photo on the wall
Christo & Jeanne-Claude are an art duo, the married couple Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935-2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935-2009), an iconic pair of innovative land-art artists. They are known for their large-scale installations: they are packing great historical landmarks, working with huge spaces and monumental natural objects. Their projects are distinguished by what they call "Americanism" in Europe - that is, something grandiose and large-scale. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work is in many major public collections.
Félix Vallotton, a Swiss-born French graphic artist and painter, is recognized for his distinctive woodcuts and paintings of nudes and interiors. Vallotton's journey into art began in Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian, fostering a unique style that broke from traditional norms. His early works, characterized by extreme realism, were showcased at the Salon des Artistes Français and the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889. This period also marked Vallotton's encounter with Japanese prints, notably those by Hokusai, profoundly influencing his artistic direction.
In 1892, Vallotton joined Les Nabis, a group of avant-garde artists including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, which led to a significant evolution in his style. His paintings from this era, such as "Bathers on a Summer Evening" and "Moonlight," exhibited at the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Musée d'Orsay respectively, reveal a departure from realism towards a more symbolic and abstract representation. The works from this period are characterized by flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplified details, mirroring the style he developed in his woodcuts.
Vallotton's woodcuts, like "Intimités" (Intimacies), a series published in 1898, showcased his mastery in capturing the nuances of human relationships, particularly the tensions between men and women. His graphic art, which included depictions of domestic scenes, bathing women, and street crowds, was not just celebrated in Europe but also influenced artists like Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Towards the end of his career, Vallotton continued to innovate, combining elements of realism and abstraction, evident in paintings like "La Malade" (The Sick Girl) and "Clair de lune" (Moonlight). His works remain a testament to his ability to merge technical precision with a poignant exploration of human emotions and societal themes.
For art collectors and experts, Vallotton's body of work offers a rich and diverse exploration of early 20th-century art movements, especially his role in the development of modern woodcut techniques and his contribution to the Nabis movement. His works are a study in the fusion of realism and symbolism, marked by a distinctive style that makes his art enduringly relevant and compelling.
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Sigmar Polke was a German painter and photographer.
Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s, when he produced abstract works created by chance through chemical reactions between paint and other products. In the last 20 years of his life, he produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions of them.
Eugen Felix Prosper Bracht was a German landscape painter.
A late Romanticist painter, Bracht was known for his moody landscapes and coastal scenes in North Germany, and began a sketching trip through Syria, Palestine and Egypt from 1880 to 1881. In 1882, he became a Professor of Landscape Painting at the Prussian Academy of Arts.
Later, Bracht became a representative of German Impressionism.
In 1901, he obtained a teaching position at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts that he held until 1919.
Robert Gober is an American sculptor. His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs.
Thomas Struth is a German photographer who is best known for his Museum Photographs series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives and works in Berlin and New York.