sculptor Per Palle Storm (1910–94) who advocated naturalism in sculpture. As an assistant to Arnold Haukeland from 1961 to 1964, Aas lost his apprehension of the untried and cultivated his sense of daring, as he gained experience with welding techniques. Highly imaginative and versatile, Aas worked in both abstract and figurative modes and is reckoned one of the foremost sculptors in Norway; in 1990 he was honoured with St Olav.
Aas’s first sculpture was an equestrian monument in snow, made in Inderøy while he was a schoolboy. His first public project was the abstract steel figure ...
Article
Aba-Novák, Vilmos
S. Kontha
(b Budapest, March 15, 1894; d Budapest, Sept 29, 1941).
Hungarian painter, draughtsman and etcher. He trained as a drawing teacher at the College of Fine Arts, Budapest (1912–14). In 1913 he worked at the Szolnok colony and he served in World War I. He taught drawing for a while at the Technical University, Budapest. In 1922 he learnt etching from Viktor Olgyay at the College of Fine Arts. His early works show an affinity with the Group of Eight; later he moved closer to the work of the Activists, especially József Nemes Lampérth and Béla Uitz. He instinctively sought a dynamic and powerful form of expression. His pen-drawings and etchings are frequently based on biblical subjects and are characterized by a heroic conception, an illusory atmosphere and romantic associations. The etching Savonarola (1925; Budapest, N.G.) reveals his extraordinary compositional abilities, especially in the rendering of crowds, and his use of strong chiaroscuro. His landscapes are dominated by carefully composed, naturalist details and the exploitation of the dramatic effect of reflections. In his drawings, Cubist arrangements gradually gave way to a more diffuse composition. His nudes in the landscape (e.g. ...
Article
Abacus
Article
Abadie, Paul
Claude Laroche
(b Paris, Nov 9, 1812; d Chatou, Aug 2, 1884).
French architect and restorer. He was the son of a Neo-classical architect of the same name (1783–1868), who was a pupil of Charles Percier and architect to the département of Charente. The younger Paul Abadie began studying architecture in 1832 by joining the atelier of Achille Leclère and then entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1835. While he was following this classical training, he participated in the rediscovery of the Middle Ages by going on archaeological trips and then, from 1844, in his capacity as attaché to the Commission des Monuments Historiques. He undertook his first restoration work at Notre-Dame de Paris, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc. Abadie was appointed deputy inspector at Notre-Dame in 1845, and in 1848, when the department responsible for diocesan buildings was created, he was appointed architect to the dioceses of Périgueux, Angoulême and Cahors. He subsequently completed about 40 restoration projects, mainly on Romanesque churches in Charente, in the Dordogne and the Gironde, and as a diocesan architect he was put in charge of two large cathedrals in his district: St Pierre d’Angoulême and St Front de Périgueux. In the former he undertook a huge programme of ‘completion’, returning to a stylistic unity that was in line with current episcopal policy (...
Article
Abakanowicz, Magdalena
Zdisław Żygulski jr
(b Felenty, nr Warsaw, 1930).
Polish textile artist. She studied at the College of Fine Arts, Sopot, and graduated in 1955 from the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw. At the beginning of her career she was interested in drawing, painting and sculpture, but after 1960 she concentrated on textile arts in the broad sense of the term. Breaking with tradition, she initiated bold experiments with fibre and fabric. Her work contributed to the revolutionary textile movement known as Fibre art and finally entered the domain of modern sculpture.
Abakanowicz’s début, with a composition of forms made of white fabrics, was in 1962 at the first Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie in Lausanne. At that time she also experimented with tapestry, giving it three-dimensional relief by introducing non-woven shapes. In the late 1960s her development of three-dimensional textiles was fully realized in her ‘abakans’. These took various forms—winged, open or round—and were red, orange or white. She also created fifteen heavy, monolithic ‘black forms’ and three large ‘black garments’. In ...
Article
Abate, Nicolò dell’
Dorigen Caldwell
[Abbate, Niccolò dell’]
(b Modena, 1509–12; d ?Fontainebleau, 1571).
Italian painter and draughtsman. He was one of the most important artists of the first Fontainebleau school, which was developed at the French court by Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio, and he introduced the Italian Mannerist landscape into France.
He was almost certainly trained by his father, Giovanni dell’Abate (d 1559), a stuccoist, and by the sculptor Antonio Begarelli. Apparently after a period as a soldier, by 1537 he was working in Modena as a painter under Alberto Fontana (fl 1518–58). There the two artists decorated the façade of the Beccherie (Slaughterhouse) from which certain paintings survive (e.g. St Geminian and an allegory of the Wine Harvest; both Modena, Galleria e Museo Estense). His early paintings clearly show the influence of Correggio and of such Ferrarese artists as Dosso Dossi. They also display a love of the picturesque and the pastoral, with frequent variations on the theme of the concert, as in the fragment of a concert scene (Reggio Emilia, Mus. Civ. & Gal. A.) from the façade decorations of the Palazzo Pratonieri in Reggio Emilia. Around ...
Article
Abbatini, Guido Ubaldo
Ann Sutherland Harris
(b Città di Castello, c. 1600–05; d Rome, 1656).
Italian painter and mosaicist. He trained in the Roman studio of Cavaliere d’Arpino. He is principally known for executing fresco decorations in several chapels in Rome to designs by Bernini. Independent commissions, such as the frescoes depicting the Life of Charlemagne (1635–7; Rome, Vatican, Sala di Carlo Magno), reveal, however, that despite his collaboration with Bernini and later with Cortona, his preference was for a restrained classical style, close to that of more conservative contemporaries such as Andrea Camassei and Giovanni Francesco Romanelli. He assisted Bernini with the vault of the Raimondi Chapel in S Pietro in Montorio (1642–4) and that of the Pio Chapel in S Agostino (c. 1644–5). He also painted the vision of clouds and angels in the vault above Bernini’s marble group of St Teresa in Ecstasy (c. 1647; Rome, S Maria della Vittoria, Cornaro Chapel). In 1650 he executed independently the decorative frescoes on the ceiling and side walls of the sacristy of S Spirito in Sassia, Rome. He also executed mosaics in St Peter’s, after his own designs and those of ...
Article
Abbaye de Créteil
Daniel Robbins
Community of French writers, artists and composers in operation from November 1906 to February 1908, located in a villa on the banks of the Marne at Créteil, south-east of Paris. Their choice of name paid homage to François Rabelais, whose Gargantua had established the Abbey of Thelema as a model monastery, a self-supporting commune whose members devoted part of each day to group labour and the rest to perfecting the self intellectually. The Abbaye de Créteil numbered among its members the painters Albert Gleizes, Charles Berthold-Mahn and Jacques d’Otemar, the poets Charles Vildrac (b 1882), Georges Duhamel (1884–1966), René Arcos, Alexandre Mercereau, Jules Romains, Henri-Martin Barzun (b 1881), the composer Albert Doyen, and the printer Lucien Linard, whom Gleizes had met while doing his military service. It was through Linard’s trade of printing and publishing that the Abbaye hoped to secure its material future....
Article
Abbey of Saint-Germain (Auxerre)
Barbara A. Watkinson
The former Benedictine abbey church of St Germain in Auxerre, France, now comprises the remains of a Carolingian crypt, a Gothic choir and transepts, and the four eastern bays of the nave; the western nave bays and the Carolingian westwork were destroyed in the early 19th century. A detached 12th-century bell-tower also survives. The medieval history of the abbey is dominated by the cult of St Germanus, the second bishop of Auxerre (reg 418–48), who was born in the town and was an important figure in the Church’s campaign against the Pelagian heresy.
St Germanus’s tomb lay below the level of the main apse of the Merovingian church built c. 493–533 by Queen Clotilde, wife of Clovis I (reg 481–511). Between 841 and 859 Conrad, Comte d’Auxerre, the uncle of Emperor Charles the Bald, decided to enhance the structure, and a contemporary description mentions the ‘admirable unit of crypts’ organized around the semi-subterranean confessio containing Germanus’s remains. In this form of ‘outer crypt’ the confessio formed the nucleus of a small aisled, vaulted chamber surrounded by a corridor leading to small chapels in echelon. Attached to the crypt at the east was a circular oratory that was part of the same building programme. This elaborate arrangement, which provided access to the tomb on important feast days, reflects the growing importance of the cult of relics in the Carolingian period....
Article
Abbey, Edwin Austin
Pamela H. Simpson
(b Philadelphia, PA, April 1, 1852; d London, Aug 1, 1911).
American painter, illustrator, and muralist, active also in England. Abbey began his art studies at the age of 14 in his native Philadelphia where he worked with Isaac L. Williams (1817–95). Two years later he enrolled in night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art working under Christian Schussele (1824–1979), but by then Abbey was already a published illustrator. In the 1870s his drawings appeared in numerous publications, but it was his work for Harper & Brothers that proved most important to his career. In 1871 he moved to New York, and in 1878, Harper’s sent him on a research trip to England. He found such affinity with the country that he made it his home for the rest of his life. After 1889 he devoted more time to painting, was elected a Royal Academician in 1898, and in 1902 was chosen by Edward VII (...
Article
Abbey, John Roland
Jacqueline Colliss Harvey
(b Brighton, Nov 23, 1894; d London, Dec 24, 1969).
English collector. Educated privately, he was commissioned to the Rifle Brigade in 1914. He was invalided home in November 1916 and made a director in his family’s brewing firm. He began his book collection in 1929, at first with an interest in modern bindings. In 1931 he commissioned Sybil Pye and R. de Coverley and Sons to produce a binding to his own design for Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Consistently stressing the importance of appearance and condition, Abbey began buying antiquarian books in 1933 and manuscripts (of which he ultimately owned 143) in 1946, with advice from Sydney Cockerell. After World War II he had the largest private collection of his time, including 1914 18th- and 19th-century books of watercolour prints.
Auctions of his collection were held between 1965 and 1967 (buyers included Paul Mellon and the Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart) and, after his death, between 1970 and 1975...
