First Open: Post-War and Contemporary Art Online
Ellen Berkenblit is an American painter. She was born in Paterson, New Jersey and graduated from the Cooper Union in 1980. She received an Arts and Letters grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2013, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in the following year. She has exhibited at the Anton Kern Gallery. The Brooklyn Museum holds examples of her work.
Often working in large-scale and in oil paint, a recurring motif in Berkenblit’s work is a magical female protagonist, frequently depicted as a cartoonish women in profile, with long lashes, rosy cheeks, and wild hair.
Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.
Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, also known as Aboudia, is an American-Ivorian contemporary artist.
Aboudia began his artistic career early and has drawn attention for his expressive and emotional style. His work reflects the complex realities of the city and the experiences of locals during political and social crises. The painter often uses bright colours, rough strokes and abstract shapes to convey the violence, chaos and hope that are present in his subjects' lives.
Aboudia's artistic style mixes elements of graffiti, street art, African folk painting and contemporary art.
Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, also known as Aboudia, is an American-Ivorian contemporary artist.
Aboudia began his artistic career early and has drawn attention for his expressive and emotional style. His work reflects the complex realities of the city and the experiences of locals during political and social crises. The painter often uses bright colours, rough strokes and abstract shapes to convey the violence, chaos and hope that are present in his subjects' lives.
Aboudia's artistic style mixes elements of graffiti, street art, African folk painting and contemporary art.
Chantal Joffe is an American-born English artist based in London. Her often large-scale paintings generally depict women and children. In 2006, she received the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award from the Royal Academy.
Zanele Muholi is a South African photographer and LGBT activist.
She works in the fields of photography, video and installation. Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality, with the bulk of her work documenting and celebrating the lives of black lesbians, gays, transgender and intersex people in South Africa.
Richard Mosse is an Irish conceptual documentary photographer living in New York and Ireland.
He has a BA from King's College London and an MA in Photography from Yale University and has worked in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia. Moss' photographs and films document armed conflicts, humanitarian crises and environmental crimes.
Moss works to visualize events, technologies and systems that often remain invisible, using a camera equipped with thermal imaging technology that obscures, abstracts and brings violence to the fore.
Taryn Simon is an American photographer. She is known for her conceptual photography, which explores themes of power, control, and the hidden structures that shape our world.
Simon's work often involves extensive research and collaboration with experts in various fields. Her photographs are often large-scale and meticulously composed, featuring subjects ranging from political figures and cultural icons to everyday objects and places.
Some of Simon's most famous projects include "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar," which documented hidden sites and organizations throughout the United States, and "Contraband," a series of photographs of items seized by customs officials at JFK International Airport.
Simon's work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world, and she has received numerous awards and honors for her contributions to the field of photography. She continues to produce new work and is widely regarded as one of the most important photographers of her generation.
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Her breakthrough work is often considered to be the collected Untitled Film Stills, a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of herself evoking typical female roles in performance media (especially arthouse films and popular B-movies). In the 1980s, she used color film and large prints, and focused more on costume, lighting and facial expression.
Candida Höfer is a German photographer. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. From 1997 to 2000, she taught as professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe. Höfer is the recipient of the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Photography award, as part of the Sony World Photography awards. She is based in Cologne.
Andreas Gursky, a German photographer born in 1955, is renowned for his large format architectural and landscape color photographs, which often feature a high vantage point. Gursky's work has garnered attention for its unique perspective on modern life and contemporary scenes, capturing the grandeur and intricacy of his subjects with a meticulous eye for detail. His pieces, such as "Rhein II" and "99 Cent II Diptychon," showcase his skill in transforming ordinary locales into extraordinary visual narratives, often with the aid of digital manipulation to enhance and refine the final image.
Andreas Gursky's photography is celebrated for its ability to capture the essence of globalization and the human impact on the environment, presenting scenes that are both familiar and alien in their scope and detail. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in high esteem in the art market, with some of his pieces achieving record-breaking auction prices.
For art collectors and experts, Andreas Gursky's photographs offer a profound commentary on the world we live in, blending technical prowess with a deep conceptual framework. His exhibitions and publications provide insight into his creative process and the evolution of his artistic vision.
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